Six miles in 44 minutes on the streets after 2 miles on the treadmill in 17 minutes. Except for the last two miles of the run I felt I was going at a nice easy aerobic pace. For me that would be 7:50/mile or so. But my measured "easy runs" are clocking between 6:50-7:40 pace. Yesterday I ran the last 10K of an "easy" run on hilly, gravelly streets at 7:20 pace. My legs feel it a bit, but I'm happy with the effortlessness of these near MP-pace runs.

Why am I running faster without trying? The treadmill I ran on all winter has a definite uphill pitch to it. So some of those 50 miles a week I sustained all winter were higher quality than I first thought. That also accounts for the difficulty adapting to the impact of asphalt. But after a summer of clocking sluggish training times on the Timmins streets last year, it's nice to see all of these faster times.

On Saturday I'll be running with a group of slower runners, but we'll go 10-12 miles. So I'll do my 20-minute tempo run first on the treadmill, then the long, easy run. It should help my threshold for the MH in 20 days.

Lesson: the treadmill has error margins that must be acknowledged...