Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

7:45 avg.  Ran mostly in the 7:50s.  But I passed a guy around mile 6 and he annoyingly stayed right behind me even though I was holding a steady pace.  So when we made a turn and I hit a straightaway I wasted him with a little pickup doing the 0.38 stretch in 2:12 (5:47 pace).  I slowed down when it was time to make the next turn, looked back and he was a speck.

8:02 avg.

2 days in a row, same thing happened.  This time it was WAY more blatent.  I turn on to Z-lake, where I like to run (as does everyone) about 150m behind an Army dude.  My plan today was all easy miles and I was at maybe an 8:20 pace.  Very slowly I caught up to Army dude who I'm guessing was running 8:30s.  Now when I pass someone on the trail I like to do it quickly, like ripping off a band-aid, so I sped up to maybe 7:45 pace just to get around him.  Well you can guess what happened.  He's now running 7:45 pace right next to me.  Sped it up to a nice tempo pace to seal the deal and, nope, he's stride for stride with me, shoulder to shoulder.  Ok, maybe he just wants to run with me.  I look over at him with kind of a half smile, stare at him for a good 4-5 seconds and he looks straight ahead, focused.  "Mornin'"  I say.  No response at all.  Weird, right?  Well, now any chance of me doing the mature thing and returning to a jog have gone right out the window.  Sped up to about a 5K pace.  He stays right next to me.  Finally I put on an all-out burst of speed for 10-15 seconds and he dropped back quickly, after the first second or two.  I kept a good tempo pace for the next mile or so to dissuade any re-attacks.  Looked back after a mile and he was gone.  It was annoying at the time but for the rest of the run I felt very pleased with myself  for my win, and did not feel bad about giving into competitiveness.  I think I did the right thing.

8:14 avg.  No one challenged me today, thank goodness.  My quads are actually sore from the whopping 10 seconds of sprinting yesterday...sheez.

8:17 avg.

Ok, it's about that time - my first 20-miler is tomorrow.  My goal is to just get slowly through this one, no fancy progressive finish or MP stuff.  If I can stay healthy I'll be doing 2 more 20+ mile runs before the race, when I can work in some MP.

8:02 average, 2:40:39.  My longest run ever, first 20-miler, is in the books.

I'm not sure why I make statements like "My goal is to just get slowly through this one, no fancy progressive finish or MP stuff" anymore.  Who could've predicted I would deviate from that?  Hmmm...  I got off work pretty late this morning, so I got a late start, chugged an energy drink and took a Gu before I even started.  The Gu was because I hadn't eaten in 6-7 hours (meant to start my run 2 hours earlier).  So I started off at a fast pace due to all the caffeine probably, then didn't want to slow down.  Worked out though.

First 10: 8:17, 8:16, 8:16, 8:16, 8:17, 8:15, 8:13, 8:12, 8:13, 8:14

Last 10: 8:11, 8:09, 8:04, 8:11, 8:00, 7:56, 7:47, 7:42, 7:33, 6:37

Gu at 8, Gu at 15, 60oz of gatorade throughout.  The Gu/gatorade combo does not bother my stomach at all so I will stick with it and take all the carbs I can get.  I felt ridiculously good after 19 so I made a last-second decision to just empty the tank and see how much was left.  Quite a bit apparently, that's a 5K mile for me.  Granted I probably will now need double the recovery time because of that last mile, but it was worth it.  Just for grins, I added up my last 13.1 miles and it came to 1:43:38, about a 7:55 pace.

I can tell that I'm gonna be sore for awhile based on the difficulty with steps.  The cardio is there, the legs are not.  Tendonitis seems pretty subdued (still taking nsaid) but I'll get a better idea tomorrow.