How About a Time Trial?

When I put down 'hard 7 miles' in my workout plan for today I intended to run 4 laps of my 1.75 mile trail as follows: 13:30 (7:43 pace), 12:00 (6:51), 13:00 (7:26), 11:00 (6:17). Before the workout today I thought about the week to follow: 13-18 at an easy pace tomorrow followed by three days rest leading up to the 4.748 mile Manchester Road Race on Thursday which I want to run at 5:50 pace. I decided that running my original planned workout might put me at risk of too much lactate buildup and jeopardize the long run tomorrow and possibly the goal pace for Thursday. Playing it safely I cut off the first two laps and went with the 13:00, 11:00 targets followed by a generous 5+ miles easy. The second lap target of 11:00 works out to a pace of 6:17 per mile and a solid time trial for me. On a road course this is nothing much, but on the trails it's a good hard run for me. The trail was more challenging than normal because of the many leaves on the ground and the rain we had during the week. In addition, at the .78 mile mark there is a switchback/hairpin that results in a complete halt in forward momentum and the final .2 is filled with so many exposed roots that you end up doing something resembling a football practice tire drill as you speed through some stretches. These conditions make me all the more pleased with my performance:

Lap 1 by the splits:
.56 (end of steady climb) - 4:26 (7:55 pace)
.78 (the switchback)- 1:40 split (7:35 pace), 6:06 total
1.07 (a tree, sorry they aren't all distinctive) - 2:03 split (7:04 pace), 8:09 tot
1.75 (finish of lap) - 4:55 split (7:14), 13:04 tot (7:28 average pace)

Lap 2 by the splits:
.56 - 3:47 split (6:45 pace)
.78 - 1:21 split (6:08 pace), 5:08 total
1.07 - 1:43 split (5:55 pace), 6:51 tot
1.75 - 4:18 split (6:19 pace), 11:09 tot (6:22 average pace)

The time of 11:09 is my fastest time around the 1.75 miles by a little over 40 seconds. Pretty sweet with no speed work. I can't wait to see how far below 11:00 minutes I can get when I'm in the interval phase.

I think the ability to run 6:22 around this loop bodes well for the road race. The differential between the times I ran in the Westchester Half Marathon and the times I ran in the build up on this trail indicate that I run about 12 seconds faster per mile on the road over a comparable distance. With wet leaves and mud the differential was probably a little greater today.

The distance for today was 10 miles which brings the total to 47 for the week. Best so far in the aerobic buildup. Now that I've run a solid week again, I'm not ashamed to list the weekly progression/regression/progression of the 20-week aerobic base building phase:

Aerobic Base Buildup after Week #16:
Week #1: 16
Week #2: 21
Week #3: 24
Week #4: 28
Week #5: 35
Week #6: 37
Week #7: 38
Week #8: 43
Week #9: 40
Week #10: 28
Week #11: 46
Week #12: 23
Week #13: 1
Week #14: 26
Week #15: 26
Week #16: 47