Saturday - Manly to Spit & return

My normal Saturday ritual, waking up feeling like death after a recovery day! Procrastinated more than usual this morning, only leaving home at 6:50am (despite waking up at 6:05am - I have no idea what I did for 45 minutes). I felt okay once I got going, so kept the pace firm but controlled the entire way. I keep saying to myself each Saturday that today is going to be the day that I finally run slower than the previous week. It hasn’t happened yet, and I was pretty sure today was going to the case. Especially with some of the timing I had this morning - I cross two roads there and two roads back. Because I leave early, I’ve never had to slow down and weave my way through the traffic. However, today I got caught out twice in the first kilometer, so not an ideal start. A few detours around small clusters of people (there weren’t as many out this morning, but my timing was off so when I did see people, they were all together), but a much more friendly vibe. I even had one guy (with his wife/partner) stop at the top of a set of stairs and wait for me to come past. He joked that he was enjoying watching me suffer up the stairs, so didn’t want to get in the way to give me an excuse to stop. What a legend! That’s the sort of friendly banter that’s generally missing out there today in a world otherwise filled with zombies walking with their headphones on/looking at their phones, or angry people who think they have right away at all times (or can’t tell the difference between left and right). Anyway, pushed the final kilometer, getting home 16 seconds quicker than last week in 86:32. The GPS was overly generous today, clocking in at 20.26km (4:16’s). I’d say that 4:18’s was more likely, but nevertheless I’m happy with that. It felt ‘comfortably hard/solid,’ just the way I like it. Great conditions, with a nice and cool headwind on the way out (more like a breeze) that killed the humidity.