Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

38F, NW 12 mph.  7:37 AP.  Felt pretty good again today, good run to start the new year.  Went out to the wind farms and back...a perfectly clear, cool day.  Time to taper now.

Also, time to point out that I am on top of the 2012 mileage board.  Enjoying it now since it will never happen again.

Day off today, great way to start a taper!  I will update my blog with 2012 goals and stuff after Houston; obviously a lot is contingent on how I do there.

As far as my racing schedule, that is completely up in the air.  I am separating from the military in a couple months and don't have a job yet (despite my best efforts), so I have no idea where we'll even be living.  Mostly looking in TX, but I am chasing a couple opportunities in OK and KS too.  We'll see what happens over the next couple months.

34F.  7:46/mile.

42F, NNW 12 mph.  8:36 AP.  Easy today, last workout of the cycle is tomorrow.

29F, calm.  7:28 AP.  I had the track to myself for this last workout this morning.  Pfitz says that 10 days is the amount of time you need to fully recover and reap the benefits of a workout, and I'm 10 days out now.  The workout that he has in every one of his plans is 3 x 1600 @ 5K pace (800m recoveries).  I have no idea why that would be the last workout before a marathon but figure he's a lot smarter than me about training, so I did it.  Hard workout.  The only saving grace (and probably the only reason it's even an achieveable workout for me) is that you get 800m to recover, and there's only 3 repeats.  So, 5K pace is 6:00 for me, which means I needed 5:58 per 1600 repeat.  First, about a 3 mile warmup, then:

5:59 (91, 90, 89, 89)

4:14 recovery

5:58 (86, 89, 91, 92)

4:26 recovery

5:58 (89, 90, 91, 88)

Finished with a 2 mile cooldown.  So, just a fraction of a second slow on the first repeat.  Tough workout for me, probably means I needed it.  I hated every minute of it, especially having to make up time on that last 400.  But it's done!  Now I get to do easy/moderate runs the rest of the way...

43F, 8:38 AP.  early.

41F, N 11 mph.  7:42 AP, which included 5 or 6 strides.