Helloooo spring!

So today was 60 degrees. 2 days ago the morning temperature was 8. Gotta love MN! Spring in MN = 2 glorious weeks before the summer humidity sets in. Before that we sit in limbo in this weird spring-winter combination where the temperature fluctuates widly, snow falls one day, tshirts adorn the masses the next.

Today I took advantage of the glorious weather.  A sunny 40 degrees greeted me at 10:30 as I set out for my run. The changing season also means many recalibration runs as I re-acclimate to running in temperatures above freezing and that dreaded experience known as running in heat! I overdressed for this run hands down. I found myself longing to lose my underlayer but decided against trying to remove it whilst keeping on my tshirt and juggling a phone and headphones. Overdressing though, did not kill my motivation. My feet loved their new home in the Mizunos and my body responded allowing me to channel a pretty decent speed workout. I'm seriously trying to incorporate speed wokouts. They're not fun but instead of all-out sprinting right now I just focus on picking up the pace for a certain amount of time and then let myself recover. I think I probably eeked out 6-8 intervals in that fashion over my 3.1 miles logged this morning.

apparently that's exactly what a fartlek is. just the name makes me giggle because I have the maturity of a 12 year old. It always sounded like a more structured thing and I never bothered to really learn what it is. I happened to read an article describing what a fartlek is and apparently, I've been doing it all along! I'm encouraged by my experience last year to keep it up.

While training day 1 was an epic failure -- no running, just some light stretching, I made up for it today. I did 3.1 miles in a personal record time of 29:42. That's right, my first sub-30 minute 5K!!! I now relax on the couch relishing from this amazing run. Tomorrow morning will be a yoga day as I decided against yoga tonight.  My muscles will rejoice after the work I put them through today.