Progression run - 8 miles w/ last 15 min. moderate. 6:10 am, 63-66° F, 55% humidity, wind 7 SSE, cloudy. I stayed up kind of late last night watching the Rockies finally win a game. A few minutes after I got up this morning, I heard my sprinklers turn on. That would be fine, except that my oldest and youngest children were sleeping in a tent in the back yard. I let the sprinklers run while I was getting ready because they start in the front yard. But then I turned them off before I left on my run. I rescheduled them to run tomorrow morning instead, and so my son will need to take the tent down today. I wore my sunglasses on this run, thinking that the sun would come out from behind the clouds while I was out, but it never did. It felt hot and muggy to me. I know it wasn't as hot as it is for Bonnie in Arizona, or as humid as it is for the Quiet Pirate in North Carolina, but it was more than I am used to. I ran a route today that I haven't run in a really long time. It started and ended the same way all my runs do, but the mid section took me further south than I usually go. I wonderful feature of this route is that there is lots of uphill in the first half, particularly the 2nd and 4th miles. My training plan said to run the last 15 minutes at a moderate pace and uphill, if possible. I have to admit that my last 15 minutes were mostly downhill. However, there was a quite a bit of uphill, including my hill sprint hill, in the last 1/4 of a mile. Also, I had to stop twice for lights in the first 5 minutes of the last 15 minutes. I paused my watch when I was stopped. I've done several fast-finish runs like this lately and I had not managed to get my last mile under my magic "fast miles" threshhold of 8:30. My goal today was to get the last mile into the "fast miles" bucket. AP: 9:20. Splits: 9:49, 9:54, 9:26, 9:45, 9:27, 9:24, 8:38, 8:20.
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