Keeping it easy

This weekend brings the culmination of the past six months of training. Two 10k events in little more than 24 hours. Sunday's London 10000 will be followed by my fourth appearance at the Hatfield Broad Oak 10k.
Normally these events clash & I always opt for my local event as it's usually one of the highlights in the running calendar. This year the organisers of the London event moved from the bank holiday Monday to the Sunday, making this (somewhat foolish) plan possible. The last time I ran 10k around London it was in last year's horrific British 10k, an event designed to fleece and degrade runners, given Sunday's event is run by the London Marathon team I harbour no fears of a repeat.
With an energetic weekend ahead I opted for two easy runs in the week. Tuesday & Thursday, like a return to my old schedule. Running easy also gave me the opportunity to break in one of my new pairs of trainers. I opted for the Saucony Kinvara 5's on the basis that the colour scheme is funkier!
First impressions are that the Kinvara is a very good running shoe. Noticeably lighter than what I'm used to and they had a nice bounce to them. My two runs were just 7 & 5km so I'll still need to test them on long runs to see if any problems manifest, but they appear to be perfect for 5k parkrun events.
On Thursday I started easy and then just let rhythm take over to see how I felt. Every kilometre was quicker than the last, finishing with a 5:11, a pace I never knowingly attempt in training.
I also signed up to Strava this week. It appears to be like Garmin on performance enhancing drugs! As a stats lover I was close to taking a premium subscription straight away. It looks like a fun tool for analysing my performance even more. I especially liked the segments and courses, grade adjusted pace also looks intriguing at first glance.
Will it make me a better runner? Probably not. But statistics and information will make me a more motivated runner in all likelihood.
So the weekend approaches and I feel in good form, I'm interested to see what I'm capable of, after all my 10k PB has stood for nearly two and a half years.