Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

77F, low wind.  7:47 avg.  I didn't do this on purpose, but it ended up being a perfect progressive run with each mile faster than the last.  Well, the fast finish in the last few miles was on purpose, because I felt pretty good today.

8:43, 8:16, 8:15, 8:12, 8:10, 8:09, 7:58, 7:57, 7:48, 7:33, 7:32, 7:23, 7:09, 7:02, 6:41.

78F, low wind.  7:59 AP.  Ran to the city dump and back.  Nothin fancy...

79F, SW 10 mph.  8:44 avg.

78F.  Longest run with the Kinvaras so far - they are still feeling pretty good but I'm taking it slow just in case.  Aerobic base miles today with 8 x 100m-ish strides on the way home.  7:53 avg for the run.

I finished reading Advanced Marathoning by Pfitzinger.  It's the first actual book I've read in awhile, and had lots of good info.  Really filled some knowledge gaps I had about marathon training, and running in general.  Highly recommend it.  I'll be doing an 18-week training plan for Houston, starting in September, from this book as well.  I'm looking forward to actually having some direction for my training.

78F.  8:46 AP.  I know every crack, piece of debris/roadkill and thorny bush sticking out on this route...looking forward to a little vacation - visiting family next week around Texas and Louisiana, and running in some different spots.

79F.  7:47 avg.  I convinced myself to get in a workout today - 6 heat-adjusted, tempo-paced miles.  To seal the deal in this self-arbitration proceeding (which took place during my warmup), I offered a 1-minute jog between each mile.  So the workout was first 8 miles easy, then 6 x 1-mile with 60 sec jog in between.  Then cool down whatever was left.

EZ 8 -- 8:10 AP

tempo 6 -- 7:09 AP (7:15, 7:12, 7:12, 7:14, 7:07, 6:53).

The 1-minute jogs were around 8:20s for the pace.  I liked this workout.  One minute is obviously not enough to recover much, but it gives you something to look forward to.  It was hard enough that I was glad to be done but easy enough that I didn't want to quit running, which is the normal workout feeling for me.

This afternoon, I'm going in to get my free massage from winning a 5K awhile back.  I'm a little nervous that it might be from a dude, because they didn't say.  I know Danielle thinks I'm stupid, but I am going to try to be mature either way.

79F, 85% humidity (in Houston).  8:51 avg.  Great run in a thick, warm Houston morning with FRB legend Flatlander.  Tough conditions, but we had a good time and the miles actually flew by pretty fast, it seemed.  Thanks Mark.

Got back and took the kids to a fun (free) park downtown before it got even hotter.

92F. Got a late start, so this was a slow, short run in the heat.

79F, 88% humidity.  Last run in Houston.  It was a pretty fun route - went all the way to downtown and back to Memorial Park staying on walking/jogging paths most of the way.  8:06 AP.  Longest run in the Kinvaras - felt good.

Got home, toweled off, and went with Dad to play 18 holes.  I haven't played in over a year and I really suck now, but managed to barely break a hundred (98) with a par on the final hole.  So I got in 14 miles and a round of golf before 11 am!  Now in Baton Rouge for a few days to visit more family.

80F, 93% humidity (Baton Rouge).  8:42 avg.  Ran from the hotel, mostly in a very confusing neighborhood.  They must have planned it so no one ever wants to take a shortcut through it.

80F, 98% humidity.  8:20 AP.  I wanted to run to the LSU campus but our hotel was on the wrong side of I-10 so I drove to the other side and looked for a place to park.  Settled on the Jimmy Swaggart Bible College, which had an empty parking lot (insert joke here).  I should've scouted this route ahead of time because I spent a lot of time clomping through high, wet grass.  There were very few sidewalks until I got to the campus, and I was running during rush hour.  I did one loop around University Lake and headed back.  The 2-3 mile loop around the lake was the only nice part of the run.  More clomping through grass, etc on the way back.  The heat index was in the 90s by the time I finished thanks to the ridiculous humidity.  Kind of a miserable day, but it's done.

77F, 90%.  Longview, TX.  8:11 AP.  I ran a big loop to the east of town, lots of good hills.  It was still warm and muggy but I felt a lot better today after an impromptu day off yesterday.  Sped it up pretty good the last half mile, and felt really smooth and fast.  I'll probably take tomorrow off too, and try to get back on schedule and back to normal build-up mileage next week.

77F, 90%.  7:54 AP.  I'd been putting off this one workout (6 x 800, jog 400 between) for a long time.  I had various internal excuses - I was tired from Insanity, I forgot to set up the Garmin, it's too complicated, etc, but today they were gone.  I haven't done Insanity in over a week, and I ran on jogging trail that was accurately marked every quarter mile (so all I had to do was hit the lap button at the appropriate post).

So, I finally gave in.  First I did 10.5 easy to get some nice miles under me (and I wanted to set up so I didn't have a 180 turnaround in the middle of a repeat.  10.5 easy was 8:14/mile.  Then 6 x 0.5 mile (in bold) with 0.25 jog (in parenthesis).

3:18, (2:11), 3:12, (2:06), 3:16, (2:09), 3:13, (2:07), 3:10, (2:13), 2:52, (2:05).

The last quarter of that 2:52 was 1:18.5, I kinda let it fly the last little bit.  Averaged 6:20 pace for the repeats, just about 5k pace (although most were a bit slower).  We'll see how the achilles does - it was my longest run in the Kinvaras and had a lot of hills and speed.  If I make it through ok, I think these will be my marathon shoes (once I can test them in a 20-miler).

76F, back in Abilene and a glorious 58% humidity.  I have a new respect for those of you suffering through the humidity, because it felt so nice and cool today.  8:46 avg.

AM - 81F, warm morning.  6 miles, 8:45 AP, with more to come this evening.  Pfitz says to break recovery days into doubles if you're doing more than 8 miles that day so I will give it a try, as much as I don't want to do doubles....ever.  My typical week for the rest of the summer will have 3 MLRs and 3 recovery days, with Tuesday probably getting broken into 2 recovery runs.

PM - 101F, ESE 15-23 mph.  I waited until after dinner to run so it could cool off outside...  5 miles and change, also at an 8:45 AP.

77F, 69% humidity.  7:52 AP -- started in the 8:20s and progressed to 7:20s.  Pretty wiped out afterward, more so than I would've expected.

Found this article about training in the heat.  There was a study, albeit with cyclists, that showed heat-trained cyclists outperforming other cyclists who did the exact same workouts in cool conditions, even though the time trial was held in cool temperatures.  They don't really go into the science of it though.

81F.  9:08 AP

80F, S 12 mph.  8:02 avg.  More slog-it-out miles to finish my running week.  Definitely need this day off on Saturday!

80F, S 11 mph.  I got an article from JG that inspired me to hit up the track at ACU this morning.  It was time to get out of slog-mode, if only for a day.  Had a pretty rough start though.  I thought I had taken care of business this morning before my run, but I found myself having to stop and walk a few times during my warmup to prevent disaster.  Everything was looking like a port-o-potty, but kinda like a mirage in the desert, nothing ever proved to be what I needed.  Finally I reached the track and after a lap, not seeing a bathroom, decided I would start and hope I could fend it off.

My planned workout was a ladder: 200-400-800-1200-1600-1200-800-400-200.  I jogged half the distance after each one, except the first 200, after which I jogged a full 200m.  Felt like the sane thing to do.  I made it through the first 3 ok, but in the first 1200 I had to pull up and walk again to defend against you-know-what.  Jogged a lap to collect myself, then started again and had to stop again after about 20 seconds.  Getting desperate now, I jogged around the facility, looking everywhere until I found the bathrooms, which had a locked gate around them.  Fortunately I noticed a "secret passageway" between buildings where they stashed hurdles.  I went around, climbed over them, and I was in!  I came out a new man, and finished the rest.

200m - 41.2 (5:31 pace)

200m rest - 8:21 pace

400m - 1:33.3 (6:15 pace)

200m rest - 8:16 pace

800m - 3:11.9 (6:26 pace)

400m rest - 8:24 pace

*************POP BREAK****************

1200m - 4:48 (6:26 pace)

600m rest - 8:33 pace

1600m - 6:20 (6:22 pace)

800m rest - 8:29 pace

1200m - 4:49 (6:27 pace)

600m rest - 8:50 pace

800m - 3:04.6 (6:11 pace)

400m rest - 8:45 pace

400m - 1:26.0 (5:46 pace)

200m rest - 9:14 pace

200m - 34.6 (4:38 pace)

After the last one, I walked for about 10-15 seconds to collect myself again and jogged slowly home.  I wasn't sure what paces to run on any of these so I just did whatever felt smooth.  Kinda looks like they are all over the place but that is pretty normal for me and speedwork.  The track is oriented north-south so I had a nice headwind on one of the straightaways; it wasn't terrible wind, but it was there, affecting things a little.  The important thing is I got in 4+ miles of (what I consider) faster speeds (averaging roughly 6:16/mile if you take just the fast stuff).  AP 7:47 for all 13 miles.

81F.  Ran at a moderate 7:55 avg pace.  Normally I'd do a recovery run after a workout like yesterday's, but I'm having a...minor procedure done this afternoon (not running related) that will probably take me out for the rest of the week.  So I kept a solid pace today since I'll have plenty of rest coming up.

78F, 8:21 AP.  No pain or discomfort so I went 4 miles.  Best of all, now we can all stop commenting on Monday's entry.

79F, S 12 mph.  8:11 avg.  Felt fine, so I will be ramping up to normal mileage pretty quickly.  I did feel a little out of shape though, but I'm sure that'll be erased in a couple workouts.

79F, 8:11 avg.