Threshold Run - 2 miles easy, 6 miles @ half-marathon pace, 2 miles easy. Average pace: 8:44. 35° F at start, dropping to 33° F by the finish, 90% humidity, wind 7 N, light drizzle/mist. I'm cold. I'd like to jump in a hot shower, but my sons have been showering, so now I've got to wait for some hot water. It's been a long time since I've run 10 miles on a week day. I can only fit in 8 miles if I'm going to make it home in time to drive to seminary, so today I made the boy walk to seminary. In the cold and the wet and the dark. Poor boy. I assume he made it. He was gone when I got home. According to the McMillan calculator, and based off of my Ogden marathon time, my half-marathon pace is 8:09. I've yet to actual run a half marathon at that pace. My splits this morning were 9:56, 9:56, 8:29, 8:20, 8:24, 8:02, 7:57, 7:54, 9:06, 9:18. This particular route is mostly uphill for the first half and mostly downhill for the second half, and you can see that in my splits. If you average together the splits for the 6 tempo miles, it comes out to 8:11, so that's pretty close to my half-marathon pace. It was a cold, wet run, and I felt like I was running blind much of the time because my glasses were very wet and sometimes fogged up, and my headlamp wasn't working very well. I really couldn't see where I was going.
Yesterday on my way to work, I stopped and took some pictures of the hill where I do hill repetitions. It's longer, but not as steep as my hill sprint hill. When I took this first picture, I was standing at about the spot where I start my hill repetitions. I've drawn an arrow to the sign I try to reach, but I don't think you can see the sign very well. 
Here's another picture that I took when I was part way up the hill. Again I've pointed out the sign that I try to reach when I run up this hill. 
It occurred to me when I was taking the pictures yesterday that if I really want a challenge, I should try running up that grassy hill that's on the right side of the street.
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