It was hot again early in the morning, that's nothing new, but this was the most humid day I can remember in a while. The air was heavy.
No matter, I was only going about 4 miles. The training schedule called for hills, so I changed my usual route to include the frontage road along I-29 for its roller-coaster qualities. I had done 7 miles in two runs on Monday, but they were easy miles, so I was pretty fresh and felt like I could do a tempo run.
So, after a warmup 10:04, I did 9:19, 8:40 and 8:38. The last half mile was done at an 8:47 pace, all of it on a pretty sharp uphill grade. The overall average was 9:07.