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

Up early this morning.  Another hot one.  I felt better than yesterday even with some sore muscles from yesterday's kettleball workout session.  Aerobic base miles.  19:14, 8:11, 7:52, 7:48, 7:43, 7:44, 7:35, 7:23.

This heat is wearing on me.  I wondered during today's run whether or not I would rather run in this or 20 degrees and a wind chill.  I remember some pretty cold runs during the winter though it seems a long, long time ago.  I think I would still rather run in these conditions even though it's tough.  

8 miles at around 8:00 pace.

I decided I needed a change of senery so I ventured down to Town Lake trail. The neighborhood routes are getting a bit boring. Besides, I felt like jumping in Barton Springs after the run. I parked at Barton Springs pool. It was 5:40 am and already 80 degrees. I thought I would run a progressive run of some type. I ran a mile warm up and then started to drop the pace. My legs are still a bit sore from Saturday's core workout and that scares me a bit - it wasn't that hard and it has been 3 days already. Oh well. I was feeling pretty good and figured I would drop to around a 7 minute mile or a bit lower for the last mile. At around mile 5 low and behold I see Lisa and another runner coming up the trail behind me. Oh boy, I thought, here we go. I knew this would be a good chance to drop the pace and why not, it is easier to run with or try to hang with someone rather than attempt this alone. They finally passed me and I decided to hang with them for a couple miles. It got the heart working, that is for sure. With a mile to go I stopped to grab a drink and slow it down a bit. Lisa had faded a bit but passed me here and I wished here good luck. Time for a mile cool down back to the pool. Nice cool down in Barton Springs pool to finish. 8:54, 7:50, 7:37, 7:35, 7:22, 6:30, 6:31, 7:43.

Workout #2:  Did the one hour core/kettle ball workout for the first time.  Challenging to say the least.  They had us doing crazy stuff like sets of jumping rope with a 2" rope - it must have weight at least 6-7 pounds.   Pistol squats, hang cleans, burpees, kettle ball swings, squats, I can say I have never worked out that hard for a solid 60 minutes before.  I am sure to be nice and sore for the next few days.  I would like to be able to do this twice a week for 4 weeks or so.  I want to get my body stronger in order to prepare for the rigors of fall marathon training.

Sunny and a cool 96 degrees.  Again I choose to sleep in this morning so out for a day time run.  Really tried to keep it in the recovery zone - 8:29 overall pace including a slow warm up mile.  Legs are sore from yesterday, well, everything is sore from yesterday.  

79 degrees and humid at 5:30 am.  Parked at Barton Springs and then ran 1.5 miles to the group and then ran with the group for another easy 2 miles.  Legs were still sore from Tuesday's core workout so I took the warm-up miles very slowly. Once we hit the other side of the trail we started our workout of 2 min hard effort with 1 min easy. I ran with the lead group for most of the run by they broke away with about a mile and a half to go.  The others that I ran with faded, too, but more so and I ended up running alone.  I was able to push it the last couple and even added another at the end of my half mile cool down to finish strong.  We ran the 1 minute easy portion way to fast - 7:40 - 7:20's - these should be much slower, especially in today's heat, and we ran the fast portions in the range of 6:10-6:30 pace.  I got 10 of those in for a total distance of 3.31 fast miles.  Ran in the Nike Free's again - still like them.

Did a canonball into Barton Springs to cool down afterward. 

Slept in again so 6 miles on the indoor track at around 8:30 pace. 

Parked the car at 5:50 am and it was 81 degrees already.  Not sure what the humidity was but it was high.  I got to the group just in time for the coach to say get moving, so out the door everyone went.  I hooked up with Lisa for the first mile or so and then we got passed by Desiree Ficker - she's kind of a local celeb in the Austin area - a professional tri athlete and finished 8th overall in the women's division at the NYC marathon a couple years ago.  Anyway, she runs with our group once in a while.  We kept up with her for a bit and then she took off and Lisa went with her.  I figured we would pass Lisa again as she was running too fast and that was the case.  I think we passed her at around mile 5 or 6.  Desiree is running an Ironman next week in Frankfurt and we all wished her luck when she broke off from the group at a water stop.   

Today's run went so much better than last week.  We pushed the pace and I managed to stick with it for the whole run.  At one point I wanted to go for 16 miles but at the pace I ran I decided 14 was sufficient.  Not sure how to record these miles because they are faster than my easy pace but not quite my MGP pace of 6:50.

Not quite 60 miles this week but getting there - been taking a slow approach to building back the mileage. 

8:19. 7:40, 7:26, 7:20, 7:05, 7:13, 7:18, 7:09, 7:08, 7:04, 6:56, 7:08, 7:13, 7:08.  Followed by 4 x 50m strides. Overall pace of 7:18.