Cowboy Hazel

Helen is in South Africa this week to run a race (in which she kicked ass, by the way), I have a ton of work to get done this weekend for one of my Ink Plant clients, and I was just plain tired from a long week, so I had absolutely no plans for my Friday night. I was just going to get some work done and try to catch up on sleep. But then, my Friday morning plans didn't happen... Instead of waking up early and running before work, I abused the snooze button for an hour, drifting in and out of several bizarre dreams involving an ice cream truck and waffles. Today was an office day, so I couldn't sneak in my run at lunch. Then, after work, I had errands to run downtown (exciting errands: giving my cable box back to Time Warner and then buying a cool new handheld water bottle and also unexciting errands: grocery store and laundry) and didn't get home until well after 8. By the time I had gotten everything put away and changed into running clothes, it was almost 10 o'clock.

Right from the get go, I was moving quick. My first mile on the streets of Harlem towards the park was a 6:50. Whew, that 36 hours of rest really helped. I slowed down into the low 7's for the next three miles, not wanting to push too hard. But, when I hit the south end of the park, I had tons of energy to burn and was just itching to go. So I went. The next 3.5 got progressively faster until I was doing 6:10's. Wow. That was a big relief after a week filled with such mediocre runs. I probably shouldn't have pushed so hard (I have a long run tomorrow morning then a 5K race on Sunday), but sometimes when it's going that well it's impossible to not just roll with it. I ended up doing 8.61 miles in 1:00:04, a 6:58/mile pace (even including the slow cooldown). Definitely the best run I've had in the past couple weeks.

Only bad thing is that I'm still completely amped up from this run and I really need to get to sleep soon. I'll try reading a bit and hope that helps. Goodnight.