Long Run Saturday: Pickups in the rain

Plan: 2 miles easy; 4x 4:00 at 9:50/mile, 4:00 easy, cool down
Actual Mileage: 6.7 miles
Route: Along Victory Memorial and Crystal Lake (which is actually in Robbinsdale)
Weather: 60s and rainy.  It wasn't terribly windy but there was some wind on the way out.

Execution:
Warm up/2 miles easy: This took longer than I thought.  Stop 1 was talking to a friend walking her dogs.  Stop 2 was for a train.  Stop 3 was an actual stop light.  Then I got moving okay
Faster sets: My goal was to see what running a 9:50/mile "feels like" on the road.  I can do it when the treadmill is telling me how fast to go, but I need to learn to do that myself.  I tried to glance at my pace every 30 or 40 paces to get an idea, but not to go insane looking at my watch.  If I was on pace great.  If I was too slow, I'd try to pick it up and not panic.
Set 1:  9:38/mile.  This one felt good, and it ended on a downhill which was nice.  I had to hold my body "stiffer" but also "more springy" than normal to hit this pace, and I was able to run without dying the slow set after it.
Set 2: 10:09/mile.  This one was up a hill. So I told myself "see what it feels like to run fast up hill" and "see if you can hit this pace up hill"  I couldn't really, so that's an area I'll need to work on before race day.  I'm not sure if I don't have that pace up hill, or I have it but I'm afraid to use it, or I have it but I don't know what it feels like.  Probably a bit of the last two.
Set 3: 10:03/mile  Just feeling a little tired.  It's close to the right pace but not perfect.  At the end of this set I came to the steepest hill on the route.  I walked it for my slow set.  I just could not...
Set 4: 9:40/mile  I told myself to really go for this one because I only had the cool down left after.  It was hard but not insane, and I was able to run the cool down, and see yet another train.

From today, I learned: Having a positive attitude and viewing this as a chance to learn really opened me up on this run.  Instead of "I have to get this perfect" it was "see how much you can do and what you can learn about how the pace feels" and it was a great opportunity.

Bonus: Did I mention the rain?