Last night was literally a breath of fresh air. It was cool, comfortable, and fun.

Ellie and I set out to make amends for our relaxed training routine for the past couple of weeks. We got back on schedule with a nice forty-minute "Easy Run." The funny thing about this particular "Easy Run" was that it was just that. Easy. We ran faster than we have in a long, long time, and when we finished neither one of us were really all that tired, or even sweating much. We ran comfortably our first mile and turned in an 8:56 mile split. At this point, we were dialed in, and ran three back to back 9:30 miles.

We happily talked to each other the entire run. We weren't focused on the time, or our distance or pace. We weren't focused on pushing hard or the route we were running. We just set out and ran. We realized we put up a twenty-nine minute 5k time, and that felt great because lately we've been over thirty most days. I don't want to say it was completely effortless, because we did drop our pace once to recover a little bit,  but that was pretty short-lived.

The cool night air felt absolutely amazing. It was chilly at first, but it was incredibly refreshing after the long hot and humid runs that we have grown tired of. It gave me an incredible amount of renewed energy and excitement about the fall running season. I guess I never really appreciated how running is just that much harder when the temperature is higher.

It really is amazing how just one run can completely lift my spirits. The half-marathon in a few weeks seems a whole lot less daunting this morning when I woke up compared to yesterday.

I'm pretty stoked.