Berkeley smelled good this morning. I'm not sure if it was coming out from under the (unfulfilled) threat of rain the last couple days, or maybe just because I was running on the sidewalk and was that much closer to the flowers, but it stuck with me. Si has been sleeping in of late (he's still asleep as I write this, after stretching, eating breakfast, and making coffee) so I got up early and headed out on my own. I found myself heading toward the dirt track at MLK middle school. There's a nice synthetic track at Berkeley High, closer to home, but it doesn't open until 7. Checking the log now, I haven't run on a track since March 9th. Given that, and the proximity to a half marathon, I decided that a tempo run was in the cards. I'd been looking for an opportunity to do this so that I could start developing a race plan instead of pulling one out of thin air.

The track had plenty of people walking, jogging, and stretching, including one woman running clockwise. There were no lanes, of course, and parts of the track were muddy from the sprinklers running overnight, but I was able to beat a pretty clear path. The plan was 3 miles at 6:30 pace, which is just about my half marathon PR pace. Went down like this:
6:16
6:31
6:32
Not half bad, especially considering the fast first mile and that I couldn't hug the rail. I felt pretty beat by the end and walked half a lap before heading home. Ideally I will follow this up with a 5 mile tempo next week, maybe at 6:35 pace or so, to try to triangulate a race pace.

total, about 7 miles in 48:55.