Growth mindset in running - addendum

Just to add another data point to the role of growth mindset in running, here are some numbers from last Thursday's workout. Thursdays in my marathon training plan are tempo runs. Last week was #14 of 16 for the upcoming Pocono Marathon, and it should have been a 5M tempo run. Instead, just to be a bit conservative, as I transition to tapering, I changed the tempo to intervals. In between a couple miles warm-up from home to the local high school track and a couple miles cool-down from the track back home, I did the following workout: Intervals of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 2 laps, with a lap easy jogging in between. I would have done 1-2-3-4-3-2-1, but I was running short of time (for work). The interval times are shown in the following chart.

The average time per lap (or mile pace, in red) increased, as the number of laps of the interval increased, as expected. What's interesting is the fifth and last interval of 2 laps. When I should have been the most tired, I ran at a mile pace that's 4 seconds faster than that of the second interval of 2 laps. Now, though growth mindset has been on my mind a lot recently, and I was thinking about it during those intervals, I'm not attributing this 4-second difference to that. I think finishing the last of a series of intervals at a relatively faster pace is pretty natural. The end spurt applies in this case as well as at the usual end of a run. Still, the key question is how to achieve, earlier in the run or race, that natural almost subconscious mental state that enables the end spurt. A growth mindset will be, I suspect, a major part of the answer.