It was terribly warm today to get an 18 mile run in, but I did it. I tried to get up real early, but didn’t manage to get myself out of bed until around 5:30, so I didn’t get on the road until around 5:45 or so. There was still a bit of coolness in the air as I headed out, but it was soon replaced by heat and sunshine.

I decided that in addition to the other changes I’ve made in my training, I’d start to mix up my courses a bit as well. Each week I always seemed to end up on the same courses over and over, which just made them boring … I found myself running through a corn field this morning which I thought was pretty cool. I felt like I should have been posing for a picture for Runners World with the scenery around me.. anyway, I got into a good pace this morning by sticking to the training plan of running 10-15% slower than my goal pace. that put me around 9:10/mile, which I did a decent job of keeping. Its funny how you can run so much better when you have a plan (and a watch that complains if you drop too far below the pace).

Some other changes I’ve made include the fact I don’t run with an MP3 player anymore. Weird, eh? After running with one for several years, I’ve just totally abandoned it .. its been since Memorial Day weekend since I ran with it, I didn’t even use it for the last marathon I ran. It may be that I got bored with the same old music over and over, who knows.

Tomorrow is my first bike ride .. I got down to Performance Bikes in North Wales on Friday to pick up my new bike. I was able to get out and just test it out and get it adjusted, but tomorrow will be the first true test .. I intend to take it easy since its been several years since i’ve been out on the bike, but i’m looking forward to it because the best part is that after my bike ride tomorrow, its a rest day (which means no running)..

So this past week was a pretty easy recovery week and next week I start to kick up the workouts a little bit, so we’ll see how good I feel next weekend..