thursday miles - too fast?

i must admit that i surprised myself with today's run. i did get in 8 miles, continuing the higher daily mileage for the week, a third straight eight miler. that wasn't unusual - that was the plan. but the 58:41, 7:20 pace, was a bit of a shock. it was one of the those moments where i said, "cool," as i stopped my watch and, almost immediately, followed it up with an, "oop!" the pace didn't seem as fast - great, leading indicator for me. but, even though i hope to run 70+ miles for the week, i still want to race as much of the wurtsboro 30k as possible. that goal would be undermined if i left some of that 30k on the post road this afternoon.

the training run started off like any other one would, an 8:01 initial mile and 7:49 mile two. at that point i normally begin to cut down the pace, not dramatically, but to about 7:30 or so. today the next three miles were 7:07, 7:09, and 7:08, for a 5 mile split of 37:14! at this point in a ordinary training run, i'd expect a split of 40 minutes, give or take. i would be surprised with a split of 38:00. so the sub-37:30 snapped me to attention.

in an annoying bit of hubris, rather than back off, i ran a 6:48 mile 6. it wasn't all out, but enough to trigger one of those, "i should rethink this" moments. that internal dialogue slowed mile 7 down to a 7:29. but with just one mile left, i ran it in 7:10 to finish in 58:41 - a full 2 minutes faster than yesterday's 8 miles. it was my third sub-one hour 8 miles in a week (the 8 mile split in my 10 miler on saturday, followed by the 8 mile split in the 15k on sunday).

i'll wait and see how the rest of the week unfolds before second-guessing whether today's training was too fast, too hard an effort. tomorrow will be another 8 miles, at least. with a 70 mile target for the week, i'd be happier with 40+ miles heading into the weekend (instead of the 39 that 8 miles will give me).

that said, there's the matter of the 30k on saturday to factor in.