Was it the goat cheese?

Another hard-to-get-out-of-bed morning.... but I'm glad I did. We were blessed with absolutely beautiful running conditions this morning - cool, but sunny, with a nice breeze. I headed out to the track - as has become my Wednesday custom lately. I took it a little easier this morning heading out to the track than I normally do. There are a few inclines... we'll call them hills... en route. Normally, I'm somewhat of a hill charger (so I've been told, but I don't really believe it), but today I consciously took it easy - I'll have enough hills to contend with come Friday when I Run the Monk.

I did the same routine as last week (5 x 200s with a 200 meter rests in between) - again, keeping track of my splits as I just figured out last week how to do it. I thought about doing 400s today, but decided to at least do one more week of 200s in an effort to a) get more used to trying to run faster and b) get a better sense of my baseline at this distance (since I'm new to keeping track of the splits thing). It went something like this 53.7; 54.2; 52.7; 52.6; 52.7. I don't know if you're supposed to keep track of tenths of seconds... I'm not sure it really matters... but since I was able to remember it, I figured I'd put it down. Can't hurt, right?

I don't recall off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure that that is a few seconds faster than I did last week. Not sure what to make of that. I definitely felt better (and dare I say faster) than I did last week. Don't know really what made the difference - maybe it was because it was cooler, or maybe it was because I was wearing my lucky shorts... Couldn't have been the wind because, actually, I was running into a noticeable headwind. Maybe it was the hummus and delicious pear and goat cheese salad from last night's dinner that was fueling me. Who knows, but I'll take it.

The run home was good. Again... the beautiful weather was helpful and I felt good. Friday evening is the Monk 5k - which promises to be a challenge. Touted as one of the toughest 5k courses in the Commonwealth, the brochure for the race says that 0.1 miles of the course is flat. Sounds like fun... yeah. I'm sure a LBRR will follow from the likes of me, Seebo, and Ian.

Like last week, a little over 5 miles. I forgot to stop my watch, so I'm not sure of the time overall.