Bret

Took the day off from running.  Just not feeling well or motivated.

AM - early 8 miles on the treadmill - still not feeling all that well, but felt like I would benefit from the effort. 

AM - only time for 4 short miles this morning before work.  Better than nothing.  

PM - good workout today on the treadmill.  6 miles at MP on the treadmill after a 2 mile warm up and about a half mile cool down.  Wore the HRM and the effort was to lock in at a pace for about 30-40 minutes which would between 75 and 80% HRR - which happened to be 6:49 pace today - which is really quite satisfying to know that if I needed to push harder on a tempo effort or faster, I still had a fair amount of room to do so.  Admittedly in the last 5-7 mins or so, I was on the upper limit of the 80% range with some cardiac drift probably due to some dehydration - but my avg HR for the workout was 148.

Anyway - doing about one workout per week for the last few weeks and a medium long-ish run of 11-13 miles on the weekends has permitted me to gradually get myself into decent shape without stressing my systems too much.  No injuries and no dragging fatigue from overtraining.  Will stay on this lighter / gradual training approach for a bit longer before I add any more stressors.

AM - 6.5 miles easy on the indoor track at the gym near my office.  Cool rainy and windy outside.  

PM - 8.5 miles in a cool mizzle.

So - not exactly a race time I would have wanted to post - but I decided late yesterday evening that I wanted to do a tempo effort and with no less than 25 races to select from in a 50 mile radius of Atlanta this morning, I opted for a little 10k race in Roswell, just a few minutes from my house - to get that type of effort in this today.  

The last week has been very rainy with springtime showers and so with more expected today, the humidity percentage was above 95%, temperature of 62 and a dew point of 61, it was a bit on the muggy side.  

Course was 2 loops of a 5k (which was the 2nd race that started 15 minutes after the 10k).  The first half of the loop was primarily on a uphill grade and the second half had a short downhill but with a segmented (3) hill on a dirt road for the last mile to 1.2 miles.  So the first loop provided a preview/warning of the second loop.

Started conservatively and remained consistent at that effort - Splits were 6:58, 7:00, 7:30 (hill), 7:00, 6:48, 7:32 (hill) and the last .2 was at 6:34 pace.

Passed couple of runners in the first loop and caught another one on the second loop, and was starting to catch two other runners on the downhill of the second loop until we started climbing again, so I just maintained my position until the finish.  

Good consistent miles - not too fast - but I could not have run too much faster uner the conditions today. 

Low turnout in the race, had me finishing 5th.  I need to confirm that information along with my age group when the results are posted.