By the time I got out the door for my run for the day at 5:30 pm, my legs were basically jumping out of my shorts to go running. I felt kind of cooped up all day. And also, I missed my regular workout yesterday. So I guess my body is just itching to get out and run faster. Hence I think I'll do a speed workout tomorrow morning. But today I just started heading up table mesa, and decided to run up to NCAR and back. Its a nice steady road run that gains over 700' over 2.7 miles. As I looked down at my pace early on I realized I must be feeling pretty good because I was running about 7:00 pace. I just went with that, and it was one of those runs where everything just felt amazing. Zero soreness, lots of strength. Maybe it was mental...I couldn't get all those world and american record setting runners from Monday out of my minds eye as I was running. It seems I often feel faster or better after I witness really fast strong runners for some reason. Anyway, I cruised up the entire ascent feeling pretty incredible and hit the sign at the top in 20:44. As I just looked back at my previous best time up that route from my house, I beat it by nearly 5 minutes! And I wasn't running all out. Just a steady, really smooth feeling run. It's kind of cool when that happens. The stats for the ascent are 2.7 miles, ~725' vertical, 7:41/mile. At the top I added a slow easy mile out and back on the trail up toward the mesa trail, then headed back down on the road. Total: 7 miles - 52 minutes - 7:26/mile - 1020' vertical.
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