After a long winter of keeping to the slow and steady mantra and building my distance up, it is time to change things up and focus on running a more efficient 10k in preparation for my 10k trail race this fall. My professional life is still way too busy and chaotic to try and follow a rigid plan but I have a 16 week, 4 run per week plan I'll loosely follow. I say this because there is very little chance I'll ever be able to get 4 runs in per week, except perhaps when I take some holiday time this summer. The nice thing with having some form of a plan to follow, is that I don't have to make any decisions about what I should do for that run. My professional life consists of making decision after decision after decision, often rapid fire, which can be so exhausting. I find when I'm not working, I hate having to make a decision and would much rather be told what to do instead of being the one doing the telling. Today's run was the start of doing some speed intervals. It was a 3 mile run with strides at the end. It was supposed to be 3 miles ran at an easy conversational pace followed by three 20 second fast intervals with 2 minute slow recovery runs in between. The sun was shining, it was a comfortable 8 degrees with a light breeze, the creek water levels have dropped so my run route was fully open (no detours, yay!) and I felt no toxic 10 (actually usually a toxic 20 for me) today. I had forgotten to do some dynamic stretching prior to leaving the house so tried to remember a bit of what I had seen in the past. I did a few quick stretches and started the run. I felt amazing. I looked at my Garmin and saw I was running a 5:45/km pace at the beginning, not the 7min/km pace recommended but it felt soooooo good (ok, maybe I like being told what to do, but I may not listen 😁). I knew I couldn't sustain this pace and still have gas in the tank to run strides at the end so tried to slow it down. I got it down to about 6:10 on my next quick glance to my watch. Better but perhaps still too fast. Although I wouldn't call it an easy conversational pace, I wasn't huffing and pufffing. Perhaps we could call it a breathy conversational pace (ooh la la 😉😆). I slowed it down a bit further but stopped focusing on my watch and just tried to run on feel. I was easily able to happily wish all the walkers a good morning with a big smile because I felt on top of the world. I knew picking this path, I was possibly setting myself to hit the strides at the end of my run where the path has a series of undulating hills, but the run gods were with me and each sprint segment hit on the flat between the hills. I even managed to finish the run without having to turn and double back! Yay. Although I was a bit tired when I got to the sprint intervals, I still had gas in the tank to "blow the carbon out" as my gear-head hubby tells me he's doing when he takes our hot rod out in the spring and he smokes the tires after the poor baby has to sit in the shop all winter long waiting for clear roads 😢🤣.
Post run stretches done, post run smoothie drank, running forum post completed, now I must hit the showers and start my long list of errands on my only day off for the next week.
week3run1 ✅. 3 x 17 mins with 1 min walks. 
How did your parkrun or (not)parkrun go?
