5 miles
2,400 vertical
Started off this morning intending to go moderate. I was going solo on Green for the first time in a few weeks, so I brought along my Mp3 player. As I started walking through the West edge of Chautauqua, my legs were feeling pretty tight and tired, so I figured even going moderate was going to be an effort. Having gone on a recent road trip, my Mp3 player was set up with a variety of music that Allison and I could both agree on, instead of my usual line up of sports podcasts. I spent my warmup and the first 6-7 minutes scrolling through songs and trying to find my Endurance Planet podcasts, but with all the auto tagging fancy smarty stuff going on, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, so I got pi$$ed and turned it off and yanked out the headphones.
By now, the first junction had passed and I decided to bump up my pace a bit. I was never giving it too much, just rolling along at a good clip and I started to notice some decent splits. As I went up, my legs felt better and better with each step. I started thinking about 33-34 range and really started gassing it good at 27-28 minutes into the run. I knew it would be desperately close and I could taste the pain of the effort over the final few switchbacks, but my legs felt AWESOME. I made it in 33:49:92. I figured that was my 2nd fastest, but after a quick search of my logs when I got back, I realized it is a PR by a second or less! This buoyed my confidence a bit after my somewhat disappointing ascent of Grays on Saturday. I think as long as I don't mess up in the next 2 weeks, I am in a good position.
