Easy run + 5 x 8 sec. hill sprints. Average pace: 9:30. 4:58 am, 65°F, 50% humidity, winds calm, party cloudy, as if that made any difference in the dark. I stayed up too late last night watching track. I saw the finish of the women's marathon, the women's 1500, and the men's and women's 4 x 400 relays, which the Americans dominated.
In the 2nd mile this morning, I was running along a street approaching a point where a trail that goes through a green belt meets the street. I don't run on those trails in the dark because they're too dark and lonely. And they're paved like sidewalks anyway, so they don't offer any better surface than the roads. Anyway, I saw two headlights of what looked like a car approaching me on the trail. I thought that was odd because cars don't normally drive on the trail, though it is not inconceivable that a park service truck might drive on the trail, but even that seemed unlikely at just past 5:00 in the morning. Then one of the headlights moved in front of the other as they got closer to me, and I realized that it was two bicyclists. It was just kind of weird how your brain can tell you you're seeing one thing when you're actually seeing another. This was just a typical run. I made a pit stop at a gas station in mile 5. That seems to be my new routine. In any case, splits on the easy part were 10:12, 9:28, 9:29, 9:02, 9:10, 8:34. Paces on the hill sprints, for what they're worth, were 7:10, 6:23, 6:08, 6:36, 5:52. I was really pushing it on that last one.
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