9.5 "road" miles

In January, road miles are hard to come by, so when a brief reprieve in the weather allowed for the ice to melt, I jumped on the opportunity to hit the road for some quality miles.

Was actually woken up by my alarm for once at 3:15 and made it to the meet up by 4:25 am.  I was hoping someone would be up to run with me but I didn't have any takers so I was on my own.  The temp was 31 degrees with an 8 mph wind.  After last weekends run in the low 20s, this almost felt warm.

I started off easy, but quickly started accelerating.  Found a few icy spots on the sidewalks so I moved to the road.  I hit the 1 mile at 7:28.  I kept cruising along after that and hit mile 2 in 6:53, my fastest mile of the run.  After the 2nd mile I got into the rolling hills and found some icy spots in the valleys... nothing too extreme but I did feel my foot slipping on some toe offs and definitely had to be a bit tentative about where and how I stepped.

Mile 3, 4, and 5 were 7:09, 7:10, and 7:12...  Mile 5 is normally tough as it has a long uphill section but today the hills felt easy.  Improvements in my aerobic conditioning were tangible in this instance... it's hard to even describe as I don't remember hills ever feeling this easy.

Coming off mile 5, I wound up running 6:58 for mile 6 which is slightly downhill.  Mile 7 was back uphill and I ran it in 7:10.  Steady effort and again the hill felt easy.  I came to the last hill where normally I turn around to make it an 8 miler I decided to keep going for the full 15K.  I picked up the pace and hit mile 8 in 6:56.  Mile 9 I was finally starting to feel a bit fatigued but kept cruising.  I was running straight into the wind now and that made it feel like it was taking a bit more effort.  Mile 9 split was 7:05.  From there I pushed it past the 15K mark all the way back to the parking lot to get in an extra half mile at 6:50 pace.

Final Stats:

9.50 miles

1:07:31

7:06 Avg Pace.

146 Avg HR (not sure if this is accurate or not).  

Some notes after the fact:

• I'm incredibly please with this run due to the fact that it wasn't really that hard of an effort.  I was running fast but comfortably and really never felt like I was "pushing" it 
• The Saucony Endorphin Speed is a great shoe!
• I ran this on tired legs but they never really felt tired... they just didn't really feel peppy.  
• the inside of my left knee feels a bit tweaked.  I noticed it during the run.  Doesn't seem serious but I hope its okay by tomorrow.