6 X 1 mile? No problem!

It was a misty, dreary day here in Greenwood; the temp hovered in the low fifties as I started out on this run.  To tell the truth, I was glad that the bitter cold from last week had moved on if only for a little bit.

My attire, chosen especially for such a day as today, was a long sleeve shirt, shorts, socks, and shoes, and oh yes, a baseball hat that is slightly thicker than my other hats.  And it has a red bull on it.

I set my pace alarms at 9:20 and 8:40 to achieve, hopefully, a 9:00 minute pace.  As I warmed up during my first mile, I heard its cries to speed up.  I ignored them.

I quickened my pace at the chime of the mile marker and settled into a loping run that silenced the annoying alarm.  Soon, much to my dismay, the sister alarm sounded that urged me to slow down, which I obeyed immediately.  For the first mile interval, I seemed to bounce between the two alarms, never really silencing them both for very long.

After less than nine minutes, suddenly, the mile was over.  As I slowed to my recovery pace, my watch screamed at me to increase my velocity; once again, I closed my ears to its screeching.  After what seemed like an eternal 2 minutes 51 seconds, it was time to take off again.

 And so I would repeat the ping pong match between my slow alarm and my fast alarm five more times, taking care to tune out the too slow alarm during each of my recovery periods.  As I picked up my pace to my usual ~11 min/mile, my slow alarm continued to urge me on faster and faster still, but I refused to acquiesce to its demands.  I finally stopped the run at 9 miles and silenced the alarms for good.

Well, that is until tomorrow...

On a side note, I place this run in my top 5 training runs; I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was tough, especially that sixth mile, but after it was done, I felt great!