"P word" runs = "exciting conclusion" runs

Thursday night I tried out the new Lewinsville loop, getting a little lost, but ending up running the same distance by cutting off an extra loop. It was 11 miles at 6:45 pace.

Friday after work, I ran an 6.5 miles around the Mall and Hains Point at 6:15 pace, then hit two miles hard on the Mall, taking quarter-mile splits but not looking, so I would focus more on maintaining a hard effort regardless of the splits and keeping it from becoming a time trial. I was hurting the first half mile, but got into a groove after that. I finished in 10:18- 5:07/5:11. About the same dropoff from mile one to two as last week(I used Henry Park again, so the second "half" was a little longer to make up for the slightly short loop), but that doesn't worry me too much. It's a 15-second improvement from last week, which, again, I a trying to avoid putting too much credence in, but I have to feel great. I ran 15 seconds per mile faster for 1.5 more miles before starting, and it was a good bit colder than the week before.

That's three workouts this week that went exceedingly well. I improved markedly in each, and am pretty confident a week before my first test- the By George 5k. It won't be a hard race, it's certainly getting the least focus, but it will be telling to see where I am and will help me calibrate my workout paces. I am shooting for breaking 16:30, then after a 10 minute recovery, I'll run a hard mile back on the course, jog around while I wait for the 10k guys to come back, and finish a hard mile with them. I'll do a medium interval workout on Tuesday, miles or 1ks, then do more turnover on Thursday.

Saturday I was feeling a little sick, so I slept in, skipped the store run again and did 5.5 in some substantial wind, and wrapped up the week at 75 miles. Given three hard workouts and my cough, it didn't seem prudent to push the mileage this week to 80. It seems better to do that as I increase long run distance, anyway.