Back on the road, at least for the weekend

Rather than take a rest day on Sunday to recover from Saturday's race, I decided to go for a short run. The Snowflake Run distance was only 4 miles so a recovery wasn't really necessary. At the same time I didn't want to go out for a long run since my neighborhood roads are still  marginal, narrowed by snow with icy patches and pooling runoff from the recent rain. After two weeks of treadmill running and only one outdoor run I was just happy to be outside.

The weather was sunny and the temperature was 37. I wore two light layers on top and it was chilly for the first ten minutes. I used the cold as a motivator to generate some heat and I stepped up my pace to help that along. I'd originally planned to run easy but faster felt better. It may have been Sunday's race pace that tuned me for speed but I felt good turnover on my stride. My form wasn't quite as smooth as Saturday but it all worked. With the exception of the times when I needed to slow down to run along icy parts of the road, my pace stayed under 9:00. I ended up averaging 9:05 which was speedier than I'd planned. I'll likely run indoors this week because the icy roads and darkness present too much safety risk. But this weekend I'm aiming for some longer outdoor runs.