Definitely, one of those mythical, magical top 10 days of summer today.

What a glorious morning, after yesterday’s thunder storms rolled through and a good night’s sleep, I woke up to sunshine and much lower humidity. Which meant that Bennie enjoyed both of his walks and I was looking forward to my run this morning.

It was supposed to be an easy run where I just go and run comfortably for a few miles. Since this is my first real week of running since my injury, I wanted 3-4 miles to get over 25 miles for the week. Nothing crazy mind you. Since last week was just about 15.0 miles.

Then as I was walking down the driveway, I got this great idea. Yeah, I know!!! Hehehee Harold and his great ideas.

Why not do my Pepin Test Course at about 80 to 85% effort to see how the leg is progressing. I haven’t had a “good” effort run since June 5th and to be honest I was feeling a little froggy this morning.

Starting out was okay and going down the hill, I had to remember how to run faster, without braking going down it. About half-way down the body went “oh yeah” and the pounding on the legs got back to a much lighter stride.

During the second mile I did get a nice pace going, although I had to slow down a little when a woman let her dogs off leash before she saw me. When I got about 30 yards away, I asked her if the dogs were going to follow me (a couple of black labs). She jumped, startled and quickly grabbed the dogs, all while grinning sheepishly.

I kind of chuckled and said “Hi”.

I politely let her know that I would be turning around at the dirt and would be coming back up the road in a couple minutes. When I turned around and came back through she grabbed both dogs collars and waved a little wave. I just chuckled and waved back.

The second mile split ended up being my fastest one in a while, without hammering the leg too much.

To be honest I did let off the gas a little when the 2 mile split buzz went off on my watch and kind of lost focus for a bit. Once I got back out on Shepard I did push a little harder and even kept the effort level steady going back up Philbrick Hill. Yeah, I was breathing pretty hard going up the hill, but the leg(s) didn’t bother nearly as much as I expected them to.

During the last mile I did pick up the effort levels again and while it wasn’t super fast, I felt stronger than expected for not having done any harder work for over a month.

While the left leg can take some harder efforts, I figured out that it ain’t quite ready for heavy-duty speed work yet. There is still a bit of soreness that pops its head out when I get a few miles on the legs. Nothing bad, but enough that I don’t want to jeopardize the progress I am making during my active rehabbing of the leg.

Overall, probably my best run since the injury and a really nice confidence builder. No, I didn’t wear my go faster shoes and don’t plan to for a while yet.

Gotta stay conservative for a while longer. However, running my Test Course with a bit of extra effort this morning was the correct choice. My intuition called it correctly today.