Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

6 @ 8:36 AP.  Standard Sunday neighborhood construction trails.  

AM:  74F, 90%.  6 @ 8:22 AP.  I think I'm ready to hit the track tomorrow.  "Ready" is a relative term, but I'll just set the bar low and work into some 5k-ish effort.

PM:  4 TM w/ 6 x 1 min @ 5k

AM:  74F, 91%.  Dang.  I set out to do 8 x 800 @ 2:52, 400m rec.  That's 5k pace.  

1: 2:53 - am I usually this tired 1/8 of the way through a workout?

2: 2:54 - new goal: 8 reps below 2:55

3: 2:54 - new goal: 6 reps below 2:55

4: 2:56 - new goal: finish 6 reps

5: pulled the plug after 200m

Dang.  I knew it wouldn't be amazing but I was really hoping for a decent starting point to this block.  Dang.  The one silver lining is that I am 100% sure I am doing the right thing by shifting my focus to speed - I need it bad.

Probably going to do a penalty TM run this afternoon with some 1-min on/offs.

Dang.

PM:  5 on the TM with my punishment - 10 x 1 min on/off.  Kept increasing the speed until I was panting as hard as possible.

3 easy recovery days next, and then I gotta figure out how to do LT... Mile reps @ 7:30?

AM:  77F, 84%.  6 @ 8:54 AP.  hopped an armadillo.

PM:  92F, H/I: 99F.  4 @ 8:48 AP.  weekly heat plod...might need more of these if I keep tanking workouts.

AM:  78F, 89%.  6 @ 8:47 AP.  Nasty and sticky outside this morning but fortunately all I ever do is plod around now...even when I'm not trying to.  I did finally see some of the UTSA team out on the trail though...a harbinger of fall running maybe?

PM:  3 on the TM because I didn't think I had time for 4.  Then I got to my meeting 8-9 minutes early.  Timing fail, slowjoe.

AM:  72F, 88%.  6 @ 8:16 AP.  Did a few pitiful pickups to HMP, which is 5k effort.

PM:  83F, H/I 88F.  4 @ 8:45 AP.  Right after a way-too-big lunch, so this run tasted like stomach acid.  Buffet again.  Help me.

77F, 90%.  Went to the track this morning for the classic 4 x 2400m, w/ 400m active recovery.  To get through it, I decided to set the bar even lower - I would accept 10:00 per rep (6:40 pace).  Considering that back in peak shape days, I'd want to be around 9:00 per rep, this was conceeding a lot, but I'm accepting that I have to work with whatever the running gods have bestowed upon me.

Fortunately it wasn't quite that bad and I ended up averaging 9:31 (9:38, 9:41, 9:31, 9:13).  That's not quite good, either, but probably the correct-ish stimulus, especially considering I'm a little gun-shy.

The high school XC team (like 40-50 kids!) showed up right as I was starting my first rep, and I was really cursing my luck....aren't they supposed to be running on grass or something right now?  Fortunately they did in fact mostly run on the fields, and not really on the track except to do some lunges in lanes 2-8 and some kind of whistle-based fartlek thing during my last rep.  If anything, it kept me going.