Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

74F, S 10-15 mph, sunny.  hot.  8:17 AP.  If there is some kind of conditioning process your body goes through for running in the heat, I have not gone through it yet this year...that was kind of brutal.

72F, S 17-27 mph.  8:16 AP.  About the same pace as Sunday but it felt really easy today since I got an earlier start and was never really in direct sun.

In other running-related news, I am signed up for Houston in January next year.  They opened some early registration spots (available to sub 4-hr marathoners) so Danielle grabbed one for me and now I guess we wait for them to verify the time.  Feels good, a lot better than going through the lotto!  Now I can plan out the Fall season a little better, race-wise.

71F, cloudy, S 14 mph.  8:10 AP.  I had to be at work unreasonable early today, so I got in this run at lunch.  Fortunately it's a cool day today.

I also forgot my Garmin (left it at home) so I mapped it after the fact and I got pretty darn close to my planned 6, although I had an idea of how far to go beforehand since I've run this route before.  I always see people talk about how liberating it is to run without the Garmin, but I hate it.  Hate it.

64F, low wind, maybe 8-10 mph.  7:55 AP.  I'm doing a 5K on Saturday, so I ran easy with 6 x 1-minute at 5K pace spinkled in randomly.  As hard as those 1-minute intervals felt, I'm not real optimistic of a PR on Saturday.  I've just felt really sluggish and slow-pokey since the marathon.  Maybe the 5K will wake me up a little.

58F, low north wind.  5 @ 8:16 AP.  Just a short run in the hopes that I can eke out a decent time in the 5K tomorrow morning.  The weather should be nice, not windy like my PR a couple months ago.  I wish I was feeling faster though; my PR was 6:17/mile (per Garmin) which felt like an all-out sprint yesterday.  We'll see, who knows....

I'm dealing with a bit of metatarsalgia right now which is a bit of pain on the ball of my left foot, near the base of the middle toe.  It's not a show stopper at this point but it's making me re-think wearing flats for the race, which would probably take PR out of the picture.  Smart money says I'll wear the flats anyway.

52F, north wind 10-15.  Close to perfect running weather, just a little breezy.

Well, I won my first race.  It was an ok turnout, a bit over 100 people maybe.  Looking around at the starting line I didn't see any of the usual suspects that win these local events so I made sure to listen to the directions just in case.  Fortunately they did a great job of marking the course and had people out there directing.  They definitely needed that, as they had to cram 5000 meters of race into a pretty small area around the zoo.

I started out in 1st right away and just built a lead, maybe won by a minute or two.  Abilene isn't exactly a runner town, obviously, if I can win.  Also, I think maybe a fourth of the participants were running with dogs.  It really all just depends on who decides to show up to these things and no one did today.  It kinda sucked the last mile, because I could've used someone to push me a bit.  Don't get me wrong, I was winded but there was probably some coasting.  My last .05 miles was the same pace as the rest of the race.

I'm a little conflicted as to whether I call it a PR.  My splits on Garmin were 6:20, 6:20, 6:27, 0:17 for 3.05 miles, so it measured short.  My AP was 6:22 today per Garmin but 6:17 per Garmin on my PR in March.  However, the course had a ton of tight curves and hairpin turns that could've easily caused the Garmin to shortchange the distance, and the runner's club (that puts on the races) usually gets it right.  Here's what I'm talking about...

I'll stick with my old 19:41 as a PR as I just don't feel like Garmin would've been that far off, even with all the crazy turns.  The cool part about it all was winning anyway - I got a $25 gift card to Academy, a free 1-hour massage and a mug.  Fun morning, and I think it woke up my legs, finally.