Great weekend- ready for HTC baby!

Saturday morning Richard and I ran the Madison in May 12K.
It was a great race. 7.46 miles on a long country road, with high humidity and lots of sun.
The pace was a little faster than I expected and I found myself falling behind some of the other runners. I typically run slower at the beginning and pick up my pace later on. I felt a little better on the third mile as I noticed the guys who started out with a fast pace quickly became fatigued and I was passing many of them. I was running a pace right at 8 minutes per mile through the first 6 miles, but as I hit the sixth mile I started to feel dizzy and overheated, so I stopped and walked a minute, thinking I was about to drop. After the brief respite, I held a steady pace to the finish line, ending with a time of 1:00:54, or a pace of 8:10 per mile.
Overall, I am happy with my performance that day, although I really wanted to finish under one hour- that one minute of walking really hurt my performance.

Sunday morning was my normal run at Stone Mountain Park, although by the end there was nothing "normal" about it. This was my personal best, and I have no idea why. I ran my usual course and was running at a pretty good clip. I was in high gear and felt really good. At about the halfway point I noticed I was running about 2-3 minutes faster than usual, so I just kept on going. I hit mile 5 at 36:59 and kept going to mile 6, finishing at 44:24. That puts my average pace at 7:46 per mile. I am totally stoked- that's the pace I plan to run at HTC!

Tomorrow is an "off" day for me as I hit the gym instead of the trails.
I hope everyone else is training hard!