Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

69F, S 15-20 mph.  7:49 AP on some nice fresh legs, included a quarter-mile hard up the one significant hill along my route.

Time to share my obsessive research on race day weather for OKC.  Here's the scoop so far.  Pretty much every place I've looked agrees that this coming weekend there will be a hot morning followed by a cold morning.  They disagree on when the cold air will arrive.  4 out of 7 think it will come before the race, including my two most trusted sites, weather.com and wundergound, which put the low at 53 and 49.  Awesome.  The other 3 out of 7 say the cold air doesn't arrive until after the race, including 2 local TV stations that put the low at 58 and 62.  Weather.com thinks the low will be 67 the morning before the front (which right now they say will be the morning before the race - Saturday).  So if it stalls out, it could be a painful day.  Guess I'll just keep checking it 5 times a day until I see what I want.

54F, low wind.  What a nice morning.  8 @ 7:48 AP, last 3 in the 7:20s.  I'm going to take tomorrow off (a chance to really focus on my amateur meteorology) and then a couple more short runs to shake things out on Thursday and Friday.  Travel Saturday, race Sunday.

45F, calm, clear.  May not get another day like this in Abilene for about 6 months.  AP 7:58 - easy miles with 6 or 7 pickups to faster paces for 30-45 sec.  I felt really fresh and springy.

The front may arrive right during the race.  Should be nice temps, low 50s to start but the front will bring a north wind and rain -- hopefully no thunderstorms.  So it looks like I'll probably be running my second marathon in the rain too.  Good news is it'll be 10+ degrees cooler than Houston, bad news is the wind.  Don't think it'll be terribly strong; anyone that runs in this part of the country knows that the north wind is to be respected and the south wind is to be feared.  Sunday will have the north wind.  Looking good!

63F, S 22-30 mph.  8:38 AP, probably my last run before OKC.

Weather predictions for the race:

Temperature - beautiful -- starts at 52 or so, and actually decreases throughout the day (52 is the high) due to the front.

Skies - It'll be overcast (good) but rainy (not ideal, but ok).  Like my first marathon I'll just be hoping for no lightning so they will actually have a race.

Wind - Likely 20 mph from the north.  The front is arriving right before the race and bringing some wind.  It'll probably be a good negative split day with a headwind from (roughly) miles 2-11, and a tailwind from 18-26.

I'm definitely going to hit up Wal Mart today for some throw-away clothes I can wear in the corrals.  The orange shirt must be protected until race time.

Made it to the hotel, got all the gear, etc, and now just relaxing a bit before dinner.  Danielle and I drove about 3/4 of the course - definitely more hilly than I'm used to, but no huge monsters or anything.  Danielle is getting nervous!  She's doing her first full but is dealing with a tendon issue.

Looking at the weather, we might catch a break and not get rained on too horribly.  There's also a good chance of temps in the upper 40s, maybe even the whole race!  Wind will be there, but it is probably the only enemy out there at this point.  Just gotta suck it up the first half and maybe accept some off-pace miles when the wind gets angry. 

I'll get a report up late Sunday night.  In the meantime my bib # is 299 if any anyone wants to look it up beforehand.