Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

61F, SSW 13 mph.  Workout was 8 easy followed by 10 @ MP.

8 easy, 7:48 AP.  (8:03, 7:57, 7:54, 7:50, 7:36, 7:38, 7:40, 7:46)

10 MP, 6:45 AP.  (6:52, 6:52, 6:51, 6:49, 6:50, 6:49, 6:39, 6:38, 6:35, 6:30)

Overall for 18 miles, 7:13 AP

I was starting to suspect I'd gone through an improvement spurt this week since my easy aerobic runs were coming in about 10-15 seconds/mile faster than usual.  I think this confirms it.  When I finished it was 63 degrees and in direct sun (around 9 am) so not ideal conditions for me, although not terrible either.

My BQ pace is 7:03, so I don't think that is in much doubt now unless the conditions are particularly adverse.  It might, MIGHT be time to start thinking sub-3, but it's a fine line because the BQ is the goal and I don't want to blow it by getting greedy.

The shoes I ran in (type A4s) will probably be my marathon shoes, as they felt fine the whole time.  I have been dealing with a sore right achilles/calf since the race last weekend though, so definitely need to run in the trainers for awhile.  The good news is that it never hurt at all while running.

AM - 60F.  7:57/mile, legs were pretty dead this morning from Sunday's workout.  It definitely does not makes sense to do those long MP runs more than once every couple of weeks -- I don't think I'll be ready for a workout tomorrow, so I'm going to try for Friday...thinking 8 x 800 but not sure yet.

PM - 67F and cooling.  8:31 AP for 4 miles and change.  I wasn't originally going to double up today but there will be a nasty south wind on Friday, so I am shuffling the whole week around so I can go to the track on Thursday (40 degrees and low wind).  Hopefully the legs will be good to go by then.

44F.  8:29 AP.

30F, w/c 26F.  Little chilly, but great interval-running weather.

The plan was for a 5 mile warmup, then 8 x 800s with 400m jog recovery at the track.  Well, after my warmup, I notice what looks like the entire ACU football team or something arriving there too.  So on to Plan B, which was to set my watch up for 0.5 mile laps and do the repeats around the campus jogging path loop.  So the workout ended up just about the same, I just did 0.5 miles fast and 0.25 miles slow, 8 times.  I ran them pretty evenly but since it wasn't a track, there were some slightly overall uphill and downhill repeats.

5-ish warmup: 7:53AP

8 x 0.5 miles: 3:02, 2:57, 2:57, 2:59, 2:59, 3:02, 2:55, 2:51.  AP was 5:56 for the 4 total fast miles.  Recoveries were all basically 2:00-2:05 for the quarter mile inbetween (8:00-8:20 pace).  It felt all frantic at first trying to get to 6:00 pace, but I sorta found a groove with it.  A really uncomfortable groove.

Pretty much the times I was shooting for, even if I had gotten to run on a nice level track, so I'll call it a success and go back to avoiding VO2 max workouts again for as long as possible.

AP 7:19 for 13 miles.

46F, S 18-25 mph.  8:17 AP.

64F, S 19-27 mph.  Normally I do the LR on Sunday, but offered to take the windy day this weekend so Danielle could have some calmer weather (tomorrow) for her 18-miler.

Overall, 7:51/mile.  The direct headwind legs were about 8:40 pace, and I had to push a little to get that, so pretty nasty wind.