It wasn’t as cold as

It wasn’t as cold as I’d expected last night when I went for a run after work, squeezing it in before the sun went down. I’d only brought a long-sleeve shirt so I was a bit warmer than I would have liked to be, but the run went ok anyway. I did 3 miles in 33:24 for an average of 11:08/mile. Average heart rate was 177. I did the first mile in 11:10, followed by a 2-minute walking break for the ol’ burnin’ legs, and then ran the rest of the way. The second mile (with walk break) was almost exactly 12:00, with the last mile being something like 10:14!
The good news is that while my legs hurt, they didn’t hurt quite as much. And by the time I got to the third mile, they weren’t bothering me too much. We’re talking shades of pain here, but hey, slightly less pain is better than same old, same old! The most interesting thing to me is the last mile — 10:14. And I felt pretty good, like I could have done another ~10:30 mile without a problem. I’m choosing to interpret this in a very positive way, just for the sake of my running motivation — my cardio system seems to be recovering from the summer’s lack of running and revving back into shape, but my legs just haven’t caught up yet!!
The third mile is probably also the cause of the leg stiffness and slight soreness I had this morning when I got up. At least I know I was working hard! Today is more or less a day off, and tomorrow morning I’m running the Turkey Trot 10K. It’ll be the first 10K I’ve done since my part of the 20K relay a month ago, so hopefully I can at least replicate that performance.