2 Very Different Training Runs!

We have new neighbors across the alley to the north west of us. They moved in over the weekend. On tuesday I went out the alley gate and around the corner to the street and began my run. On my way home, I walked around the corner and was greeted to a screech that sent me up in the air......his name is cujo, and he is a very tame, extremely loud, 4 year old giant scarlet and golden mccaw. He was sitting on his owners shoulder eating fruit and nuts and babbling and screeching. So far, whenever he is outside, he is driving mugsy nuts.....wants to know what the hell it is. Of course if he got any where near it, he would tuck his candyass tail between his legs and head back to his yard at light speed......
Sunday I ran long in cold weather. Didn't enjoy it much. On tuesday, I set out to do 6 bye 3 minutes at sub 5K pace with two minute recoveries. Run was horrible. Felt flat during the warm up, and labored mightily doing the intervals. After completing them, I never felt like I recovered at all during the cool down. When I got home I downloaded the info into my computer from the garmin, and my pace for the intervals was about 8K race pace. I was very pissed off disappointed by this result. Not sure if it was just a bad day, or if I didn't recover fully from the long run. Today I went out to do a cut down run......a 3K warm up, followed bye 2K at half marathon pace immediately transitioning into 2K at 8K race pace, followed bye a 3K warm down. I actually transitioned from half marathon pace to 5K pace for a very good hard training run. When I started the cooldown, I felt recovered in about 4 minutes into the cooldown. So one ugly training session followed bye a very good one.
This weekend I will do a long run and easy run. That will be the final long run before my december 8th race. I will try again to do a good short interval workout next week, and another cruise interval run, and then start to taper into the race......