Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

82F, S 10 mph.  Track day.  12 x 400 (200m active recovery) was the workout, was not looking forward to it.

I ran to ACU and jogged around campus for awhile, then hit the track with about 8 miles on the watch; fairly slow warmup.  It's funny, during the week the track is unlocked at every entrance but on Sunday everything is locked except for one gate, and I always have to jog around to find it as they seemingly rotate which gate is open.  Finally found a way in, and started the intervals.  My goal was just to run smoothly and keep it below 5k pace.

1:31.8, 1:31.7, 1:28.0, 1:33.9, 1:30.8, 1:32.7, 1:33.5, 1:33.7, 1:32.7, 1:32.1, 1:32.2, 1:29.0.

Average 400 was 1:31.8 (6:09 pace), and much slower for the 200s.  The 200m recovery jogs got slower and slower, paces started in the low 8:00s and eventually almost hit 10:00 as I got tired.  So painful.  Not smooth at all once I got to 7 or 8 repeats.  I told myself I could go ahead and give up if I couldn't keep at least 1:35, but the splits kept unfortunately coming in below.  I had to walk a good 100m after the last one to collect myself, then slowly made my way home.

Anyway, the real highlight today is my oldest daughter's birthday party (she turned 5 earlier this week).  I have only been around for 1 of her birthdays so far, so this one will make me 2-for-5.  Poor kid!

82F, S 15 mph.  8:57 AP.  Legs were pretty crushed from yesterday's workout, so I let them go whatever pace they wanted.  They were not too ambitious.  I'll do more easy running like this tomorrow and will hopefully be ready to tackle the rest of the week on Wednesday.

AM - 82F, S 12-18 mph.  6 more easy miles at an 8:54 avg.  I'll do a few more this evening.  Should be awesome with a high of 107 today.

PM - 104F, SSE 14-24 mph.  5 @ 8:55.  I thought if I left at 7pm the sun would be low enough to give me some shade.  I thought wrong.

81F.  8:07 AP.  Slog miles.  I actually felt pretty good to start and found a solid pace early, but unfortunately forgot half my gatorade.  I was almost sure that the 20 oz I had would not cut it for me for a 2-hour run in the heat, but I decided to keep going anyway and (not surprisingly) faded badly as I dried out.  Oh well, next time I'll turn around to retrieve the fluids I need...lesson learned.  Took the direct route home which cut out about 0.4 miles, thus I was a little short of the planned 15.

Treadmill...  I flew last night and by the time I got home it was almost 4am so the run just wasn't happening this morning.  I just did 4 on the TM later @ 8:41 pace, pretty much just for the sake of putting up something instead of getting a goose egg for today.

78F, 72% humidity.  This was the first time in a couple weeks that we actually dipped below 80 in Abilene, although it came with a little humidity.  Definitely not complaining though!

7:44 AP today - felt good today so did the standard feel-it-out-but-not-too-crazy progressive run.  First 7 miles in the low 8's, then 7:40, 7:40, 7:38, 7:32, 7:27, 7:24, 7:15, 7:03, 3:11 (for the last 0.51).  Good way to end the running week after the stinker on Wednesday.