Appreciate seeing your planning and progress. You are keeping at it and being smart- success will come! Thanks for sharing the details.
Those times look pretty good to me for a first time out. A week or so ago I was having a hard time hitting 3:23 (albeit w/ 2min R).
without being overly dramatic, I really feel this workout was some sort of breakthrough, mentally for sure, to achieve a new level of commitment to the training. I feel when I look back on the season, I will be able to point to this workout as the turning point, given there were several points where I considered pulling the plug and trying again tomorrow, but pushed through and completed the rep with decent form. the Good Friday/ Resurrection paradigm applied to run training, death to self and rebirth to a new life. OK, maybe that is too dramatic, haha!