Even though this was going to be a good opportunity to run the Gateway trail, and the first time I've done it in 2023 since the trees bloomed, I planned a shorter long run since I thought my effort would be best spent on something faster and quicker in preparation for my race. Also, the forecast called for hot weather by the time I left the temple. Thankfully there were some cool volunteers raising awareness of the Gateway trail so very conveniently I got to take a whole bottle of water right after finishing my workout when I had 3.5 miles to go. Then after that I enjoyed running back nice and slow and really taking in the beauty. And at the end, more volunteers gave me more water and transcribed my answers to a survey about the trail (I was lathered in sweat lol). It was cloudy at the end and smelled great so it was very enjoyable.
However, the mile markers are really questionable. My warmup splits were 6:23, 5:55, 6:08, which felt amazing, really like a quick jog, even though the latter two miles have traditionlly been fast. Then I ran 5:20 for my first of alternating recovery-tempo miles. After that I felt like I gave appropriate efforts, but the splits were all over the map because of the trails weird markers. Overall miles were: 5:20, 5:07, 5:50, 4:32, 5:09, 5:23, 5:49, 5:10. Assumming that overall the mileage was correct, that's like 5:17 pace I think. The 4:32 mile was hilarous, that was where I had supposedly run a 4:55 during my longest long run.
| 