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

 Met Dan down at Barton Springs for an easy 9 miles on Town Lake trail.  No watch today - just out for the run.  I was cool but quite humid.  I ran with my cushioned insoles as well to help with recovery.  I put my legs in the springs at the end of the run.  Great way to start a Sunday.

Another humid morning - cold front tonight should solve that for tomorrow's run, though.

8 mile easy - relaxed run - plan on doing a tempo tomorrow morning so I did not want to do anything crazy this morning.  7:40's-7:50's.

Nice and cool - 58 degrees albeit windy and very dry.

I met Lisa and a couple of her running buddies for a tempo run @ 5:30 at the "rock" which is a point along the Town Lake Trail. For some reason the training group is not doing any tempo runs this fall. Well, I think that is pretty odd. Fortunately, I found someone who is doing them. I really want to get 2 more of these in before the big day.

I ran close to a mile and then met Lisa. We did 3 miles warm-up to Expo and 38th - this is the hilly porting of the Austin course, and then started tempo coming back to Windsor - and worked our way back to LAB and the back to the start. The course was fairly hilly.

I felt really good and the miles came fairly easily - my tempo range according to the charts is 6:11 - 6:29 and I managed that and ended up a bit faster on the last 2 miles. Maybe I was trying to make up for that 10k I missed a couple weeks back.

Lisa and I then ran 3 easy miles after the tempo run. Good workout and legs felt really good.

Warm up: 8:58, 8:09, 7:48, 7:50

Tempo: 6:22, 6:16, 6:07, 5:58, .10 @ 5:58.

Cool down: 7:55, 7:39, 7:36

7 recovery miles around the soft train near work. Also went back to putting my cushioned insoles in the Kinvaras for recovery runs. It seems to help the legs recover better.

AP today 8:30. Found it hard to stay any slower. I think my legs are getting used to running some faster miles as my run progresses so they always want to take off on me.

8 x 1000 track repeats on the agenda for tomorrow - can't wait! (Really, I can.)

Arrived early at BS Pool area and ran until I met the group coming in the opposite direction from RunTex. That was close to 3 miles, turned around with the lead guys and ran back with them to Austin High.

We did not do any drills but went straight into the 1000's. Fell in with Matt and Joseph and we traded pace duties. Felt pretty good until repeat #7 where I was about the pass my friend James but he was having none of that. I finally let him go because I was not going to kill myself with one more repeat to go. Still my fastest 1000 of the day and it took all the mental toughness I could muster to finish the last one.

Recoveries were active 200m with no standing around - when we got to the start off we went. We did not even stop for a drink. This was challenging but good.

3.5 easy miles @ 8:50 AP followed by 8 x 1000m repeats with 200m active recovery between each.

1000m in 3:38 (5:50 pace)

1000m in 3:35 (5:46 pace)

1000m in 3:35 (5:46 pace)

1000m in 3:41 (5:54 pace)

1000m in 3:39 (5:50 pace)

1000m in 3:34 (5:44 pace)

1000m in 3:30 (5:37 pace)

1000m in 3:34 (5:44 pace)

3 miles easy back to the car. Actually hit the parking lot in 2 miles, continued down the trail for .5 and then back to get in an extra mile. I am not running a long run on Saturday as my wife will be out of town, so plan on going out today at lunchtime to get in another 7 or so to make today a 20 mile day.

On the way home I heard on the radio that today was the coldest October 20th since 1953. It was around 48 degrees at the start of my run.

AFTERNOON RUN: I had to go downtown for work so I had the opportunity to run the Town Lake trail during lunch time. It took a mile for my legs to get the message that yes, I was serious about running when I had just finished a hard workout 5 hours early. Definitely some good training in sugar depletion mode. I wanted to run the miles at a good effort to simulate a long run.

7 miles around the trail: 8:12, 7:36, 7:19, 7:13, 7:28, 7:34, 7:06. Tough last couple miles - if you ever want to duplicate that feeling you get at the end of a marathon, try doing this! :-)

Nice cool morning, nice short recovery run.  Legs had a tough time to get going, the first mile as 10:30 or something like that, back into the high 8:00's by the 3rd mile.  Wore my cushioned Kinvaras.  I think it helps.

Had to go downtown again for work.  Used my lunch hour to run 6 miles on the trail.  This time I took the trail from BS Pool and headed towards the wilderness.  This is a "real" trail with some good technical spots but after about a mile and a half it flattens out in to some very pretty tree covered pathway.  Mostly single track hard packed dirt.  Really a joy to run.  Ran to 3 miles and turned around.