What Do You Know? Sometimes Less Really Is More!

I almost didn't make it out the front door for my easy 8 miler yesterday,one of the drawbacks of a week off{or almost a week off since I did knock out a 8.4 mile Art Museum Loop run Saturday} is getting into that false sense of a "comfort zone" where having not ran for a week you think to yourself"do I really want to run today?"
Thankfully this was only fleeting and by the time I arrived home I was shoving those negative thoughts down my throat and humbling myself by laying on the living room floor to get my stretches in,now that I'm dealing w/ Sciatic Nerve issues in both hamstrings I'm having to do double the stretches to keep said Sciatica at arms lenght but it's a small price to pay to allow myself "another day" day in,day out.

Out the door gone 4.30pm the plan was an easy 8 miler to kick the week off,last time out on my easy 8 miler I went 1.14.02 which felt like a reasonable target to chase given for all intence and purposes I was coming off the DL {Disabled List}
Conditions were grey and overcast but 58 degrees when I set off,to be 100% honest I wasn't fixated on splits,I blew through the opening mile and it was almost an afterthought to check my watch at mile two......
28 mins plus at mile 3/Lloyd Hall {technically the 3 mile mark comes in around the Art Museum.....}b4 making the turnaround in 36.16.....1.12.32 pace if I kept this pace last time out my turnaround split was 37.27.......

I still wasn't thinking about a brisk time,the whole point of an easy run is to take it easy,there will be  time for lung busting on the Tempo run whenever I get to that this week.
W/out going "gangbusters" I did feel pretty good, a week ago I had all manner of crap on my lungs but you'd have never known it today as I was picking off miles w/ ease,once again a weeks inforced rest had become a positive rather than a negative.
Almost a year ago after eight weeks of high intence training for my outdoor season opener I pulled/strained  my right groin which while sucking like a Dyson vacuum initially proved to be a blessing as that week off allowed me to recharge my batteries to the point where every ninth week after that I took a week off,something I planned to keep in my rotation this season but between my taper for Indoor Nationals and incomplete weeks when the weather interupted my training etc I hadn't reached a point where I felt I had eight weeks of 5 day/40mpw.....till I got sick and was forced to sit out a week.......

Finished in 1.11.26 clearly lent considerable weight to that argument,my last tempo run over the same 8 mile out and back course was 1.10.12 so maybe I did need that week off,the trick now is to keep this pace and intensity up for the remainder of the week.....easier sai than done but on fresh legs....who knows?