Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

70F, 92%, SSE 12 mph.  Pretty good run today.  I meant to keep it easy, but by mile 11 my pace had almost progressed to GMP, so I made the decision to finish up with the last 6 at goal pace (6:51, 6:52, 6:58, 6:46, 6:54, 6:47).  This definitely does not yet feel like marathon pace but it was probably too warm to really assess that yet (and I was running a little under GMP anyway).  Hopefully, when/if it cools off again it will feel more sustainable.

7:24/mile overall.

62F.  6 recovery miles, 8:40-ish on the pace (forgot to look).

My left knee has been ever-so-steadily getting worse over the past month.  It's on the medial side, below the knee - only thing I can find that makes sense is pes anserinus bursitis/tendonitis.  Anyway, I'm lucky enough that I can waltz into the flight doc's office and ask a doctor about it anytime, so I'm gonna go see him in a couple hours and maybe score some of my favorite nsaid.  Right now I don't think this will hold me back too much but it's starting to concern me so I'm probably going to back off a little this week.  I can definitely get through my runs without much pain but it's just not going in the right direction...

**total fail at the docs - apparently now that I am flying again, I can't take Rx nsaids.  Should've known since we can't even take cold medicine without seeing the flight docs.  That was my only reason in going; he listed some more common knee injuries that were certainly not what I have, but I kinda knew the internet would be a better source of specific injury info than the young doctors anyway.  Oh well, ibuprofen it is.

59F.  More relative rest, strengthening surrounding muscle groups, stretching, and lots of Vitamin I.  8:24 pace.  Still feeling like I will be a probably be a go for my 10K this weekend.

72F, SSE 12 mph.  8:22 pace.  My knee is definitely feeling better.  At this point though, might as well finish off Thursday and Friday with easy runs to be fresh for Saturday.  I'll kinda be tapered, but it makes me nervous to have run so slow all week and then have to go 2 min/mile faster for the race.  I did a stride at the end of the run today - felt fine.  Maybe a couple minutes @ 10K pace on Friday...

63F, N 19-29 mph.  7:56 AP.  Cold front arriving!  I don't think the coolest air will hang around for the race, but we'll probably see mid 60s for the start -- not ideal but not bad at all.

Knee is probably fine; I'm still doing 2400 mg/day of Vitamin I, but will probably start weaning myself off soon.  Not completely out of the woods with this one, but close...

** PM - I won't be able to run tomorrow morning so I decided to bite the bullet and will take a day off tomorrow.  However, in order to live with this decision I needed to get in a few miles after the kids went to bed, and while Danielle was watching.....Grey's Anatomy....  Threw in 2 x 1 minute at 10K pace since I hadn't really gotten the legs moving all week.  4.31 miles @ 7:57 AP for the PM run.

Played a round of golf this afternoon and shot 90 thanks to a lousy back 9 (42-48).  I had a birdie putt on the last hole for the sub-90 and just missed.  Wonder if that is a sign that I will run like a 40:01 tomorrow.  Actually I would be pretty happy with that anyway.

66F.  Warmish, but pretty good racing weather for this time of year.

I have been looking forward to this race for awhile -- haven't raced in 3 months and wanted to see some progress from all the summer slogging.  Some mile repeats I did a few weeks back told me I'd be really close to breaking 40, but it was cooler when I did those so I had some doubts today.

The course was good in that it was as flat as you can get, and it was USATF Certified.  The bad news was that there were 31 90-degree turns and 4 turns that were closer to 180 degrees; a lot of course crammed into kind of a small space.

So the race started and it's me and red singlet running by ourselves for first.  Like Flatlander has said, we're not terribly fast in Texas.  Anyway, I stayed right behind him for about 4 miles.  He started to gap me in the 5th mile and I pathetically tried to stay close but it was not to be.  I could tell by the way he was thanking the course volunteers all along the way that he had some wind left that I did not.  So he ended up maybe 15-20 seconds ahead.

I should have turned off auto lap on Garmin because they had mile markers and I knew it would measure the course short with all the turns.  But, here are the garmin splits:

6:19, 6:25, 6:31, 6:33, 6:33, 6:27, 0:55.

Measured it at 6.15 miles, but like I said, USATF certified...I can definitely understand a 1% Garmin error with the maze of a course we ran through.

So, I think I'm right on track with the BQ goal.  I still have some improving to do to get there, but not an overwhelming amount.  With a good cycle, I think I'll be where I need to be come January.

official results

finish line pictures...not only did we have to follow the golf cart guy for 40 minutes, he also got in the way of the shot!

Afterwards came the Kids' K