I only run on days that end in a "y."

8 recovery pace miles - 8:50's.

Another great morning - only saw one other runner this morning.  Where is everyone?  I have not seen many runners in the neighborhood for a couple months now.

Miles 7:50's to 8:00. 

Mile repeats tomorrow. 

Early morning and 65 degrees / high humidity - had to meet the group @ 5:30 and I wanted to get some miles in before then so I woke up at 4:45.  Got downtown at 5:15 so I had time for a bit of a warm up, then met the early group and we did another easy warm up.  So I ended up with 3 miles easy.  Then on to mile repeats.  We do our repeats by Barton Springs pool.  The loop around the park is exactly 1 mile and includes a couple of good hill climbs.  We run one way one repeat and then the other direction for the next and alternate back and forth. 

I was going to do 5 repeats but coach told me 4 was enough with the 10k race coming up this weekend. 

I ended up running them alone as I was running these a bit faster than the others. 

Quite happy with the mile times given the hills on the loop.  Ran them just as fast as the 1200m workout and those were on the track.

Mile 1: 6:05

Mile 2: 6:07

Mile 3: 5:59

Mile 4: 6:00

Ah, a full 8 hours of sleep last night.  My body needed that.  

I think today qualifies as summer - full sun and 85 degrees.  I had to run during my lunch time since I slept in this morning.  I don't think I am ready for this yet.

I ran on the soft trail and was content to hold the pace in recovery range.  7 miles @ 8:59 overall average.

1.75 easy then met up with the group.  Another 2 easy then 10 x 1 minute fast (5:59-6:18 pace) with 1 minute recovery.  Followed some cool down miles @ 7:40's pace.  When I got back to the car it was still early so I added another mile.  I took a trail and ran until the trees covered the moonlight and then turned around.  Seems like it would be a good run to keep going - maybe I will bring my light with me next time.

Today was a scheduled day-off but I went to the gym and did an hour in-door cycling as recovery and get the blood going.  15 miles in 60 minutes.  I am going to put down 4 miles for the effort.   

I read a great article/interview in Marathon and Beyond with Brad Hudson who is a well known marathon coach (and a 2:13 guy back in his prime.)  A couple of the main points were: 1. marathon runners generally do not run easy enough on easy days or hard enough on key workout days and 2. a big mistake is to run long runs to slow.  He goes on to explain that a marathon is all about fuel and the only way to train your body to best utilize its fuel is to train no slower than 10% off of MGP during long runs but really the more miles at MGP the better.

I have been reading and hearing this a lot lately.  If one runs long runs too slow one cannot expect race day "magic" to happen  and all of a sudden run 26 miles at MGP.  It all sounds logical to me.  I personally had better results running MGP on long runs than when I did separate MGP runs during the week so maybe there is some truth to it.

Wow - slept in until 7 - 9 hours of sleep.  I think I slept too long.

Nice and easy around the neighborhood, 4 pickups at the end at 10k pace.