6+ miles easy

After the previous afternoon's hill session started to bite around lunchtime, I kind of hoped the snow would come on heavily enough to make running dangerous and give me the perfect excuse to dodge training, as cold weather and sore muscles are a bad combination. I was suddenly feeling much better at around 7pm and decided to risk it. Arrived at the Science Park just in time to see a group heading towards the bridge over the Kelvin, and guessed it was the fast group due to distinctive running styles. Parked the car and got changed as quickly as I could, and had to run at something like race pace to catch them at Anniesland Cross - luckily it turned out to be an easy session or I wouldn't have managed it at all. The group was also an aggregation of the two fastest groups because of the poor post-holiday turnout, which explains why they set off a few minutes earlier than usual. Between three and four miles, the group started to disintegrate as the faster runners picked up the pace. I kept up quite comfortably for another mile or so, but threw in the towel when we headed towards Kelvinside rather than back home - there was clearly too far still to go to keep up that kind of pace with a 10K coming up on Saturday. I coasted in for the last couple of miles and felt absolutely fine.