Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

72F - ran later in the morning, after our oldest's soccer game.  8:34/mile.

Then hopped on to watch the live video of the finish line at St. George, thinking I timed it right to definitely catch April, but the clock said 3:53.  Off by an hour - I was thinking 2 hour time difference for some reason.  Dumb.  Hope everyone did well!

59F.  Today I did the 8 @ GMP workout that I postponed last week.

8 easy miles were about 7:57/mile.  One one isolated stretch I saw some kind of big cat (3-4 times the size of a large house cat) walking on the road ahead.  Some people have said they've seen cougar/mountain lion-looking animals around here, guess it's true.  Then some deer crossed the road right in front of me and hurdled a barbed wire fence.  One got tangled up a little and had to thrash around to get free.  He looked ok though as he sprinted off.

Next 8 were 6:52 AP (6:59, 6:54, 6:57, 6:56, 6:55, 6:55, 6:53, 6:25).  Popped off a 10K mile to finish it up, aided by some downhill.

7:25 AP for the 16 miles.

I'm usually disappointed with how GMP feels, and today was no exception.  Just means I have work to do I guess.  If I had to guess, I'm probably in 3:10 shape right now so I need another good improvement spurt sometime in the next 15 weeks to kill that last 5 minutes.  I definitely still have a cold, so hopefully that factored into the difficulty (can't blame it on the weather today).

Next weekend I'll run the Tyler half marathon and, taking a page from JG's playbook, will make it a MP run.

61F.  9:11 AP.

I don't think I'm going to run tomorrow.  I'm tired, sick, busy at work early tomorrow, my knee is still achy, and not being able to tally a single sub-9 mile this morning was probably my legs making a cry for help.  And I just dropped $600 at the vet for a cat that looks like he's on death's doorstep anyway.  Yeah, I'm not running tomorrow.

67F, SSE 12 mph.  Running felt horrible this morning so I turned around at 5 to go back home early - I'd planned on 12.  I just figured I'd be better off with more rest since I am obviously not myself right now, running-wise.  Then around mile 7 I started to feel better and the pace dropped while my breathing slowed down almost to normal "easy" levels.  Never had it take that long before.  Weird - 8:20s and 8:10s felt like tempo pace initially and then 7:30s later almost felt like recovery when I snapped out of it.  I still quit at 10 miles because there's still something wrong with me, hopefully just the sickness making everything more difficult and out of sorts.  Ended up with 7:53/mile.

68F, SSE 24-32 mph.  hello south wind.  Pretty much just punching the clock today, slogged around in the wind, 8:10-ish on the AP.  Rethinking my training....

71F, SSE 27-38 mph.  So I was just going to run a few easy miles today but the base had their (mandatory) fun run this morning on the airfield.  If you don't know anything about flying, runways are oriented/built to minimize crosswinds based on typical wind directions.  Well they definitely got it right because wind was coming right down the pipe.

It started, and in typical military fashion, everyone takes off in a sprint.  I'm going 5-something pace and there are 50+ people in front of me within seconds.  Slowed it down, and ran 6:22 with a first-mile tailwind, probably 10k effort overall, very easy with the tailwind.  Mile 2 was down runway 16 into the teeth of the wind.  I went from about 20th to 6th on this portion, running a 6:45.  That was both fun (passing everyone) and terrible (ever try to run fast into a 30 knot wind?).  Ended up 6th.

No warmup or cooldown.  Didn't feel like it...shame on me!

Easy 4, no watch (yes, it's true).  Tomorrow Danielle and I run the Tyler Half, just for fun.  I'm still going to make it a solid effort, and hopefully get a few MP and tempo miles.  It's a hilly course so definitely good for a workout.

73F, 73%, E 14 mph.  Today was definitely no-shirt weather, even with Danielle's disapproving looks.

I just did this as a progressive effort "fun" run, and it was the right decision.  That course is definitely hillier than anything I have ever run on, and a real sweat-fest.  Here are the splits:

7:22, 7:09, 7:24, 7:15, 7:15, 7:10, 7:11, 7:10, 6:56, 7:13, 6:46, 6:48, 6:44, 0:46 (5:29 pace).

The splits don't look cleanly progressive, you'll just have to trust me the effort was -- lotsa hills meant pace was all over the place.  The highlight was a guy I was running with in mile 4 or 5 (he was gasping for air) telling me he was just on a recovery run today so might not want to pace off of him.  He dropped back  pretty quick after that...I smiled about it for awhile.  I did still manage 3rd in AG which came with a nice plaque.  And of course a cheap PR; the all-out effort will come in November in our local half.  Flatter and cooler!

Afterward, I ran the course backwards to meet up with Danielle and run her in.  We had a really good time and she passed everyone in the last tenth of a mile, including me.

Results

68F, 87%.  2 full days off to start my "reset week."  8:42 AP today.

After this week I'll be back up to speed with most weeks 65-70 miles until Houston.  I'm keeping the long runs (with MP) and medium-long runs from the pfitz plan, and simply throwing in workouts when I most feel like it, but only once a week.  Mostly tempos and maybe some 800s when I'm feeling really ambitious.  This will be a small step up from Oklahoma training this spring.  Small steps is the way to go I think.

56F, foggy!  Haven't seen 100% humidity here in awhile but didn't matter because the cool temps are back...hopefully for good this time.  7:57 AP.

61F, 7:48/mile avg.

63F.  Managed to squeeze in a few easy miles before my daughter's soccer game.  8:32 AP.

64F, SSW 12 mph.  Started in the 8's and progressed to GMP for the last few miles, with a half-mile cooldown at the end.  Overall avg was 7:33/mile.

Reset week did its trick, I feel like I'm ready to start running the miles again.

67F, S 15 mph.  9:05 AP.  I think I needed the recovery, I was a little more tired that I would've thought from yesterday.  Cold front is coming in tomorrow...

53F, N 22-27 mph. Exactly 8:00 pace avg. Ran during the arrival of the cold front. Very refreshing run. Tomorrow morning it'll be in the 40s! I will definitely celebrate with a tempo or some kind of workout.

43F. Yep, pretty much perfect weather, not much wind either. So I cranked out 9 easy, followed by 4 tempo.

9 easy in 7:56 AP.

4 tempo in 6:27 AP (6:37, 6:34, 6:27, 6:09).

Overall 7:29 AP.

Obviously a little carried away at the end, as 6:09 is out of my tempo range but I rarely ever run that fast so probably no harm done.

I ran in the Type A shoes today, and now I'm wondering if this would be a better shoe than the Kinvara for races. They are not quite as comfortable, but seem to rebound a lot better than the softer Kinvaras. Probably need to test them more, it might be too much pounding for a marathon but I'd like to try them in some longer runs.

58F, SSE 15-27 mph. I didn't get home from work until 2:30am so this run didn't take place until about 10am. So nice that it was still nice and cool out. It was almost weird running in daylight hours. 8:42 AP for 6 recovery miles.

50F.  Same route as Tuesday but I felt a lot stronger today and had to hold back a lot.  7:50/mile.

68F, 80%, S 17-22 mph (ran late morning).  8:38 AP.

59F, overcast.  7:44 AP.  Enjoyable 17 this morning.  I had a self-imposed 7:40 floor to keep the effort easy since I tend to get carried away on long runs, so the last 10 miles or so were all right on 7:40, give or take a second.  The one exception was a 7:29, when I was daydreaming about my next race.

My new thing on long runs is that they will either be easy, or long MP tempos - this is what Pfitz suggests.  I think it will help me from going through these cycles where I am running well, then push too hard, then break down and need recovery weeks.  So we'll see how long I stick with that...

76F.  8:38 AP, a nice trot around the neighborhood as it was getting dark.  I'd planned to take a rest day today but it didn't feel like I needed rest so I ran (obviously not much).  I like the flexibility of not being tied to a daily plan.  Hopefully when the shoe is on the other foot and I need an unscheduled rest day, I will let myself take it.

68F, S 16-25 mph.  8:01/mile avg.  I think we have one more warm morning (tomorrow) and then it's cool weather from here on out.  In other possibly related news, my tempo run just moved from tomorrow to Friday.

71F, SSW 14-21 mph.  7:53 AP.

47F, N 13 mph.  9:00 AP.

44F, NNW 10 mph.  Workout was 8 easy, followed by 5 tempo, aiming for 6:35-6:40 on the fast miles.

8 easy avg 7:51/mile

5 tempo avg 6:36/mile (6:38, 6:37, 6:36, 6:37, 6:34)

Overall AP for 13 was 7:22.

Meh, I did the paces I was shooting for (a little faster than HM goal pace) but it was a lot of work.  I did finish with some gas in the tank so I would recover faster, but my goal pace in 8 days is 6:43.  I'd honestly be a little surprised if I can pull that off.  I'm hoping that I owe some of the toughness of this workout to the fact that it's coming at the end of a pretty high-mileage week for me.  I will be doing a 2-day taper for the Abilene half so I'll be a little more rested, but it will probably be warmer.  We'll see, I think I'll need a lot of race day magic to break 1:28.

59F, SW 14 mph.  Ran after noon, how about that?  8:27 AP.

52F, S 10 mph.  First 20-miler in months.  I questioned going this long since I am 6 days out from an important race, but decided if I kept it slow and easy it would be fine.  I wore my newer pair of cushiony trainers to hopefully mitigate any pounding effects.  7:50 AP.

It's so nice that 20 miles is not a big deal anymore; it used to really leave its mark on me for days.  Although, in a couple weeks I'll start throwing on 10-12 miles at GMP and maybe it'll be a different story.

42F.  9:08 AP.  Sorry about the lack of details lately, things are busy...