POSITIVE STEPS

Since dedicated myself to stretching on Monday my legs have felt much better. Whether or not it is actually correlated, who knows, but I've had two good runs since then.

Monday's run was fairly productive. I concluded I needed to "cram" for the 10k, so I decided I would run five miles... one warm up mile, three at race pace, and then a cool down mile. I'm happy to report it was a really good run. My legs felt fine and I was able to hit the pace. The pace was definitely a challenge though, I can't believe that was my marathon pace within the last two years, but it is what it is. I definitely could have gone further, if I needed to, but I didn't want to press it.

After some tedious stretching after that run (and copious amounts before) my legs felt pretty good on Tuesday. Pretty much like they used to feel when I ran. Slightly used, but fine. I wasn't limping around. On Wednesday I did four miles at an easy 9:20ish pace and it was fine. Again, like it used to feel. I stretched a bunch after that run too, and I felt fine today. So that's positive. I think I can get to the race without issue. I'll keep doing this and see if I continue to improve.

So the race Saturday. I'm actually looking forward to it. It will be far from my 6:59/mi PR, but it will feel good to run a race hard and hopefully help my friend achieve her goal. I think if I ran a 10k at my hardest right now I'd clock in around 7:35-7:40ish a mile. So this race at 7:50-7:55ish isn't going to be much easier. It will be a good test though and take a pretty hard effort.