best.run.ever resumes

Made it out of work at a reasonable hour Friday afternoon, and stopped on Jamestown for a run on the way home. I almost didn’t run – thought seriously about just taking a quick half-hour nap before driving home. It had been rainy all afternoon, I was tired, blah, blah, blah.

So, I made a deal with myself. Just an out-and-back; 15 minutes out, 15 minutes back. So I’d still have a couple of minutes to shut my eyes and listen to NPR if I really wanted to.

Sure, self. You’ve got a deal.

Grumble, grumble. Left the iPod in the car in case it started pouring again. Started the timer on the HRM, and ran. Kept the heart rate about 140 on the way out.

At about 14 minutes, I say to myself “Hey, why not go to 16 minutes, and try to make up the difference on the way home?” So, I blow on through 15 minutes, and keep running.

At 16 minutes, I say “Hey, why not go to 5 miles, or thereabouts?”. “Sure,” I say. Crunch a couple of numbers and decide that 22 minutes, give or take, should put me where I want to be.

At 22 minutes, I turned around, and kicked up the pace for the run back to the car. Decided just to go for the complete and total blow-out; rack the heart rate up to max, and just RUN.

Wow. felt good to feel fast.

18.5 minutes later, back at the car. There was a tragic bit where I’d looked at a nice, flat spot of the shoulder to get a little running on dirt instead of ashpaht in, only to realize, tragically, that the solid-looking dirt was really the deep, squishy mud. So, my shiny new Asics are now muddy. But, that’s the worst thing that’s befallen me running all year, so no harm done. I did a lap of the soccer field to cool down, then drove home.

This morning, I plugged it into GmapsPedometer, and was shocked, SHOCKED! to find that the total for the run was just over five miles, meaning that even on the out I was down to sub 8’s. And the way back was even better.