Step by step, mile by mile

AM - 4 on the treadmill at 9.0 mph. calves felt a step or two away from straining something; i think that's partly on my legs always straining a little bit more on treadmills though. still, i will exercise caution with caution of exercise

AM2 - hour on the stationary + sauna. covered 17 miles in the hour at high resistance, felt like i loosened up my right calf which was giving me some pause for the AM double. probably moving back to just 60-70 minutes in the morning; i enjoy the extra mileage from the shakeout prior but with my timeframe to run the only options are treadmill or asphalt. I already knew my legs didn't hold up well under consistent treadmill running, but figured maybe my bias against hard surfaces was unjustified. nope! and i will now continue to avoid running on sidewalks and asphalt like the plague

noon - stationary + sauna at the gym

PM - drills and strides on the turf, plus a couple laps jogging. calf felt good.

AM - stationary + sauna. probably ready to start running again

noon - 3 on hilton, 5:44 pace. anyone familiar with tapering would be shocked to know a couple weeks of hard training followed by a couple days of light cross-training meant i felt very good after loosening up the first 5 minutes or so. since the calf is still probably a day or so from being 100% tried to keep it controlled and not to go too fast and still ended up under 5:45 pace, lol.

PM - dynamics and strides on the turf. covered a bit over a mile; gonna count it as a mile 

AM - 8 on mural at 4am, 6:16 pace. very windy. kept the effort pretty light, your hand is sort of forced running on a grass field in the dark and all. wanted to go about 20 minutes longer but the start of mile 8 i took a step and my toe started hurting with every step so i knew it'd be in my best interest to bail... after finishing that mile in 5:50, obviously. anyway took off my shoes right after expecting a horror scene but nope, nothing. it may still hurt but it's mostly healed up after a couple days off so i think i'm in the clear. nothing to speak of from the calf either, you love to see it

AM2 - 5 on mural, 5:33 pace. vent run; had a stressful morning which resulted in me doing the run i had slated for around 2pm at 10am. only about 4 1/2 hours of recovery between runs usually means running a little slower, which honestly might be a good thing: i ran the last 3 miles in 16:14(5:29, 5:30, 5:15), if i had ran 15 minutes i might have died from an overdose of self-satisfaction :)

PM - dynamics and strides on the turf

AM - 7 on mural, 6:08 pace. another night run from waking up way too early; like i said yesterday, night runs on the grass cap the pace a bit but 6:08 pace felt real easy

AM2 - 5 on mural, 5:57 pace. pretty good run if you ignore that i intended to go for a fast 10 but my legs were completely drained of life. what i get for pretending 7 miles is shakeout territory and i could bounce back by 7am. nothing hurt but my stilts were just giving me nothing to work with. would have added a few miles to the early morning run if i'd known, but oh well. if i wake up stupidly early yet again tomorrow i'll get it right 

PM - drills and strides on the turf.

AM - 10 on mural in the dead of night once again, 6:01 pace. if it weren't hard enough trying not to sprain an ankle on the grass with the limited depth perception afforded by nothing but the moonlight and my phone flash, it also got extremely foggy after maybe 5 minutes. it mostly settled by the last 3-4 miles, but when it was bad i couldn't see the ground more than 5 feet ahead of me. i try to refrain from the "what-if" game but i have zero doubt this one would have been at least under 5:50 pace if i had ran at like 8am when the ground was more compact, much less wet, and i could, you know, see it. almost makes you wonder why i didn't. what a stupid question

AM2 - 4 on mural, 5:27 pace. felt good! grass was still very wet, don't think the legs could have moved much faster(at least on this course) but aerobically it felt very controlled. basically a repeat of wednesday's second run sans the first mile that day where i was easing into it as the run wasn't planned. even ran the last 3 miles in 16:14 again! i got hurt last week and somehow came back in even better shape and i'm kind of terrified lol

PM - turf dynamics and strides

AM - treadmill workout. 3 mile w/u, 6 x half-mile at incline in 2:30 with 60" jog recovery, plus an extra 20" or so ramping the treadmill back up

pretty good one, first repeat definitely felt the hardest and the last one probably felt the easiest, especially in the last 90" or so. felt less like my feet were pushing off the ground and more like they were stepping on landmines :)

AM2 - 5 on mural, 5:52 pace. pace is deceiving; we got heavy rain all night so mural was a mushy and muggy mess this morning to the point that i wasn't expecting to even push under 7:00 pace, and didn't bother doing my extended warmup before aerobic runs because i assumed this wouldn't be anything more than a jog. sike!

PM - drills and strides on the turf. we've got more storms hitting us tonight and the temperatures subsequently dropping to something more winter-y, but it's been nice having the high be a sunny 70's the last few days. the temp range to be comfortable in the "shirtless in tracksuit pants" fit is a tight one, especially in a more humid area. cherished getting to rock it for this