For me, a useful definition of "tempo pace" is that at which I could sustain for 3-5 miles but would really like to slow down. My typical workout: 2 miles warm-up, 3-5 miles tempo pace, 1-2 miles cool-down. The tempo part is run either at the local high school track or on the road, at a current pace of about 8:00-8:30/mile.
During the early weeks and months of the pandemic, the uncertainty of what's out there constrained my training runs to laps through the house or around the lot. When I finally ventured out to run, I had lost some fitness. So, to ease back into training, I began running what I call the "broken tempo," i.e., breaking each mile into a tempo part and a slower recovery part. I began with 0.5 mile tempo/0.5 mile slow and incremented 0.05 mile every couple weeks or so, sometimes with variations, e.g., first two miles at 0.6/0.4, third mile at 0.65/0.35. Over several months, I was back to regular tempo runs of 3 miles. (In writing this post, I came across this informative article on tempo runs and found that "broken tempo" is an actually used term!)
This process of easing back into training revealed some interesting mental aspects of tempo running ("mental tempo"!). For example, for a broken tempo of 0.8/0.2, towards the end of the 0.8, I was feeling the effort. Yet, after I got back to 3-mile tempo runs, knowing that there are no slow-run segments, those first 0.8-mile's felt easier, not needing as much effort. This I find generally to be the case, i.e., once "committed," the perceived effort seems lower. Once I've committed to the full 3 miles, the 0.8-mile mark of each mile lost its significance; I just ran right past it. I stayed at 3 miles for several weeks. Then, one morning, in the midst of a 3-mile tempo run, I decided to extend it to 3.5 miles. Once decided--mentally committed--that additional 0.5 mile also seemed not that hard. The perception of effort decreased. I'm currently at 4 miles for tempo runs and will be at 5 miles in another month or so.
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