What a Gift!!

My goal this week is to do easy recovery runs as I was feeling pretty darn sore after Sunday's 4 mile race in Central Park. The weather in NYC today was nothng short of spectacular. The high was 68 degrees!!! At around 6pm when I begin my easy 4 miles it was a balmy 57 degrees. What I have found is that I tend to run most of my runs faster than I should. Somebody passes me and I feel I have to speed up. There is no better receipe for failure than this. Thus I promised myself I would be conscious of this, espcially this week as I recover from the race. As part of this plan I decided today that while I would wear my Garmin 305, I would not check it on any part of the run. Just a start at the beginning and a stop at the end. I would run easy based upon perceived effort. My ran began on 12th and Hudson River Park and I started to head south..easy. I made a right turn onto the long pier that dashes 250 yards into the Hudson River. Low and behold right in front of my was a huge Norwegian Cruise Lines ship that had just set sail to who knows where. It was dusk and all its lights were on and it was just a beautiful sight. A nice little motivator. I continued along the perimeter of the pier and back onto the park's running path. Tempted always to look at my watch but not doing so. I'm running pretty easy and I'm curious if I'm going slower than the 10s I'm probably running. After 2 miles down at the water ferry in Battery Park City I make a U-turn for the return trip. Again tempted to look at my watch to check my HR and pace but maintaining the will power not to look and just running based upon my desire to go easy using perceived effort only. At mile 3.5 it started to drizzle which turned into a little shower. Was just lovely and cooling!. 4 Miles done easy boom stop. When it was all said and done I had run 9:47 pace at my lowest heart rate for a 4 mile run. While 9:47 vs 10:00 might not sound like a lot, on a 4 mile run that is almost 1 minute faster. Needless to say the weather and sights were a gift.