Tonight was my first 'Tempo' run with the Clapham Chasers.
I had to look up what a 'tempo' run actually was, and got pointed to a resource that Karly had been given by Bryn: http://www.runnersworld.com/workouts/what-is-a-tempo-run. It's essentially around twenty minutes of running at a pace 24 seconds slower per km than your 5k pace.
For the chasers, this translates to three laps around Battersea Park, with short, medium and long laps so that people running different times still get to see each other (albeit briefly) at the lap marker.
Ooops.
I want to blame switching from km to miles, but I ended up running at a far quicker pace than advised in the article above. I'm still (quite optimistically) aiming for a sub-3.45 marathon, and to do this I was looking at 8 min/mile. That easily translates to 5 min/km so I had that as a target in my head.
I ended up running with a few others at a pace of just under 5, and kept the last two laps to 4.42/km and fairly consistent. My heart rate also looked nice and steady - so at least I got that part of the programme correct.
I'll wait to see what impact this has on my running - I either need to run a 5k quite a bit quicker when I do the parkrun on Saturday (to justify my speedy tempo run) or drop the pace next week.