Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

5 recovery @ 8:55 pace.  Day off tomorrow should help my knee - I'm starting to get that annoying pain behind the kneecap when going up stairs, squatting down, etc.  Hopefully it's not from bad running form and it goes away by Tuesday.

1 warmup, 3 tempo, 1 recovery - went like this: 8:20, 7:21, 7:18, 7:07, 8:11.  Average was a hair under 7:40.  Great run for me.  My 3-mile time of 21:46 today beat my 3-mile actual race time from November by over 40 seconds, and I didn't sprint it out or anything today.  Finally, crystal-clear proof of definite improvement!  Got the knee twinge after I slowed it down for mile 5 and it's still here now, so this might be something I just deal with until I'm ready to take a week off.  Still hoping it goes away on its own but I didn't feel it at all during the tempo portion so, whatever, I'm running on it for now.

4 painful early-morning miles @ 8:48 pace.  I can't run well at all right after popping out of bed.  24 degrees outside didn't help.  I was huffing and puffing like the pace was 8 minutes.  Too bad races are all in the morning.  I wonder if it would help (for a race) if I woke up like 3 hours beforehand to trick my body into thinking it was at least mid-morning.

Ahh, my first interval experience at the track.  I found out it's almost exactly 2 miles to the ACU track from my house so I did 2 warm up miles, then 3 at the track, then 2 easy back home.  The warmup miles were 8:20s.

The first track mile was 2 quick 400s with an easy one after each.  The fast ones were 1:36 and 1:32.  Some of the track team was there so I went a few lanes outside as they blew by me often.

The second mile I did 4 quick 200s with an easy 200 after each.  The fast ones were 38, 40, 45 and 44.  As you can see I was not doing well toward the end of those!  My easy jogs were getting close to walks.

The third mile I had planned to do 4 100s and jog the rest of the lap.  I only did 2 because my knee was starting to hurt.  It didn't like the speedy runs at all.  But I was also wiped out so I caught my breath for the last 2 laps around the track and jogged home.  I think the 100 times were about 18 seconds but I don't really know where the start and finish for those were supposed to be.  I don't know my way around the track at all; I was a swimmer back in high school.  In fact, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to use the inside lanes to get the right distances in turns.  Is is measured from the middle or inside?  I guessed inside.

I babied my knees on the way home 8:30s pace.  8:30 overall for the 7 miles.  Hope I didn't too much damage to my knee; it feels ok now, just not great.  Will hold off on the track workouts until they feel better, I think.

3 @ 8:20.  Long run tomorrow!

I got my first introduction to "The Wall" today.  For starters, there was a 15-20 mph south wind, gusting to 30.  So I knew they way back home would be brutal, but it turned out to be the least of my worries.  The problem was I didn't fuel up before I left at about 11.  I got up early, went to my daughter's soccer game, and all I had was a piece of toast....dumb!  Probably didn't hydrate well either.

So I took off at normal-feeling pace, but had a huge tailwind so the splits were a bit low.  Here's the first 6 miles: 8:11, 8:09, 8:23, 8:24, 8:27, 8:34.  Perfectly normal long-run splits for me considering the first 2 were hugely aided and the next 4 were slightly aided.

Now coming back: 8:50, 9:10, 9:11, 9:24, 13:13, 11:12.  So I was fighting the wind on the way back and at first attributed the slowness to that.  Nope.  Completely ran out of fuel.  My legs felt like they were made of lead.  The odd thing was that I was breathing easy, probably a decently low heart rate but zero use of my muscles.  Felt pretty dehydrated too.  At the 10.5 mark, I started walking and my legs were wobbly.  At this point I would have called my wife for a ride home...if I brought my cellphone (lesson learned).  Walked a half mile, then tried to run the final mile home.  I managed to "run" it all and could only do it in 11 minutes!  Wow, how am I ever gonna do a marathon, or even a half!?

Time to take it easy this next week and hopefully I learned my lesson about fueling/hydrating.  Very humbling day after last weekend's long run went so great.  Gave me more respect for the distance as well.  I will start slower no matter what next time.

Weekly mileage: 36.0