A downright balmy November day in Seattle. Weird phenomenon this morning. I live in the foothills east of Seattle and we get a lot of wind October-April or so. The wind howled all night (35 mph sustained with gusts in excess of 50). I had a terrible night's sleep and so after rolling around in bed for a while, I finally got up at 5am to go for a run. I checked the weather on my iPhone. 30mph winds but 55 degrees. I checked the neighboring city of Issaquah. No wind and 34 degrees. Issaquah is less than 10 miles away as the crow flies and there was a 21 degree difference in temperature. Crazy. Unfortunately, my watch battery was dead so I couldn't run this morning. But got my run in this afternoon during lunch.
I was excited and nervous for today's workout. It was my first attempt at anything close to speedy in three weeks and even the one three weeks ago was hampered by injury. So the workout was 10M with 10 reps of 1:00 "hard" and 1:00 easy thrown in the middle. So I headed out to the Sammamish River trail and after about 3.25 miles of warmup, I hit it. First couple of reps were in the 5:05-5:10 range. I didn't have a time goal per se, but that seemed pretty good. Next 3 or 4 reps were in the 5:00-5:05 range. I didn't intentionally speed up...it's just what "hard" felt like. The last few were actually in 4:50-4:55 pace and felt great.
It felt really good today to not only run, but to get some speed work in and start the journey back to being in race shape...all without even a hint of pain in the calf. | 