_DSC0026This Wednesday was the 4th Back Cove 5k of the season, and the air quality was less than ideal given the smoke and ash particles coming our way from the forest fires in Quebec. The temperature was a nice 57 degrees, although the air was very dry despite looking humid from the general haze.

I hadn’t actually intended to run this week given the two races I ran this weekend; I met up with some friends at 5:30 for an “easy” run. We didn’t run quite at tempo pace, but were pretty close to it as we made our way around the Back Cove. Rather than continuing the run on the streets with traffic, a couple of us decided to jump into the 5k since it was starting about a minute after we got to the line. The timing was just too convenient.

Of course, we didn’t keep the same pace. We ran the first few miles about 40 seconds faster than we’d been running per mile, although we did keep up our conversation without too much trouble. The last mile was a bit fast; I let Pete go but still clocked in about a minute per mile faster than we’d been running before jumping into the race.

My final time of 18:11 was only a few seconds off of what I had run the first week when I was working much harder, so the speed work that I have been doing for the past 3 weeks is definitely paying off.

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