First, thank you all for the words of encouragement regarding yesterday’s lackluster mini-LR. Like I said, I never really considered the effect a hectic travel day might have on a run the next day. I guess I’m just so used to the tunnel vision of “you wake up and run, no excuses” and ignored the possibility that a 12-miler might be challenging under those conditions.
Understanding the logic (and receiving your kind sentiments) did make me feel any better, however, there would still be a price to pay today! Subpar runs just stick in my craw something terrible. I wouldn’t be a competitor if they didn’t, no? The schedule called for a recovery run, but a recovery from what? I didn’t log many miles yesterday (12), nor did I do anything to really deserve a recovery. Still, I couldn’t completely blow apart my plan. Doing something stupid today would definitely impact the intervals and tempo next week. Therefore, I went against my own advice and engaged in a hot mix or mosaic of running.
Despite burning annoyance, I started out at and maintained a recovery pace thru the first 7 miles. I generally believe my weekly program is very solid (speed, endurance, distance), however, the one area I find lacking is hill work. It’s just tough to fit it in as a separate workout. Attempting hill repeats the day before an LR (Saturday) is a no-no and I don’t want to slip them in the day before intervals (Tuesday). I experimented last week with modest hill work the day following the LR (Sunday) and found no ill effects for the balance of the week. If anything, I felt stronger. While I cannot definitively conclude that the hills were the singular cause of a very good week of running, they didn’t hurt. Therefore, I decided to not hit the hills necessarily harder today, but when I approached Harlem Hill I definitely did not slow down. I put in the effort to scale the hill at the same or similar pace as the balance of the run. Then I circled back around and hit it again. The second repeat felt easier than the first. As I cruised on the decline I thought to myself that today was a solid workout. I could unlace the kicks knowing I did them justice today.
I still had a couple miles to go before I reached my destination. I planned for Monday to be a progression run (50% easy and the rest slowly getting more aggressive with pace at each subsequent mile). Even before I stopped, I knew a progression tomorrow wouldn’t be a great idea ahead of Tuesday intervals. Tomorrow will be the recovery run that today was supposed to be. Therefore, I decided to end today’s run quasi-progressively. I ran mile 7 at an easy pace 9:32 (includes 2nd hill), mile 8 at 8:50 and dropped mile 9 to 5k pace of 6:57.
A couple of thoughts … if I had more miles ahead of me, I would have progressed in 1 minute per mile increments 9:00, 8:00, 7:00 but I didn’t want 10 miles today. 10 miles followed by a sluggish 12 just didn’t sound smart. I know it’s only one extra mile, but back to back double digits isn’t what I want to be doing right now. Since I am targeting a sub-7:00 pace for a 5k in two weeks, I wanted to see what that effort felt like on the roads with some miles already on the legs. How did it feel? It didn’t require a sprint. I obviously couldn’t see myself, but my form and cadence felt like that of a Thursday night tempo. Not sure if that’s good or bad, but now I know I can do it for a mile immediately after 8 miles and with 20 miles on the legs over a 13 hour period. We’ll see what happens during the race, but today was more about being able to turn it on mentally while physically fatigued. Rest assured that tomorrow will definitely be a recovery run! 
I still don’t like the idea of commingling types of running, but I managed to accomplish the goal of splicing in some hill work in the context of an otherwise easy run.