2 mile time trial - 10:46

I got up this morning wondering if we might be doing a time trial, but sort of hoping we weren't. I was a little tired and I was hoping to have a little bit easier of a hard workout today. It's been about a week and a half since I had a day off and my legs were a little tired after doing 60 miles last week. I decided to drive over to the base and do a shorter warmup and cooldown today and I got there and saw we had a time trial. I almost decided to just run a lap around the bayou and put in an easy 7 miles or so, but I decided that I would go ahead and do the time trial. I only did about a mile and a quarter warmup and some drills and strides before we started. If I had known for sure we were doing a time trial I think I would have tried to make sure I got in at least a 2 mile warmup and brought flats to wear. When we lined up to start I knew that it would basically be a solo time trial The course was a mile long loop on grass with one short steep hill near the beginning of the loop and then a short steep downhill and a small gradual uphill at the end of the loop. I didn't have my garmin on so I was just having to run on how I felt rather than being able to check my pace. This may have been a good thing because I might have tried to push it to quickly early on if I had my garmin with me. I didn't want to go out too hard the first 1/2 mile and then end up falling apart. My goal for the first lap had been to run somewhere in the 5:20 - 5:25 range and then try to repeat it on the 2nd lap. I ended up going through the 1st mile right at 5:30. I felt pretty good and I thought that I should be able to run even pace or faster on the 2nd lap. Once I crested the hill and hit a long flat stretch I really started pushing it. There is a turnaround point on the loop about 600 meters from the finish and when I hit that on the 2nd lap I really started pushing hard. When I got to the bridge near the end I checked my watch and saw that I was going to be well under 5:30 for the lap and I pushed it in hard as I caught a couple of the people finishing the 1 mile time trial. I finished the 2nd lap in 5:16 for a total time of 10:46.

I was really happy I negative split it by so much and Sean said that I probably would have been about 10 seconds/mile faster on the roads. I did an easy 2 mile cooldown after the workout.