The first day of a new month usually begins with high hopes for how it will go, and today, I felt a sense of confidence in my running that I haven’t felt in a while. I hope that it will be a good sign of things to come for the rest of this training cycle.

I plan to train for a faster 5K and set myself up for a half-marathon in June/July. I want to see how the body holds up before making any final choices about my Fall goals. Although I might go ahead and register for a certain race if I get a good feeling about things in a few weeks. I know certain races fill up pretty quickly and will especially this year when we all want nothing more than to race in person at some point and this Fall seems like a decent bet.

However, this morning it was raining and in the mid- ’30s, which is not something that I enjoy running in. Luckily we had a bunch of errands to run this morning, so I could procrastinate running without feeling guilty about it. There is a method to my madness on some days. 😇

By the afternoon, the rain had mostly stopped, and wasn’t too bad to get a run in. The roads were still wet with too many puddles to navigate around on Shepard and Pepin. Plus, down-back was a mud-ice mix that I didn’t want to deal with. So I decided to do laps on Philbrick, not ideal but at the same time better than the alternatives.

I had planned for 6.0 miles for today at an easy pace, so I started comfortably and forced myself to slow down a little more. Sometimes I find that if I am running comfortably, I am running faster than what I know is easy. I expect a certain amount of discomfort on most runs, and my rocking chair effort/pace is around 9:00 minute miles at this point. So I have to purposely slow down if I am going to run easy.

Part of this training segment will be run slower for easy and run with a more effort (which doesn’t always mean faster – I, know I am slowing down whether I like it or not) on the days that I am supposed to run faster. Also, I will start using my shoes to tell me what I am going to do that day.

React Miler – Easy/Longer
Meraki – Comfortably hard
Chaser 2 – Hard

This arrangement lets me get a few more miles on the Chaser 2’s than I have been.

Doing six laps on Philbrick is tough mentally for me, and by the time I got to the fourth one, I knew that I only had one more lap in me. Yeah, I could have done one more mile, but sometimes you have to go with how you feel at the time, and 5.0 miles was enough today.

Then of course Raymond came out into the road at me on the last lap. It was just a quick buzz-by without attempting to do anything other than to say, “I am still around”. He headed back to his house when I yelled at him. He is learning, but a year old lab doesn’t have a lot of brains yet. Raymond I can deal with for the most part as long as he doesn’t get his ridgeback and growl going.

I do have to remember that I don’t have to wear my merino wool socks with the React Milers – they are warm enough to wear my regular running socks. It became a minor distraction around mile 4.0, and my feet could tell they were being scrunched a little too much due to the thicker socks.

Tomorrow will most likely end up being a day off from running and become an elliptical day. Tomorrow we are looking at wind chills in the ’20s, with 50 mph gusts. So that I won’t be outside all that much, I have a feeling.