Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

5 recovery, 8:30 avg.  I'm a little sore today mostly in the hip flexors, but it felt great to jog it out.

My wife officially signed up for the Half in OKC and her parents agreed to watch the kids, so we're gonna have fun by ourselves!  This will double our driving time but also ensure that we get some sleep in the hotel.

My legs were fresh off the rest day and I was feeling as injury-free as I have in awhile so I figured it was time for some light abuse.  I'm planning on running a local 5k on the 20th this month to check my speed and I estimated 7:00-7:10 pace should be about what I can do.  So with that in mind I wanted to do 4 x 800 repeats at that pace (3:30).  So the workout would be 2 easy miles to the university track, then the 800s with a slow 400 in between each, then 2 easy miles home.  It was already windy (15-18 mph by 5:30 am) but I figured that wouldn't matter much at the track.

2 miles to the track @ 8:57 pace

800s were 3:24, 3:19, 3:17, 3:17.

2 miles back home: 8:30, 7:54 (HMGP on the last)

Overall pace for the 7 miles: 8:04

Obviously overshot the pace a little on the 800s but I held up ok, though I started losing my form a bit on the last 400.  It was kinda funny because the girls' track team was there doing 800s as well and although they stopped to rest after each one, they all crushed me pretty bad even though I was doing great by my standards.  Overall, I'm quite happy with the workout and my knees are no worse for it.

8:16 pace, last mile was HMGP.

I wanted to try one of those progressive runs that I've seen people do, even though I just had 6 miles today.  I probably was looking at my watch too much to tinker with and manage the pace but it was fun and it kept me engaged and focused the entire run, which was a nice change.  I decided around mile 5 that I'd burn off the 0.21 miles at the end to hit a full 10K.  Splits were 8:32, 8:18, 8:06, 7:54, 7:41, 7:07, 1:19 (for the last fraction of a mile).  Overall 7:53 pace (48:59).  I think I should be able to shave a couple minutes off that total to hit my goal when I race this next month.

EZ 4 @ 8:37.

Off to the in-laws' this afternoon, about a 5 hour drive.  I'll get to do my long run tomorrow (13 mi) on a nice paved running trail they have there that's about 2.5 miles long and just go out and back a few times.  They don't really have anything like that here.

It turned out to be a great day for running in Longview, without the nasty winds that we get in the western part of the state.  A nice 45-50 degrees or so at the start.  The trail I was running on had some nice hills too, steeper than the highways I've been running on, but only 20-30 foot climbs/descents for the most part.  I took along 20 oz. of Powerade, and tried out a Gu and a Clif shot in miles 5 and 9.

Splits - 8:18, 8:20, 8:32, 8:22, 8:25, 8:23, 8:21, 8:26, 8:26, 8:22, 8:15, 8:09, 7:53 and 31 sec.  Avearge mile 8:19, total 1:48:45.  Garmin measured .07 miles for the last chunk.  The trail is marked every quarter-mile and was pretty accurate but I was running an extra .01 or so every mile for the first few.  So I practiced runing the tangents and actually made up ground which is why I got 13.07 miles on the watch - pretty cool.

Anyway, it was a nice confidence builder, although I'm fairly sure I'm going faster than I'm supposed to for a casual long run.  I'm always pretty wasted at the end.  Hopefully I can shave off 20 seconds per mile on race day!

WM - 40.3!  (first 40 mile week)