Two Good Days of Running

Tuesday asked for a seven mile run with at least one mile of hill repeats. Sure. I welcomed the privilege. Never mind that the night before I went out to dinner with 100 of my best friends from a former life and ate a huge slab of beef and helped polish off two bottles of chilled labeless house red table wine. Can you say dry mouth in the morning?
I decided to run my six mile route around the lake at a nice tempo pace; something a little slower than I might race on October 9 (10K race). Finish up by doing "the block." The block which passes my house is very popular with many many running groups/teams because, in Florida, you can't find many inclines like on my block, so a couple of laps around would finish my run.
The Lake run was effortless. It was also at tempo pace. I was thirsty but not too challenged. I've run the route for five years and, without really thinking about it, I PRed the course with a 52:58. Unbelievable. The hills were a breeze too.

Today was supposed to be an easy four miles. I met a marathon running friend at the dinner Monday night. She's prepping for the Columbus (OH) marathon October 16 (Boston qualifier) and I knew she would be doing speed work at the track just up the street. So I did a "jog by" to say hi at 530 in the morning. She was pushing hard to do 8x800s at 8:30 pace with her group. I was impressed. I'll have to try that sometime soon.
I did my four miles through the neighborhood and came home for another day of the working man's world while thinking of things that might have been. Fortunately we have avoided threatening hurricanes and just catching a few feeder bands of Rita the last few days. Hunker Down Texas!