Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

6 recovery @ 8:38.

Day off today, which works out since it's raining.

I think I may have found a half-marathon to try - Oklahoma City on April 25.  It's a 4-hour drive, but it'll be my last chance before it gets too hot for a race like that.  I think I can get in a few decent long runs by then including a couple 13-milers.  Cons are that it's 2 weeks after my 10k, and it starts at 6:30 am but I really don't want to wait until October (7+ months) to run my first HM.  Don't know if I'll be ready for 1:45 yet but it's worth a try, right?

**Did some research - one of the few cities that averages more wind than we get here...Oklahoma City!  Apparently it was brutal last year and the 5 miles coming back are usually into the wind.  I hate wind!  I wouldn't decide based on that, but maybe temper my expectations.

Pre-dawn run, no caffeine, not feeling it today.  But I managed to finally move my legs toward the end and average HMGP over the final 2 miles.  That brought the overall pace down to 8:18, not bad at all.

Early morning run, but I felt good today so maybe I'm getting used to running right after waking up.  Usually I'm dying by the time I get 3 houses down.  Did an 8:20 warmup followed by 3 @ HMGP (23:50/7:57 avg).

Oh, forgot to mention I'm officially signed up for the OKC HM (thus the focus on goal pace miles).  Got the hotel too, and  now my wife might run it (her first HM too) while we leave the kids with her parents - sounds almost too good to be true!  She'll decide this month as she tries some longer runs.

Plan walking out the door was 1 easy, 3 @ HMGP and 1 easy.  Splits were 8:23, 7:44, 7:32, 7:37, 8:24.  I started out too fast and didn't feel like slowing it down so I held pace...why not.  7:56 overall for the run.

I looked at some half-marathon training plans to get an idea of what to do but I think the best thing is to keep slowly stepping up my long run distance and weekly mileage while throwing in more HMGP miles to get used to that pace.

My 4th super-early run this week.  I'll quit mentioning it after this, I'm just so surprised I've been consistently doing it, so to speak.  Anyway, 4 miles @ 8:24 pace, all easy miles for the first time since Sunday.

Tomorrow I get revenge on the 12-miler that crushed me 2 weeks ago.  I'm dorking it up and bringing a hydration belt w/ Gatorade and a Gu, as well as carb loading today.  You can lauugh, I know it's overkill for 12 miles but I'm paranoid now.

I managed to even the score today against the 12-miler with all my fuel (although I forgot caffeine!)  Conditions were pretty good, overcast, about 55 degrees and a south wind steady around 10-12 mph which is about as calm as it gets here mid-morning.  So miles 1,2,3 and 7 were a tailwind; 5, 10, 11 and 12 were a headwind and the rest were a mixed bag.  Splits: 8:16, 8:14, 8:25, 8:32, 8:46, 8:37, 8:11, 8:26, 8:26, 8:24, 8:09, 7:56.  Overall pace - 8:22.  Obviously I stepped on the gas a bit into the wind for the last 3 and actually started fading pretty fast on the last half-mile.  I watched my mile 12 pace slide from 7:30s to 7:59 and had to dig a little to keep it under 8.  I'm limping around a bit but I'm pretty pleased overall, so I'll allow myself to try the half-marathon distance next weekend.

WM - 38.0