Thursday 15 miles

Rest break is over.
3 days of 5/ 0/ 5 miles. This morning I felt amazing and ran a fartlek up in hillbilly country. It was 35 degrees when I started.
I've never been a huge fan of fartleks but I see the benefits at altitude on hilly roads. If I focus too much on set intervals at certain paces it won't work simply because the pace conversion up here (high altitude VS sea level) is not only vague but there's quite a disparity. I've found that short hard intervals feel similar to low altitude efforts but moderate longer efforts feel much harder. It all comes down to how my muscles use the oxygen that is available. The harder and shorter efforts (today they were at 4:45 pace) use little oxygen. The more moderate but longer efforts (5:20-5:30 pace) require a lot of oxygen. Today I simply ran the downhills hard then carried the effort through the trough and up the next hill as long as I could hold the effort. The longest interval was upwards of 4:00. The shortest was maybe 30". No set goal pace or effort, I simply ran how I felt as long as I felt. The Garmin 405, I am finding, is quite cool.

pm) 7 miles on my 7 mile route in 51:32 average HR 143. This is both the fastest and the lowest HR I've done on this route. It's what I would call 'moderately' hilly... which up here means it's still hilly as crap. More improvement.