More snow overnight, meant that I needed to go to our local park for my long run today.  We are very fortunate that the staff at our local park, do an excellent job of clearing the snow of the run paths at the park.  Today was no exception.  When I arrived for my run, the park looked beautiful in the snow, but the run paths were in fantastic shape for a run.

I had a fabulous run today.  My legs were a little fatigued from my big gear bike workout and weight session yesterday, but it never seemed to bother me.  I had a 90 minutes long endurance run to do at an easy pace. Almost immediately after starting my run, I could tell it was going to be a good one.  I was relaxed and I just felt in a very comfortable zone.

I did my whole run using feel and effort to control my speed.  I didn’t look at my watch to see how fast I was running, but when it buzzed after every mile, I was pleased to see my pace was right where I thought it would be.  It turned out, that throughout my whole run, those mile splits never varied by more than ten seconds.  

The critical thing however, is that even though the mile splits were all very consistent, my fastest and slowest pace during the run, varied by quite a lot.  My fastest pace was almost three minutes per mile faster than my slowest pace.  This shows me that I truly ran by effort.  My route was over rolling hills, and I clearly slowed down significantly, going up the hills and equally I cruised quickly down them.

That is the key message today.  Easy effort long runs are just that … easy effort.  They are not easy pace runs, because pace can dictated by terrain.