Really fast...

Well, I'm back from my trip and I only ran once while I was gone, but that's okay. I still got in 5+ miles for 5 days last week and I've decided, that I've done enough basebuilding... now it's time to get serious about my training. This week, there will be a long run.

So, I want to take a minute and talk about my run on saturday morning. You have to understand, first of all, during training periods, I'm a girl with a routine. I must have my 7-8 hours of sleep a night, my water, no alcohol. Etc... Well, while I was gone... I didn't get any of those things. But I did crawl out of bed on Saturday morning at 6:30 and drove to a nearby park, parked my car and hit the sidewalks of Pigeon Forge. It was probably low 70s and it felt incredible! I still sweated like crazy, but the cool, brisk air was invigorating... So, invigorating, that everytime I checked my pace, I was consistently running around a lowish 9:20 pace. I ran 2.5 miles out and when I turned around, I noticed that my time was about 8:40. I checked myself... 1. Do I feel good? Yes! 2. Do I feel like I'm running comfortably hard? No! 3. Do I want to slow down? No! So, I kept going... my heart felt good, my legs felt good. So, I pushed a little harder, running some stretches around 8:20, but keeping it consistently around 8:40, and when I finished, I was rewarded: 5 miles @ 9:00 pace.

The odds were against me... my routine was shot to hell, but I managed to shatter my previous tempo runs. I think it was the weather. So, that gives me a big training boost. This fall, it will be cooler and I will run faster. I like it.

In contrast to my nice cool run saturday morning... tonight I will run a sizzler. Maybe I'll make it a hill workout, so I can skip out early ;)