Happy 5th of July! (Betcha that one’s not overused yet…)

I hope everyone had a great holiday yesterday filled with sun, friends, fireworks, and food. BF and I had a grand time, and I even manged to make it a double run day on top of all our shenanigans. After being out late last night and somehow making it into the gym this morning, it’s an Uncle Sam miracle that I’m sitting upright. But that’s the point of the summer, right? I can sleep when it’s rainy and dark in 3 months.

The double run was a huge confidence boost. The miles felt strong, my legs felt loose, and things were just clicking. I’ve been switching both shoes and paces when I do a double run—which seems to be helping. Slowing down the second one is clutch, and I actually really enjoy the variety.

Yesterday, though, is not the workout I want to talk about. I suppose it’s my lucky week or something, because I’ve managed to have multiple encouraging runs. Most weeks, I’m lucky if there’s one. So let’s look back at Wednesday, since that was really the pot-of-gold run of this week for me.

As I stated in my check-in post, I’m trying to do speed at least once a week nowadays, which hopefully will pick up after Ragnar. For now, once is manageable and I try to be very specific about that singular workout. This week I wanted to tempo some half-marathon pace miles, using my current PR pace. My current PR is 15 seconds slower per mile than my goal for Bellingham Bay, but it’s a good starting point.

After a 1 mile warm up, I picked it up to an even 7:30 pace, and after just a little over a mile of this, I knew I could/should push it a little more. So I hung around 7:25, and it felt…completely manageable. I was a little shocked, but more so really happy. It felt like a race pace, but it also felt like one I could hold without a lot of pain.

7:30, 7:24, 7:24, 7:25, 7:25, 7:19

That last mile cooked me a little bit, but I was too high on speedwork euphoria to notice. This was the workout I’d been waiting for. I’ve been needing to feel like my goal race for this year isn’t too much of a stretch, and although the paces above are still slower than I’ll need to average, it feels like a good start. I couldn’t have done this workout a month ago without a lot of pain and fatigue, and the fact that it almost felt easy on Wednesday makes me excited to keep pushing those paces lower.

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In other news, I want to wish a very, very happy birthday to my main man!

Welcome to the 25 club babe, glad I’m not the only old-timer anymore 🙂 xoxo

Have a great weekend everyone!