Super fast... for four minutes.

The other night (Thursday) I should have done a 5 mile speed work run, but I ended up running with my husband for 2.2 miles.  It was 8pm, 48F.

I wore my super-bright Lululemon Faded Zap Run: Brisk L/S, and my Run: Zoom Crop.

It was kind of windy, so I added my Momentum Vest by The North Face.

 

We took the first mile easy (a.k.a. super slow), walking for a minute or so then slowly making it up hill.  Half way through our second mile, my husband was appalled at how slow we were still jogging, so we decided to "sprint" to where the path ended at the road ahead.  

I checked my Garmin and told him how much we had improved our pace by in only .2 of a mile, and we ran the rest of the way home at this much faster pace.  It helped that it was downhill.  Check it out!  Particularly in the 19:00 - 23:30 range.

There was a 4-ish minute span where our pace was consistently around 8 min/mile, with several points below.  The fastest point was 7:19 (and some surrounding points were in the 7:20s, so it wasn't a fluke).  I was shocked and amazed!  It was so much easier to run super fast when I was chasing after/trying to beat my husband as opposed to checking my watch and telling myself I needed to run faster.  I will have to get him to come along with me on more of these runs!

Since I was supposed to do 5 miles of speed work on Thursday and I'm supposed to do a 7 mile run this weekend; I'll do my 5 miles of speed work tomorrow (Sunday) and tack on some extra distance for my cool down.  I had first thought about just doing a 7 mile easy run-- but I've got that distance down; I learned after this summer that it's the intervals and speed work that make you faster.

In unrelated news, Friday morning I swung by the bakery right by our apartment to pick up some kind of breakfast treat, but this chicken salad sandwich on a croissant caught my eye:

The chicken salad included red grapes, onion, and some kind of herbs.  And it was delicious!  I'm pretty sure I shouldn't eat delicious buttery croissants like this too often though.