Man! What is going on here?? I have had THE BEST week of running in such a long time. Seriously! Every single run this week has either been testing me, which is totally great in my book, or just plain old fun. Today's run definitely did not disappoint.

This morning when I stepped outside I knew right away I was going to have a great run simply because it was 61* outside, the coolest it's been in a while at 7:00 am. Perfect! And a great breeze to boot. I had my workout set up in my Garmin: 2 mi easy, ladder pickups, 2 mi cool down. The ladder pickups were as follows; 1 min - 2 min - 3 min - 2 min - 1 min with equal time for recoveries, meaning after the 1 min pickup was a 1 min recovery, 2 min pickup had a 2 min recovery and so on. Can I just tell you that I rocked the pickups? I rocked the pickups. They were fun, I didn't care what the pacing was, all I cared about was how I was feeling, my breathing and the 5 little warning beeps that my watch made when the pickup was starting and ending. The 3rd pickup was a bit tough but in all honesty, I think the 2 minute pickup that followed that was the toughest. The last pickup went by so fast that when my watch gave me the warning beeps I thought to myself, "that's it?"

Now, if you recall from last summer, if you were following my blog back then (and if you weren't you can either just take my word for it go back and read some of the entries) I was training for a marathon and following Pfitzinger 18/55. I had consulted with some friends who were veteran marathoners as this was my first and decided heed their advice and be conservative with my pacing. I was too conservative and questioned it, I felt unchallenged. It wasn't hard. It felt too easy. Yet, I continued to heed the advice.

I've never really pushed myself with my running. I've been lazy. I put in the miles but never pushed any of the quality stuff. After a great talk with my coach last night about how exactly I should be feeling when I'm running this quality stuff I found out that I have not been pushing myself nearly to the level I should be. So, this morning I set out to really push those pickups. Not 100%, but enough so that I was feeling it, I was making my legs and my lungs and my heart really work. And it felt amazing! I feel as if I have finally peered over the threshold of where the real work begins and the laziness leaves off. I am so psyched! There really is some speed tucked away inside of me which I am hoping to gently entice to come out and take shape. Coach C is going to meet me out at the track this week for my mile repeats to watch how I run, see whether or not I'm pushing hard enough, maybe even run with me. I don't know if I can ever express my gratitude to her for all of her help. My Summer Of Speed is turning out to be a good one so far.