I am one with the levee and the levee with me

16 easy. The wind was howling. Between that and feeling tired/sore from yesterday's workout, avg pace = 7:41.

10 easy. I'm amazed at how sore that Saturday workout made me. You'd think it was my first workout of the year.

6 easy + 8 x levee sprints (~200m).

6 easy. New shoes.

Had a really fun time at the local turkey trot. It was surprisingly competitive. I tucked in behind a couple guys at the start, and the pace was pretty slow at first. 2:40 first half. Picked up to 5:16 at the mile. Then a few of the college guys ratcheted up the pace. Came through 2 in 10:16 for 5:00. That felt terrible. The pace increase was so gradual I didn't notice at first, and I thought I was just feeling like crap because I'm in worse shape than I thought. Negative thoughts.

I started to lose touch with the lead pack, and didn't fight too hard since I knew 5:00 pace was too much. Well, I'd hoped it wouldn't feel too hard, but my body told me otherwise. I came through 3 in 10:28 for a 5:12. Lead pack was breaking up and some of the stragglers weren't quite out of reach. Told myself to just run a strong 4th mile and I could probably pick a few of them off in the 5th.

4 miles came in 20:40 for another 5:12. Happy to see no drop in pace. Surprisingly I started feeling a lot better in that mile. I had 4 guys who were all catchable. Caught them all before we entered the stadium for the finish, but unfortunately I struggled to shift gears. 2 of them got me before the line. 25:49 for a 5:09 final mile.

Progress. 

I trip to the ER with one of the family scrapped most of the day. Managed to squeeze in 4 tonight.... at least it's not a zero for the day.

AM - 3 warmup, 8 mile tempo starting at ~5:40 and dropping to ~5:30. Temps were about 42F at the start with no wind. Beautiful morning. I had a rough night's sleep with the little one, and it was tough to get out the door.

Splits from the Garmin: 5:42, 5:42, 5:39, 5:36, 5:32, 5:27, 5:27, 5:27 

Total time: 44:35

I didn't feel 100%, almost certainly due to Thursday's race, but I felt like I could have held sub-5:30 for a long time.

PM - 5 easy stroller miles w/ Rylie.