5M decreasing pace @ Carlmont High School - 13 Miles

6:08, 5:39, 5:17, 5:02, 4:47. *See note below

Thanks to CWong I found out that there's a track at Carlmont High School, just 2 miles away from my place. I drove out there after work for another shot at the decreasing pace 5 miler. I could have run over there for my warm-up but I wanted to check out the track first and make sure I could run my workout there. The track looked a bit unusual, it only had 6 lanes and had really long straights, sort of like an outdoor version of the MIT paper clip indoor track. I got into the workout right away after the usual 2 mile warm-up. My legs were feeling a bit heavy on the warm-up and I was a bit worried that the workout would end up being similar to last week's. At least the weather was pretty much perfect, no rain or wind like the last few days, and temperatures in the cool high 40s. I tried not to get out too fast on the first mile and ended up a bit on the slow side. I was almost right on for the second one and this time I didn't have trouble picking it up for the 3rd mile. I hit the first lap in 78 and at that point I knew this was going to be a good workout. The 3rd mile felt really smooth and almost effortless and again I had no trouble switching gears for the 4th mile. I came through the half in 2:31 and kept an even pace for the whole mile. I managed to pick things up even more for the last mile and ran 73s for the first 3 laps. I had an extra gear in the last lap and I was moving on the backstretch but I reminded myself that this wasn't a race so I kept things under control. I still managed to bring it in with a 68 last lap, finishing a very solid workout. I was feeling great after the workout and didn't mind going for a 6 mile cool-down to get some extra mileage in. I was really excited about how things turned out today and got a huge confidence booster. I've been doubting my fitness lately so it's good to see that the mileage is paying off. My last 5K was probably only a few seconds off my time at Alumni and this was at the end of a 5 mile workout, in trainers and running all by myself. Rolling week has climbed up to 97, all in singles.

* After visiting the track again I realized that it's not actually 400m long but about 390m. I did some calculations to figure out what my actual mile splits would be. I'm more interested in how I finished the workout so I'm extrapolating backwards. The workout comes out to be 200m shorter than 5M so I'm breaking it down as follows:
First 1400m at 6:17 pace
Next 4 miles: 5:50, 5:26, 5:10, 4:54.