For the second straight short race I have had a 10 in front of my average pace. It still boggles my mind a bit and is taking some time to get used to.

Sure there’s the fact that I feel fairly strong on my daily runs and that for my most recent four mile race and then this most recent 5k I felt really good the whole way through. One race was in Central Park the other in the happily flat Riverside Park.

I still have no idea if this is due to doing all that marathon training and not running a marathon or if I’m legitimately faster and can maintain this consistently. Only time will tell, but I am enjoying this a lot.

It has given me a new level of confidence and had forced me to push some of my goals a bit. For most of the past year just about every race goal I’ve had has been to get close to an old PR. After these past two races I now have the thought of trying for a new half marathon PR in Miami. I have that average pace in my head on every single run I do.

I’m in my third week of the Runner’s World Challenge training plan and really like. I think changing plans at this time has been a great benefit. Of course, there wasn’t anything wrong with the old plan, it was just old. The RW plan basically has the same distance for long runs two weeks in a row to start out and I like the distance and goals for the daily runs. These have really helped me focus on what my half marathon pace will be.

I have two weeks in a row of nine mile long runs, one of which will be the Ted Corbitt 15k in Central Park. The 15k distance has always been a little tricky for me in figuring out how to race that. I feel as though I’m getting a better grasp of it and am really curious to see what I can do with my newfound speed.