Perfect 10

Well hello, July!  June ended on such a high note, basically celebrating my birthday all weekend long.  I'm happy to be running again, and it's really exciting to wonder where I'll be a month from now.  My return-to-running program called for 10 minutes running/1 minute walking x 3 yesterday, and I was up before the sun to get to work.  I wasn't sure how I'd feel or what to expect...would I be looking at my watch every minute?  Would I be wishing the program had gone from 5 minutes of running to 6 or 7 instead of jumping to 10?

Turns out I was making myself nervous for no good reason.  The first time I glanced at my watch, 9:38 had passed and I felt great.  My plan was to run half of the second interval then turn around, but I've had a history of getting progressively faster as I go, so I decided to just keep going to the King Neptune statue before making a u-turn.  The rest of my run was uneventful, which is exactly how I want it to be right now.  

It seems as though my knee (and the rest of my legs, for that matter) is holding up well and is able to handle the increased demands I'm placing on it each week.  My lungs, however, have some catching up to do!  At first I was a little disappointed to see my average pace for these miles.  I pushed it a little for probably the last mile and a half while still feeling like it would be considered the easy pace it's supposed to be, and I didn't feel like my average reflected that.  I wasn't beating myself up about it, but it kinda sucked thinking about how much work I still have ahead of me to get back to where I was pre-ITBS (which should just stand for iliotibial bullshit, if you want my honest opinion).  But last night I looked at my splits on Map My Run and was pleasantly surprised.  I ran a total of 3.73 miles, and the pace of that last .73 was 1:02 min/mile faster than my first mile.  This was just the mental lift I needed going into my next workout.  I'm keeping an eye on the weather, and wondering how Awful Arthur, the tropical storm that's currently brewing off the coast of Florida, will impact Thursday's run (not to mention Friday's plans for the beach and 4th of July fireworks!).  I've had so many picture perfect sunrise runs lately, so I guess Mother Nature thinks it's time for a change of scenery!