Today was my hard running workout for the week. A total of 4.6 miles that had 6 hill repeats done after warming up for about 2.2 miles. They went pretty well, faster than the repeats I had done back in March on the same hill, even though the dewpoint was about 68 degrees this morning. On the other hand, these were run at higher heart rate than back in March, but I suspect that even if I had backed off a bit to where the heart rates would have been the same, I still ran at a faster pace.
I also suspect that one factor that helped me run these repeats harder is how I've been using the heart rate monitor to keep the easy runs really easy. That's one of the ideas that's appealed to me about using the tool of a heart rate monitor, doing so gives me a good measuring stick to keep the easy runs and the hard stuff hard. It also makes it easier in a sense to run the harder stuff hard because the legs aren't as beat up.