A.M. More interesting "coincidences". I put that in quotes because I do not believe in coincidences. God allows circumstances to occur, and none will without His permission. We may not understand the reason, or be able to figure out the pattern, but the pattern is still there, and exists for a reason. He plans and sets up things in subtle ways so the pattern is not obvious, and it requires faith to discern it. Being mortal, I do not yet have enough faith to know all things, but I do have enough to observe the easy patterns that speak to me loudly.
So just right after my breakthrough run yesterday Jeff called me up and said he would be in town for a couple of days. This gave me a chance to test my fitness today. Given the results of my run yesterday, and counting in possible fatigue, I rather optimistically told Jeff to pace me for 16:30 on my standard 3 mile out-and-back tempo course. So he opened with two 81 quarters, and then sped up to 79, 78, 78. The pace felt easier than I anticipated, but still too hard for me to make it to the finish with a 180 turn in the middle and some uphill on the way back. So I told him to back off. After that it was 81, 82, 82.5, 83.5, 84, 84, high 79 to give us 16:13.9 for the run. Quite a bit better than I expected. To put things in perspective, my weekly progression had been 17:16, 17:05, 16:57, 16:52, 16:45 - very small improvement increments. All of a sudden, instead of 5-9 seconds, it is 31 in just one week! Having Jeff around did help a lot, but at the same time, mid-run 78s almost entirely canceled the benefits. I did not tell him to back off earlier because I wanted to dare the devil and see if I could live through a tempo with a few 78s (5:12 pace) thrown in the middle of it. I did for the most part. Mile splits were 5:19 - 5:23.5 - 5:31 . The buzzer was set to a lower tolerance, so it was going off more than yesterday, but I was able to keep it quiet on and off. Did 3 with Benjamin, 2 with Jenny and Julia, 1 with Joseph and 0.5 with Jacob. Total of 13.5.
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