Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

I had a near-perfect race today!  The winds were saying 17 gusting to 24 before we left the hotel but they did not feel that tough most of the time.  Temperature was perfect.  I wanted to get in a half-mile warmup for my hip but we didn't have time after waiting in lines for the PoP and gear check.  Figured it was a 13-mile race anyway so I'd get my warmup.  Ran without Garmin but I have a good idea of most splits.

Miles 1-2 - 7:55 pace.  Nice and slow.  I was getting stuck behind people but went with the flow and it helped keep me at warmup pace.  I bumped into the 1:45 pace group in mile 2 and ran with them for a few minutes but it was too comfortable so I sped up.

3,4 - 7:25, 7:45.  Sped up too much, then found a nice pace.  31:00 exactly at the 4 mile mark, so 7:45 pace so far.

5,6 - ~7:30 pace.  Just felt great here, and I was right around 2 minutes ahead of the invisible 8-minute pace runner at the 6-mile mark.  Crossed the 10K at 47:50.  The results say 46-something but they're all off a minute (Danielle's showed a minute fast too).  Anyway I was happy I had banked 2 minutes already.

7,8,9,10 - ~7:45 pace.  We turned around mile 8-ish as the marathon people kept plodding along into the wind.  I was happy to turn.  This is the stretch with the 1% uphill for about 3 miles straight but the headwind turned into a tailwind so it kind of evened it out.  I was at 1:17:00 exactly at the 10 mile mark.  With 5K left, I saw that a 23:00 would really make things interesting so I started pushing, though I knew that was asking a lot at this point.

Last 5K - 23:04 (7:26 pace)!  I don't remember the individual mile splits but they were a lot faster than I had been going.  Of course I'm left wondering if I could've sprinted it out earlier to get those last 5 seconds and the sub-1:40, but right now I'm still happy about the 1:40.

Really pumped that I ran a smart race and I don't think I could've gone any faster or tried any harder (well, maybe 5 seconds...dummy).  A month ago, I thought 1:45 was way out of reach!  Thanks fellow FRB'ers - I actually thought about y'all as I passed the 1:45 pace group at mile 2 so who knows if I would've done that if no one suggested I could go faster.  Just another example of how helpful this blog is, and the people that make it work.

Ok, next HM will be October, most likely so plenty of time to improve.  Then my first marathon in January!  Lots of miles to do until then.

EZ 4 - 8:11 pace.

My legs aren't sore at all, probably because the OKC course was a lot less hilly than my 10K, but my hip is slightly worse - it took a quarter mile of awkward shuffling to warm it up this time (instead of the usual 30 seconds or so).  I think whatever the issue is, the root problem is muscle imbalance/weakness so I'll work on that right away and do my best to go easy on it running-wise but that never seems to happen.

EZ 5 @ 8:28 pace.  Back to the early-morning grind.

My hip is about the same as yesterday.  I'm just waiting to see if it gets worse or better, then I'll take days off if need be.  It was starting to improve a few days before the race with mostly easy runs so hopefully that will be the case again, it just did not like the race.

EZ, windy 6 @ 8:27 pace. Might be forced into a day off tomorrow due to busy work schedule so maybe the hip will improve in the meantime.

Found a window to squeeze in 4 TM miles at the gym at work.  They're pretty fancy treadmills and my hip was happy about the low impact.

1 @ 8:34;  1 @ 8:00;  1 @ 7:30;  0.5 @ 6:58;  0.5 @ 8:34.

Ouch.  Planned to do 8 but had to turn around and do the jog of shame thanks to my hip.  I can feel it aching the whole run now so it's getting worse.  I probably could've powered through it but I could hear the little voice in the back of my head saying, "this is stupid."  My left thigh/hip feels nothing like the right so something is wrong.  Let's see what a few days off does.