Following a different route

Today's run (street) 2.35 miles

I've gotten into the habit of running the same route every weekday morning so I decided to break free of that today and follow some different streets. My normal course is a measured distance of 2.52 miles and it allows me to manage my time and compare known distances to the Garmin readout as I run. The problem with changing my route is that I lose all my benchmarks when I follow other roads. That's fine almost any other time but at 4:00 AM I only have 25 minutes or less to run my route. Taking the wrong street can put me way behind.

Today's run took me along some streets I rarely run so it was a nice change of scenery, not that you can see much with just a headlamp. I ended up hitting the one mile mark close to where I normally reach that benchmark but, instead of following the standard route for the remainder of the run, I followed a different direction. My ad hoc route brought me home sooner than usual so my distance fell short of normal. I ran the last mile fairly quickly, at around an 8:40 pace. One more training run to go before the race.