Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

59F.  Today I did the 8 @ GMP workout that I postponed last week.

8 easy miles were about 7:57/mile.  One one isolated stretch I saw some kind of big cat (3-4 times the size of a large house cat) walking on the road ahead.  Some people have said they've seen cougar/mountain lion-looking animals around here, guess it's true.  Then some deer crossed the road right in front of me and hurdled a barbed wire fence.  One got tangled up a little and had to thrash around to get free.  He looked ok though as he sprinted off.

Next 8 were 6:52 AP (6:59, 6:54, 6:57, 6:56, 6:55, 6:55, 6:53, 6:25).  Popped off a 10K mile to finish it up, aided by some downhill.

7:25 AP for the 16 miles.

I'm usually disappointed with how GMP feels, and today was no exception.  Just means I have work to do I guess.  If I had to guess, I'm probably in 3:10 shape right now so I need another good improvement spurt sometime in the next 15 weeks to kill that last 5 minutes.  I definitely still have a cold, so hopefully that factored into the difficulty (can't blame it on the weather today).

Next weekend I'll run the Tyler half marathon and, taking a page from JG's playbook, will make it a MP run.

61F.  9:11 AP.

I don't think I'm going to run tomorrow.  I'm tired, sick, busy at work early tomorrow, my knee is still achy, and not being able to tally a single sub-9 mile this morning was probably my legs making a cry for help.  And I just dropped $600 at the vet for a cat that looks like he's on death's doorstep anyway.  Yeah, I'm not running tomorrow.

67F, SSE 12 mph.  Running felt horrible this morning so I turned around at 5 to go back home early - I'd planned on 12.  I just figured I'd be better off with more rest since I am obviously not myself right now, running-wise.  Then around mile 7 I started to feel better and the pace dropped while my breathing slowed down almost to normal "easy" levels.  Never had it take that long before.  Weird - 8:20s and 8:10s felt like tempo pace initially and then 7:30s later almost felt like recovery when I snapped out of it.  I still quit at 10 miles because there's still something wrong with me, hopefully just the sickness making everything more difficult and out of sorts.  Ended up with 7:53/mile.

68F, SSE 24-32 mph.  hello south wind.  Pretty much just punching the clock today, slogged around in the wind, 8:10-ish on the AP.  Rethinking my training....

71F, SSE 27-38 mph.  So I was just going to run a few easy miles today but the base had their (mandatory) fun run this morning on the airfield.  If you don't know anything about flying, runways are oriented/built to minimize crosswinds based on typical wind directions.  Well they definitely got it right because wind was coming right down the pipe.

It started, and in typical military fashion, everyone takes off in a sprint.  I'm going 5-something pace and there are 50+ people in front of me within seconds.  Slowed it down, and ran 6:22 with a first-mile tailwind, probably 10k effort overall, very easy with the tailwind.  Mile 2 was down runway 16 into the teeth of the wind.  I went from about 20th to 6th on this portion, running a 6:45.  That was both fun (passing everyone) and terrible (ever try to run fast into a 30 knot wind?).  Ended up 6th.

No warmup or cooldown.  Didn't feel like it...shame on me!

Easy 4, no watch (yes, it's true).  Tomorrow Danielle and I run the Tyler Half, just for fun.  I'm still going to make it a solid effort, and hopefully get a few MP and tempo miles.  It's a hilly course so definitely good for a workout.