I went out for a run today. My wife baked some ziti, so I decided to go out before dinner, unlike Tuesday. The timing worked out perfectly – I got out of the shower just as the ziti was done cooling off…

All in all, it was a good run. The first mile was a good pace. I hit the split in about 7:35, although I had to circle back for a few seconds while I waited for the traffic light to change – so I didn’t really move on to the second mile until 7:45. It wasn’t a long pause, so I didn’t stop the watch (and I just jogged in a circle instead of stopping).

I realized now why the second split tends to drop off. In the beginning of the second mile, there is a killer hill that’s about 1-200m long. Halfway down there’s another steep hill, and the last 100m of the mile is also on a mild incline. Although there are declines between these inclines, I found that I kept slowing down on the incline – until I made a conscious decision to maintain my pace. This was also tiring, especially on the first hill… In the end, I wrapped up the second mile around 15:45 – 15:50 (I had trouble reading the watch in the dark). That puts the second mile right around 8:00, which is acceptable.

The third mile was a shade under 8:00 (about 7:55). I kicked it a little bit for the last 400m (since my loop is around 5200m, instead of 5k) and I covered the last quarter mile in about 1:25 – 1:30.  My finishing time for the full 5200m was about the same as it was on my good run last week – 12:27. Discount the ten seconds I spent waiting for the traffic light, and the time is around 25:20 – a modest but probably insignificant improvement.

But, that’s a good training time a second week in a row. Which I would say is a sign that I’m going in the right direction…