It's over, man. Let her go.

After wimping out last night and not going on a run, today was the day!  Headed out after work, so it was relatively cool and the wind wasn't bad, just a light drizzle.  Took it easy & relaxed going up past CCAC then up around the park and back.  Kept the HR in check, nothing over 160 or so.  Pace was mostly low 9's except when I did a little walking or waited for traffic - 9:42 AP.  Got back to the gym and decided to do a little cool down on the TM.

Looking at the TM controls, I decided instead to do some intervals to get the legs feeling some speed again.  Set it to 15 mins, but only did 13mins (7 resting, 6 speed minutes) then cooled down the other 2:00.  Resting pace was set at 10:55, speed started at 8:00 but after two of those, picked it up to 7:30, 7:03, and finally 6:40 with a 8:00 final minute interval.  I was really happy with the "feel" of the speed intervals.  The 6:40 was definitely fast and I'd have a hard time holding that much more than another 30-45 sec, but it felt good to stretch out the stride - as opposed to the shuffle run I do.

Hopefully I feel good tomorrow since I stretched out well tonight and even with the miles, I don't feel like I over did it at all.

Goals for this run continued to change as I ran.  I started out thinking I'd run 4mi easy and just get away from the desk.  After a few minutes, I was feeling pretty good and decided to see what my 5k time was as a benchmark, just running it pretty easy with no walking.  This is a pretty flat 5k route, so it's not even close to the hilly 5k route the Riverview race will be, but it would give me an idea.

Turn around point was 18:55 @ 2.13 and I considered seeing if I could negative split, but that wasn't really my goal so I focused on the 5k mark.  5k split was 27:25 (8:50 AP) with a little push at end, but wasn't drained.  Thought I might walk for a min at 5k, but goal then changed to just run the whole thing. The whole run was very consistent pace wise, which surprised me with the wind gusts that came and went - a few that almost blew me over.  Finished at 37:32, so the bit of a negative split was icing on the Twinkie.

Riverview 5k in a month...I don't think a PR is in the cards for the course, but a sub-30 would be OK with me.  The hills - both up and down - will be tough on me, but I'm looking forward to getting a race in.

I was planning on running the Riverview course, but my son wanted to ride along, so we went to the track instead.  The first 3.26 mi were 1.08mi (or so) x 3. Ran lane 6, four full laps then stopped for a few sips of water.  Took it fairly easy, but after 1.5 mi or so the legs were feeling tired.  :-(  But, I kept it goin' and AP was 9:00 over the 3 sets.  Feeling pretty tired, but wanted to get in 4+, so had to keep going.

I decided to see if I could break into the sub-8:00 pace for a mile after my 3.26mi warm up.  Started off feeling controlled with my auto split set to 1/4 mi.  Hit 2:02, then another 2:02, felt like I was slowing a fair amount during the third lap and started justifying it would be OK to do a .75mi "time trial" but knew I needed to do the whole thing.  With a 2:04 split, I was determined to finish and try and make up the 8 sec.  With a 1:53, I was 3 sec short and ended with a 8:02. I'll take it...this time.