One of those Sought-after Days

OBJECTIVE
10 mi.@ 7:46-8:36

ACHIEVED
10.07 mi.@ 8:21

6:07 AM 70° 81% 0 mph

This turned out to be a really good run. I would have never guessed it given that yesterday's run was so late (causing such a short turnaround) and by how I was feeling while running yesterday.

The group was back together again. It was really good to see Stephanie who was riding instead of running with us last week. She said it's been since the Houston marathon that we had seen each other. That was nearly 5 months ago!

Today's version of the group included Stephanie, Laurie, Stacey, Augie, Randy, Josh, William and me. The opening pace was slow as it's only two weeks until the Coeur d'Alene IronMan triathlon. Several in our group will competing in that event. I was happy with the pace and conversation given my expectations for today's run. While with the group, I never felt particularly good or bad; just happy to be out moving around on a beautiful morning.

We meandered around the Uptown area on a route Randy mapped for us. The total mileage for the route was a bit over 13 miles. I only needed 10 miles today and found a convenient place to split off from the group around the 6-mile mark. Laurie had planned to run the shorter distance with me but when it came time, she was feeling good and decided to stay with the group.

So I was on my own to get back to the park. Before splitting up, Steph and I had moved to the front and absent-mindedly picked up the pace while talking. Nothing too fast just more in the range of what we usually run. Once on my own, I thought I'd pick it up a little bit. I felt good and just went with it as I navigated the 610 feeder road to Woodway then Memorial Drive. I could see I was going to come up a bit short of 10 miles so rather than cut straight back to the park loop, I stayed on the picnic loop before crossing Memorial Drive to the park loop. I ran the park loop clockwise from there figuring that would get me close to the 10-mile mark. All the while, I was feeling really good. I had a nice rhythm going and just found a very comfortable groove. I tried to do nothing to upset this running euphoria. I wasn't sure where it came from but I wanted it to last!

My final mile splits were: 8:10/7:56/7:45/7:27. The really nice thing about these times is that I didn't feel like a was pressing in the slightest. They came at the end of a 40-mile week and after I had finished a decent 6-miler only about 9 hours earlier. I'll take this and hope that it's the sign of progress.

PRE RUN
water, oatmeal w/brown sugar & 1% milk

POST RUN
SlimFast
Later, water, multivitamin & Kashi GoLean cereal w/1% milk