To get myself back on schedule, I ran yesterday and today. Yesterday was miserable. It was 70 at 6am and 97% humidity. I swear I could feel the water collecting in my lungs. Made it tough to run in it. Ended up cutting things short at 25 minutes because of it. I was actually short of the 10 minute mile pace too, probably because the extra effort of swimming and running at the same time. I did put an extra climb into my run without killing myself, so that's good.
Today was a completely different story. It was 48 and no noticeable humidity. Lost feeling in my fingers again. Probably time for a pair of cheap wool gloves for the morning. Beyond that, the run was awesome. I've noticed recently that my first mile is usually faster than 6mph and then I slow down for the rest of the run. Today I wanted to see if I could keep that pace up for the whole run, or at least the second mile. I caught myself slowing a couple times and made myself speed up again. Based on Daily Mile and memory since the GPS in my iPod never seems to work right, my first ten minutes was 1.06 miles. Second 10 was 1.03 or so. Last ten was 1.11. If I can maintain that 3rd mile pace for 2 miles, I've got my Army pace in the bag. If I can hold that pace for 3.1 miles, I'm looking at a 28 minute 5K.
I've been wondering recently if the fact that my current route has several points that I basically come to a complete stop and reverse course, or at least slow down to turn. I'm assuming that could make the difference of about 5 - 10 seconds compared to running on a track or a big loop. Something that I'm not running back over the exact same ground two or three times to get miles. I suppose I could go use the track at the high school to get accurate times, but running on a track is boring.
Next week I return to my attempts to get a 35 mile run in. Screwed it up this week.
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