For Whom the Dogs Bark

75F, 95% (DP 74) and calm.  No end in sight to the hot weather, even though things are cooling down in the rest of the country.  At least we aren't hitting 80s.  I am going to try a 5K on Saturday, so putting in a little bit of speedier work this week.  Warmed up for 4 miles then 2 miles as hard as I could, 7:33 and 7:10, then slogged out 4 more in the 9:15 to 9:30 range.  If I recover properly I'll do this a couple of more times this week.

79F, 97% (DP 78) and calm.  81F to finish.  Same run as yesterday, but hotter by quite a bit.  Got a late start and ran the fast ones in the sun.  The two fast miles were 7:19 and 7:13, so started out faster and ended up slower than yesterday.  Probably a combination of fatigue and heat.  Overall 8:56/mile, feeling the heat pretty badly at the end.  Heart rate 153 bpm, 184 max.  Last 4 were in the 9:02 to 9:22 range.

Indoors.  Had to travel suddenly to Guatemala this week and have missed running for the last two days due to work schedules.  But finished yesterday and made it downstairs to the treadmill this morning.  The weather here is gorgeous, was confused until somebody told me we are at 5,000 feet altitude.  The group we are working with here has a couple of runners in it, there are lots of runners in Latin America.  But they were both injured, so I didn't get to run with company, just the TM.  Legs were pretty rested, obviously, and I ran short, only 10K.  I ran 2 x 1K at 7:00/mile pace.  The rest of the run was at an 8:50 pace.  Was happy that it wasn't too difficult, but hard to really get a bead on it.  I am at altitude (minus), not racing (minus), on the treadmill (plus), indoors at 74F (minus) but with lower humidity (plus), and you have to wonder if the TM is calibrated accurately.  Too many variables to extrapolate to a morning run in my neighborhood at home.  Left a puddle of sweat for whatever that is worth.  

I'm planning to run a 5K tomorrow morning back in Houston, would be very happy to be able to hold a similar pace in that race though it will be a stretch.  If I could hit 6:45 (not likely) I would PR.  Might have already ran my race this morning, though. Dang.

75F, 97% (DP 74F) and calm.  Boiloff from rains yesterday, pretty humid.  Thought I was running a race this morning but it is next week.  But didn't do a long run, too much going on today with the BYU game in Austin and my daughter's birthday.  Ran 9 miles at 8:41 pace, 153 bpm average heart rate, 165 max, so not too easy or too hard, then 1 more with the dog at slightly slower pace.  That's it for the week, not much but not nothin'.

75F, 94% (73 DP) and calm.  Ran 10 miles in 1:28:56, 8:54/mile, warmup 4 miles then 1 x 2 mile at 7:09, 7:17 then jog out the rest.  Average heart rate 153, max 184.  Didn't run yesteray due to work pressures.

79F, 89% (74 DP), S 5 mph.  10.0 in 1:26:53, 8:41/mile, 152 heart rate, 169 max.  Was going to repeat yesterday's run, but hadn't recovere enough, and didn't have enough time to run LLHR.  Not sure how much good it does to run at this speed but it is miles.

79F, 86%, 74 DP, calm.  At the end it was 78F and 96%, DP calculator shows 78F for that combination, so close to max conditions at the end, which was consistent with how this run felt.  Did LLHR for 3 warmup miles, 11;56, 11:45, 11:43, then 5 x 1K:  8:00, 7:17, 7:10, 7:11, and 7:07.  144 average HR, 184 max.  Out of curiosity I pulled off the cooldown heart rates after each kilometer split, they climbed quite a bit:  142, 152, 160, 163 and 164, and if anything the latter ones were slower.  Radiator builds up quite a head of steam at these temps.

74F, 92% (DP 71), NNE 13 mph.  A system moved through last night and cooled things off somewhat for this race.  A girl/boy combination with same last name (either siblings or a married couple) took first and second, I got third in 22:38, splits were 6:59, 7:09, 7:09 and 7:11, HR maxed out at 182.  The girl beat me by nearly two minutes, but she ran close to my PR from 3 years ago.  The guy beat me by about 25 seconds.  Thinking the heat was to blame, I checked out my old race reports and those PR-type races were not necessarily cooler.  One was run at 80F, the other at 66F with a bad groin.  So I'm definitely slower now.  Nothing you can do.

Trying to decide whether to put in a lot of speed work for a big 10-miler in October or go back to LLHR training for a long-haul training cycle.  Problem with LLHR training is making the time, it takes almost 2 hours to do a run and that is hard to get in every day.

70F, 94% (DP 68F), calm.  So I made a tentative decision to move into a phase that includes more speedwork.  In the past doing this I got faster for a while, then got stale for at least a year, though hard to tell since some of that was injury-related.  If things go well I will probably peak at the end of the year, but not at Boston.  But I liked racing enough on Saturday that I think I am going to see how close I can get to my old PRs at shorter distances.  Everybody who knows me will be happy, not sure if I am but it isn't too much fun just getting ready for a marathon once or twice a year.

So today was 6 miles, with a fast mile thrown in, 7:21 (160 bpm).  Overall 6.09 in 54:07, 8:53/mile.

Here is the back of a car I saw at the race on Saturday.  No wonder everybody hates us.

77F, 90%, NE 3 mph. 14 miles Iin 2:05:03, 8:56/mile, 151 bpm, 161 max. Out the door at 5:05 for a medium long run, hot again but managed to keep an honest pace, inside one minute over GMP. Wade got back into town last night and joined me for about 4 or 5, it was good to catch up. As usual we are a bad influence on each other and ran too fast but I made up for it later!

76F, 93%, calm.  6.0 miles in 52:23, 8:44/mile, 144 bpm, 176 average.  Ran 2 miles fast, 7:19 (159) and 7:12 (171).

76F, 97%, SE 3 mph, raining.  10.00 miles @ 8:55/mi, 147 bpm, 161 max.  Ran 4 or 5 with Wade, then called it a day.  Didn't feel like doing 14, still hot.

74F, 89% and calm.  Didn't run yesterday in Houston due to a lightning storm.  Visiting my daughter and her family in Temple, TX.  No streetlights so it was 7:10 before I started.  I drove out to Lyons Park after filling up with gas, eating a breakfast burrito and a bottle of orange juice, just killing time until it got light enough to see.  Good cloud cover but it burned off by the end of the run.  Was only going to do 14, but had enough in me to go the entire 20, but the reason was it was very slow, 9:37/mile, 146 bpm, 165 max.  Pretty hot by the end of the run.  Lots of hills, some of them very steep, so it was a good workout.  After 10 before I finished though.

72F, 93% (69 DP), N 1 mph.  Cooling off at least temporarily. Everything else this week is supposed to be under 60.  14 miles in 2:02:04, 8:43/mile, 148 bpm, 161 max.  Pretty good run despite leftover miles from Saturday still in my legs.

66F, 71% (56 DP), NE 5 mph.  Not a typo, the north wind is a miracle worker, moves all the GOM moisture offshore where it belongs.  Plan today was to do speed work.  As I got into the run I thought about switching to a long GMP run, but my goal is to work on speed right now so I stuck with the plan.  4 miles warmup, starting at 9:20 down to 8:19, then 10 x 2 minutes on, 1 minute off, then 2 miles cooldown at 8:40, 8:18 (151).  Hadn't tried this one before, didn't time the individual splits, but overall pace during those miles was in the 7:30 range, so the intervals were probably in the low 7s, maybe even high 6s.  The best thing was hitting the last mile at low heart rate.  Probably as good as it has been in a while for that late in the run.  10.09 miles in 1;23:25, 8:17/mile, 149 bpm, 170 max.

One sad note, the bottom of my shoe started flapping at mile 8, had to come in and change.  The old ones went here:

It appears that there are no more Jingas in my size for sale worldwide.  A similar shoe, Taygra, is being made in Brazil.  They are ultra-lightweight but don't last long.  I have a pair that I race with.  I have another pair of Jingas that is almost in the same condition as the ones I threw away, and another newer pair.  After that it is a dark void in my life until I find a new hobby.

64F, 76% (57 DP), NE 4 mph.  Almost chilly out there.  Ran 6.0 in 53:41, 8:57/mile, 136 bpm average, 141 max; a little short on time and trying to keep it easy anyway.  Was surprised that I could stay under 9:00 pace and under 140 bpm, last mile was 139 bpm.  The miracles of reasonable temperatures, almost forgotten after these long months.  We aren't out of the woods yet, but end is in sight at least.

70F, 81% (64 DP), NE 5 mph.  DP 7 degrees warmer than yesterday, but not bad.  3 miles wu, then 6 at GMP, followed by 1 cd.  Overall 10.00 miles in 1:20:15, 8:02/mile, 157 bpm, 177 max.  Was targeting 8:00 on the GMP miles but the first one came in at 7:43 and after that it was off to the races -- forget the training plan.  Splits on the GMP miles were 7:43 (156), 7:54 (157), 7:49 (161), 7:31 (167), 7:34 (172) and 7:19 (175), average 7:38/mile.  

This run was fun, and the results made me start to wonder if a half-marathon PR is in the range of possibilities.  Probably not quite there yet, my PR pace in the half is 7:06, set 2-1/2 years ago.  The weird thing is that my PR pace in the full is 8:00, from 3 years ago.  Right now a full marathon PR seems more achievable, even though I am trying to concentrate on shorter races for the next couple of months.  I have a big 10-mile race in 2 weeks.  I'm pretty sure I can hit 7:30, but 7:10 would be in the range all of a sudden.

71F, 88% (DP 68) and calm.  Warming up again, but probably not much warmer than this at least in the next week.  Time crunch, was going to do 14 but settled for 12.  1:43:14, 8:36/mile, 148 bpm, max 160. Good run.

71F, 85% (67 DP) and calm.  Similar to yesterday.  Ran 20 this time, 2:58:50, 8:57/mile, 146 bpm, 162 max.  Didn't hit 150 bpm until mile 14, didn't hit 151 until mile 16.  At that point I was running a straight 9s but sped up in the last 4 by about 15-20 seconds/mile.

I was planning to do 24 today but was starting to fade pretty fast, so saved it for another day.  I'm learning.  I really believe that running an honest number of close-to-marathon long runs would be helpful in developing the needed reserves for the real race.  I know that is by no means a unanimous viewpoint in the running community, but I was thinking this morning that maybe a bonk isn't purely a muscle mass versus weight thing like many researchers say, i.e., at a certain distance you use up all the glycogen in your muscles and at that point you can't really run much further, at least not with any resemblance of normal speed.  Maybe you can actually beat it by training around it?  The extra 3 or 4 miles is a real mental adjustment that I haven't fully made yet.  I'm pretty much a 20 and done guy, although this morning pulling the plug was the right thing to do.  But I will say, I don't think those types of distances bring much benefit to shorter racing distances, there are better ways to train.

A bunch of running friends from the days when I used to run out of the Y were out in my neighborhood this morning.  Met two different groups of them and they were both yelling my name and congratulating  me for getting in to Boston.  Honestly, people really look that up?

71F, 94% (69 DP) and calm.  Getting hotter again for a few days.  Time constrained this morning, so ran 6 at GMP:  8:46 (1:37), 7:53 (150), 7:46 (156), 7:43 (161), 7:29 (167) and 7:18 (173), overall 46:54, 7:49/mile, 156 bpm average, 177 max.  Don't really have much context for this run at this DP, but in any event I still had some of Saturday left in my legs so good to cut it short.