Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

8:09 pace.  Nothing special, but the pace and the effort finally matched up a lot closer today.  The last 3 or 4 runs 8:00 pace felt like 7:30 effort.

Tomorrow I'll do 3 MP miles and hopefully determine that I'm back to normal.

5 easy, 3 GMP.  I felt great today, back to normal.  7:51 AP for the run, last 3 were 7:32, 7:33, 7:24 (faster than I will go on Sunday, but felt nice).  I even noticed once in my warmup, abaout a third of the way through the mile, that I was already at MP...good sign.  Whew, glad the race wasn't last week.

I feel pretty injury-free as well, just the standard tightness in my left hip flexor/groin that I've had most of the year - doesn't ever seem to affect anything.  The tendonitis took a couple months to go away, but it mostly has.  Both my tendon injuries in training for this marathon have actually been cured by not listening to my body and chowing down pills instead, while running through the uncomfortableness.  Not many people advocate that method.

Here are a couple homecoming pictures I've been meaning to post.

3 easy, then 7:34, 7:10, 6:45 (an optimistic MP, HM, 10K pace).  7:33 AP.

6 easy around my sister-in-law's neighborhood in Austin this morning, 8:10-8:20s.

We're now in Houston after spening the night in Austin.  Checked the forecast, and it's looking pretty crappy.  Warm and rainy.  I haven't run too much in the rain so I'm not sure what it does to performance - hopefully it's not too bad.  Maybe it'll even cool us off a bit?  Anyway, nothing I can do about so might as well suck it up.

Taking tomorrow off, then a short run (maybe in the rain?) on Saturday.  Race Sunday.

Last 3 miles of matathon training before the race, mile 2 was at GMP.  3 miles really goes by in the blink of an eye now; a year ago that was probably my median distance run.

Weather check - 50% chance rain with scattered T-storms.  Temps in the 60s, winds 8 mph.  Not a lot to like except the wind.  As long as the lightning stays away though, and they have a race, I'll be happy - just looking to give a good effort and complete my first marathon, don't think there will be any 3:20 in the works or anything crazy like that.  Still hoping to beat 3:30 though...

Bib # is 1682 for any who want to look up results; I'll probably have a report up sometime Sunday night.