I had a 7:30 am meeting, so had to get out the door early. I ran up to This is the Place Monument. I made the executive decision to run a couple of tempo miles in the middle of the run. The first one began at Fort Douglas and continued up into TiTP. On the flat section I felt good, but the little grunt climb at the south end of Research Park was tough, resulting in a 6:06 mile. After recovering for a mile up to the end of the monument, I started another tempo. This one began slightly downhill for the first half mile but then climbed for the rest of the mile, including the long dirt road to the north gate and more of the grunt section at Research Park. I was doing this old dude shuffle as I suffered in agony trying to finish the mile. I did so, in 6:18. All things considered, that was not a bad effort. It was good to reach beyond the comfort zone. I ran easy to recover my sanity for a while and then did another surge of about .70 to the steps on the Legacy Bridge. The run made me seriously consider, for many reasons, changing the title of my blog to "Shuffling Through the Blackness." | 