Notes
This was my semi-long run for the week, trying to work myself back up to some real distance. It was rainy and a little miserable outside, but the run was pretty good. I intended to run this one a fair bit easier than my previous runs from this week, so I started out at what felt like a nice and slow pace. I passed the two mile mark in about 17:00 or so, which was a decently easy pace that I figured I'd hold the entire way.
Instead, I ended up easing into a pretty quick pace from that point on. I finished the first half of this run in about 40 minutes even, so just under 8:00 pace. The next half I finished about one minute faster, around 7:45 pace. There was about a 2.5 mile stretch on the return where I was hitting about 7:20s or so. I underestimated how hilly the last 2.5 miles is; had this been a less intense return my pace might have even stuck at the 7:20 range. It felt like an even intensity throughout the run, up until the last 2.5 mile hills where I got in over my head. The burning in my legs from those last hills is probably just a week and a half of atrophy being worked off.
Definitely an easy run tomorrow, I'm going to take every effort to stay at 8:30 as the very fastest. I need to make sure I really run at a nice recovery pace.