Another training cycle begins

The seemingly endless "interim" period between my last marathon (Big Sur, in April) and the beginning of my training for my sub-3 attempt in October has finally come to an end. While I was doing plenty of running, I was doing it all simply to comfort -- just keep the legs going, no worries about pace.

I'm generally copying the same training cycle as I did the last time I had a full cycle. Which means that I kicked things off with a 10k time trial today. While the first 5k -- in fact, the first 4 miles -- went swimmingly well, I just wasn't able to keep the pace up to finish this distance in 40 minutes. No shame in that; it's a good benchmark to see where I am. So, after 4 miles, my heart rate was just far too high, 9.3mph was too much of an effort for that long. So, I dropped down to 8mph -- in itself not too shabby a pace -- to finish out the remainder of the 10k. While the effort was certainly better from a breathing/heart rate POV, my legs were not happy with me by the end of the run and cooldown walk. So much so that I spent the majority of the day sitting at my desk, rather than using the standing desk elevated. Currently, as I sit typing this, my legs are ok and I think I should be able to run tomorrow's 5k time trial in under 20 minutes.

While I am generally copying my prior cycle, I am going to start out attempting to up the mileage. I have read many things lately talking about more mileage (even at slower speeds) being important to hitting time goals, and my friend Laura keeps on hitting PRs at various distance races with all the extra mileage she puts in (thanks to her kids being interested in running, so she joins them on their afternoon runs, in addition to her morning workouts). So, I'm going to give a shot at adding mileage. Granted, I won't be increasing the mileage done at the high speeds -- it will be at a comfortable "easy" pace (aka "sexypace" as Laura is wont to call it) -- but getting the additional mileage just might help. We'll see if it increases the fatigue too much and hampers my "SOS" ("something of substance") runs. If it seems to have a negative effect, I'll revert back and not include that extra mileage. Time will tell.