Grooved to Run

Today was Week 5 Day 7 of the Hal Higdon 5K Intermediate Training Plan.

I swapped days on the schedule and did my long run yesterday, so today was four miles at a fast pace. According to the plan, “fast” means that you are basically running at a non-conversational pace.

Got up before sunrise this morning and decided to do an extremely slow warm-up mile before I tried to speed it up. Covered 1.0 mile in 12:18, and then settled into a quicker pace. Ended up running the next 4.0 miles in 38:45 (9:41/mi pace). My 1-mile splits were 9:34, 9:47, 9:59, and 9:25.

This was my first pre-dawn run, and I really enjoyed it. Just me and the crickets out there, so it was really nice. But still, I’m exhausted and will be enjoying my rest day scheduled for tomorrow.