"There are no compromises." -Once a runner

AM: 6.15

PM: 6.15 feeling better finally after 3 easy days

AM: 4.9 hope the workout goes well.  Also driving 22 hours home to alabama over the next 2 days.  Getting up early and stopping by bedoukian's place in CT for a run.

PM: 4.9 no workout.  no time because packing and need to show the girl a good time tonight since im leaving for 3 months.  Will make it up, but its gonna be hard.

AM: got up at 3am after 3hrs sleep, drove 2.5hrs to redding, CT and ran 8.1 with bedoukian.  Was very fun.  Just like old times.  Like we'd been running together every day and this was just another run.  I did realize that his 70 miles per week is really equivalent to my 80-85 because he is on trails.  Same effort is 1-1.5 min slower per mile so that makes 70-100min more running per week than it appears by miles which is like getting 10-15 more miles in to your CV system and leg muscles.  Definitely not training the pounding quite like I am which I do think starts to be important for the half marathon.  Its on roads and you have to be able to be loose and fast after 10+ miles of asphault pounding.  But he will do fine with that.  He is and always will be the long distance beast among us.  And he has decent speed.  I saw it when he was careening downhill on trails.  Even with my "lack of caring for life or limb" mentality I thought he was going pretty fast.  He just needs to find that again on the roads and track.  Among the 3 in our little challenge, he has been the most consistent over the past 3 years and I will not yet count him out.

PM: drove another 9 hours after the am run down to salem, VA where I found a cat friendly hotel, put the cats in the room, and googled for the nearest track to get in my missed workout.  First I went to this middle school with an asphault track, warmed up around the school, stretched, striders, then did the first 200 in 29sec easy and decided the track was not 400m or 200m but some weird distance that was not posted.  So I then went across town to the high school and at first I didnt think they had a track, but it was big and they had tons of practice fields.  So I ran around and finally found a massive 10 lane track that i didnt see before because it was raised on this plataue thingy.  It was a super soft track, and the 10 lanes along with the curves being longer than the straightaways made it seem long and slow.  Okay, so this workout was very strange times wise.  Remember I had 3hrs sleep, 8miles on trails, and 11.5 hours in a car.  So here we go 4x200 in 40, 40 (felt like i correctly sped up but apparently not), 37(thought I went way faster, but only just now hit my time), 36 (expected a 34 lol) 2x400 in 72, 74 (okay seem to have my legs back now for the most part) 1x800 2:25 (yay, this was worrying me, went out in 71 and back in 74, some lactic acid I will admit my arms got pretty stiff with it) 2x400 in 73, 75, 4x200 in 34, 32, 35, 29.16! (full on sprint, my 200m PR is 28.high).  Okay weird workout but got it in and the 800 was well within my goal of 2:30.  I do question whether these speed workouts would be better shorter with longer recoveries.  The next one is 4x(200m[400], 800m[600]) or something like that.  I ask, what is the point of doing 4 repeats of 1/2 of a race distance at race pace.  That is very intense.  As an integrating workout (integrating speed, lactic acid resistance, and endurance) in the final phase before a mile race I can understand it.  But in the first phase of training for a much longer race I dont understand the reason.  He seems to say he is training the CNS to run fast efficiently but in fact he is training the muscles and the lactic acid system.  Basically I am thinking about changing these workouts to something more like 5-6x200m all out with full recovery and 4x4x200m with 200m between reps and 400m between sets doing cutdowns like 37, 35, 33, and nearly all out.  The first workout actually builds speed.  The second one teaches you to relax at speed.  Opinions?

AM: 7.5 from the hotel.  Found a nice dirt path that eventually turned into a trail and then eventually disappeared.  Did 62min but figure i was slow especially on the trail section.

PM: 4 miles in the 95 degree heat at home.  Its gonna be tough training here.

AM: 5 miles at 5am.  75F, 100% humidity even at 5am wtf.  Was with some other people who are super slow so it was easy.  Might continue to run with these people to keep my mornings relatively cool and very easy.

PM: DNF'ed this workout.  95F and very humid.  Went to this 1000m stretch of road i measured out by the 200m years ago with a roller and amazingly the spray paint was still visible.  I added some stacked rocks to make the markers more noticable. The stretch is almost flat but has a little uphill/downhill in the last/first 150m maybe 5-10ft total.  So starting the workout I felt tired but decent.  3:18 first one in the uphill direction into a very light but noticable headwind felt fine.  Second one 3:19 with the downhill and tailwind felt pretty hard.  Figured I was just getting into the workout.  Third one I hit a major wall, could not finish it, stopped at 800m in 2:41.  Wanted to finish it out with 800s but I just couldnt.  After a 40sec 400 I could not even do 800m so I packed it up.  It was so freaking hot.  I felt dizzy and nauseated but decided to finish the intended distance of 8 miles which was tough enough.  I have decided that I AM going to do workouts in the morning from now on.  There is just no way around it.  There is no indoor track near here.  And while at home I dont even have access to a treadmill unless I go find some temporary gym membership = lame. 

AM: 6 with some triathletes.  They suck at running.  But they were better than the crew yesterday.

PM: 8 bainbridge loop.  Super hot.  Found a church with nobody at it and went to the back and found a hose and hosed myself down for a min just to drop my core body temp back to near normal.

87F and super humid.  Our very own imported ethiopian Hirbo Hirbo took it away with something like 28 low.  He said that he loves the heat and even so this was a full 2 min slow because of the heat.  It was hard.  I didn't really race all out, but I did go a bit harder than I would have liked for a tempo.  I just was running for place and number 3 was not too too far behind me and I wanted to discourage a kick.  Afterwards I ran the course as cooldown with hirbo hirbo and some other dude.  They almost dropped me going 7min pace in 90 degree weather on the COOLDOWN! lol.  Anyway, I am pretty happy with it given the heat.