Easy Run Tonight Has Me Asking, "So What's My Pace?"

Tonight's run confused me. I had been told that after 5 straight weeks of hard pace training and ramped up weekly mileage, I needed to take one week recovery and do easy runs.

Tuesday night, I did 3 easy miles with my training partner and it was 12:19 pace - warm humid night.

Tonight, training partner had to cancel on me. Weather was much cooler out, it was still somewhat overcast but moving out of the area.

First mile: the breeze is really nice, good cloudcover, 11:19.
Second mile: breeze STOPS, gets humid, sun comes back out, stomach's kinda bothering me from dinner, 12:09.
Third mile: still no breeze, less sun, stomach's a little better, 11:49.

So that's 3 miles in 35:16 - 11:49 average.

Well, this is 30 seconds faster than Tuesday's hotter "easy" run. So what's the difference? Does this mean I could expect 30 seconds off my pace come cooler weather?

And what does it mean that my "easy" run tonight was at slightly slower than my long run pace currently is in the heat, or is only slightly slower than my goal half marathon race pace?

The point is my paces are all over the place. I think the heat is making it so hard to predict what my pace will be when it cools down and on top of it, I AM getting faster, making that prediction even more of a moving target.

Just makes me wonder - I can't wait to get to cool temps because then I'll be able to compare to my spring PR paces I was setting this year and have a much better idea of how much faster I've become.

A kaleidoscope of miles per minute

Tonight's EASY run pace: 11:49

Training paces for the last 5 hard weeks in HEAT:

Speed runs - 2 to 3 mile repeats: 10:45-11:00
Long runs - 11:00-11:28
Weekday tempo runs of 3 miles: 11:15-11:35

Spring paces, which also were PR paces, much cooler, ideal temps:

Half Marathon PR Pace (April this year): 12:23
15K PR Pace (earlier this year): 11:50
10K PR Pace (earlier this year): 11:32
5K PR Pace (earlier this year - ideal, hard to replicate conditions): 10:24