I had a very strong 17-mile run on Sunday. Finally it was cool, and I felt good the whole time. I averaged 7:25/mile, and it felt pretty easy.

Monday was rest, then two horrible recovery runs on Tuesday - this happens often: when I have a little rest after some hard work, the next easy runs feel totally hard. I didn't sleep much the next night, and I had a terrible headache all day on Wednesday, so I wasn't looking forward to going to the track at 8pm in the dark for a 6 x 1200 session. Fortunately it went fine. Splits were 4:22, 4:20, 4:22, 4:20, 4:22 (goal was 4:21).

Interestingly, the second rep felt very hard, and I thought I was done, and I decided I would just go out carefully (not too fast) for the third one, and try to speed up the last lap, if necessary. I used this approach for all the remaining reps, and it not only worked: the first two laps always turned out to be fast enough and I never had to overexert myself for the third one.

I'm probably not as strong as I was two years ago at the same time, so that's not a good sign for sub-3, but I have some time left, and maybe I can peak and race better. If it won't be sub-3, it's not a disaster, as long as I safely BQ. I will need about 3:10 for that.