Notes
Wow... to say that I'm pleasantly surprised with the average pace on this run would be a huge understatement (will have to recheck the map, but it was pretty simple...). 50 min progression run w/ Dan, last 10 minutes at tempo. Planned on doing ~20 out, 20 back on Rte 2, then do the last 10' on the track at ~5:30s. Poorly managed run though, as after moving through the gears in the first 10 minutes we hit the rest of the out portion pretty hard. Which made for a very tough return trip, with the big Rte 2 uphills. Felt like the pace was not progressing too well. Was hurting go into the track segment (after a Colvin loop) and so when the pace we were running turned out to be ~5:40s, I thought "good enough". Legs were shot at that point though and I ended up slowing to a 5:52 1600 + that pace for another lap and change. The kicker: 3.27 miles out were @ 6:12 pace, and the 3.81 back were @ 5:49 pace. So it's really no surprise that I couldn't get down to tempo pace (at a reasonable effort) in the last 10 minutes.
So, pending review, a very solid run (if not the best progression). Much better than I expected or thought I was doing today. It wasn't easy - in fact it was pretty hard - but I just didn't think we were going so fast.
OK, so I precisely measured the out portion (with closer tangents than I probably actually ran) and only got .3 miles shorter, so even if there was a similar cut off on the way back, that's still only < 5 seconds per mile slower.