My plan today was to do a recovery run after yesterday’s slow 12 miles. I was on my own as my running partner had the dual recovery going on, 12 miles and a open bar gala last night. Since the both of us plan to do a recovery run tomorrow, I decided to just wing it and see what I was comfortable running. During my first mile I was lugging a pile of library books along with me for the first half and managed to do 9:30. I thought that sounds about what I expected. During the second mile I was paying more attention to my heart rate which was around 150-155 so I wasn’t real sure of my pace. When the mile two beep sounded I had ran that last mile at 8:17! And I felt pretty strong, so I decided to do another mile at that pace which I did. As I started into the fourth mil I knew there were going to be hills so I decided I would try to recover for a mile. The first half was all up hill and I relinquished the pace but not the HR which was hovering around 170+. For mile five I cranked out another 8:15 before hitting another set of hills. Again I relinquished the pace but kept the HR up topping 181 at one point and keeping a pretty steady HR of 175-180 for the next six tenths before I decided to back off and recover up the last hill. My last mile I ran pretty steady but relaxed around a 9:30 pace with a stop off at the library. All in all a much faster run than I expected and very enjoyable after the luxurious slowness of yesterday. Speed rules…sometimes.