This recovery run landed exactly where it needed to be: 7.6 km at 7:13/km, low perceived effort, normal legs, and relaxed breathing throughout.
The strongest signal was the feeling: being able to talk and sing comfortably confirms that the session was truly easy, even if heart rate does not always look perfectly low.
With a gym day before the next quality workout, the priority now is to preserve the interval session and avoid forcing extra recovery mileage just to satisfy the calendar.
Takeaway. Recovery days should be judged mainly by effort and smoothness, not by a strict heart-rate target. If Garmin stacks a short recovery run around gym and quality work, protect the quality session and skip the extra easy run if needed.
Next step. W02D3 Intervals. Controlled threshold interval session. Move it to Thursday after the gym day, keep the reps smooth, and do not add the separate recovery run afterward.