Ratcheting up the Intensity

I was motivated today to try and get my 6 miles 'long run' in at a faster pace after looking through the FIRST 10K training program. The 'long' runs in this program should be run at ~7:40 pace and a 6 miler is really more of a 'medium' tempo run, which should be ~7:25 for me. Today, I ripped-off the 6.4 miles at a 7:28 min/mile pace. I had pretty good splits as well: 7:32, 7:25, 7:19, 7:13, 7:25, 8:09 (the bitch) and 6:37 for the last 0.4 miles. Hopefully I can get my other two runs in between rain storms this week.