Run hard.

Check out my run here. My legs have felt awfully tight when I started out tonight [probably because I didn't run for 5 days]. This, undoubtedly, made my first mile hard and slow. My first mile on this route is mostly uphill - I try to make a lot of them that way these days. The middle mile, however, was smooth with only a hump in the middle. My first mile took almost 10 minutes. I ran my second in less than 8...which means that I probably ran the third in similar fashion. I was hoping to nail a consistent stride tonight. I'm satisfied with the time [it's close to a minute per mile faster than it should have been], but I'm not too happy with the inconsistency. On the plus side, it's a negative split - the first third was slow, the last 2/3's or so were fast. On the negative side, I can't run with the same parity for a long distance. In any case, if any of you have any ideas of how to run a more consistent mile during training, then shoot them my way. My last race was the exact opposite of this training run - I ran my first two miles in about 14:30, but finished the race at just 8 minutes per mile - this means I had some miles that were singly, or collectively, much slower than the 7:15 average of the first two. On a lighter note, if anyone is willing to pay my way, I will run the Antarctic Marathon next year [something I will never pay for myself as the cost is $15,000 - this is more than Laura and I paid for both our vehicles combined].