New shoe smell

Anyone else LOVE the smell of new shoes? As I pulled mine out of the box this morning, I took a good long sniff...mmmmm. If I'm alone on this one, so be it. I'm not ashamed. Some people love to smell coffee in the mornings to get them going, I think that new shoe smell is my new morning pick-me-up. Think I can find a car air freshener in this scent??

I think the new shoe sniffing got my adrenaline going becuase I felt really good on my run this morning. I went for a little bit flatter course this morning. Total climb was still 427 ft. (compared to 571 ft. on Thursday). Legs were feeling pretty strong and I got into a good rhythm after a few miles.
Covered 11.36 miles in 1:31:31 (8:03 min/mile pace).
Here's my splits:

Note that mile 6 was pretty slow. I attribute this to me trying to eat some raisins. I normally take a gel pack on longer runs, but I'm out of them, so I threw some raisins in a baggie. FYI - it's not easy to eat raisins out of a baggie and run at the same time. It takes two hands and a decent amount of concentration to get the raisins from the bag to your mouth. Not to mention that my fingers were half frozen. Either way, take that slow mile out and I'm probably just under 8 minute miles for the run. This is my fastest zone 2 run yet.

Average HR was 153 bpm (this is actually about 4-5 bpm lower than I want)

Max HR was 164

If nothing else, this proves that I'm successfully building my aerobic engine. During my first Base Phase, Zone 2 Run 4 weeks ago, my pace was 8:21 min/mile on a flat route.

Totals for Base Phase 1, Week 4:

Swim - 1:24 (2.4 miles)

Bike - 6:55 (119 miles)

Run - 4:28 (30.46 miles)

TOTAL - 12:51 (151.86 miles)

The goal for the week was 13.5 hours of training. I came up a little short on that, but with Christmas thrown in, I'll consider this good enough!!