6.0256 miles; 0:59:03; pace 9:48

Started off strong on this one but petered out in the middle. I have become a firm believer in the old adage that its not the heat its the humidity. It was upper 70's when I left the house but I was dripping sweat before I left our street; and that's only about 100 yards. Regardless, I made the entire run and managed to pick the pace back up in the end so I feel good about it.

I think I've settled on the Amphipod Velocity Full Tilt belt. The water bottle rides in the small of your back. I'm going to stop by REI sometime later this week and check them out.

13.2828 miles; 2:21:16; pace 10:38

What a beautiful morning! The weather cooled off this week. I was up early and got a cup of coffee in before my run. Because of the cooler weather, the first half of this run felt fairly easy. The last 2 miles were fairly challenging. This is the first time I've run 13 miles since the Austin Half-Marathon in February.

Besides the cooler weather there were two other difference in todays run. First, I got new shoes. I decided to try the Asics Gel Durango 5. I did research and found that Asics had one of the favored running shoes. I figured out after the fact that it was the Kayano. The Durango's are really meant to be more of a trail running shoe. Honestly, they felt pretty good this morning so i'm going to stick with them.

The second difference this morning was that I took a bottle of water with me to hydrate during the run. Wow, what a difference. Normally, for 10 miles, I don't worry about hydrating but I've noticed the last couple of weekends that I really drag at the end of the run. Today, I felt fairly good throughout the run and I'd have to attribute most of that to the extra hydration.

4x1200

I confess. I guessed at my target time on these this morning. I read an article that described the goal of your track workouts. The article explained that you really don't want to run your intervals too fast and that you're really better off running longer intervals than 400. So, I decided to aim for 6 minute 1200s. I ended up running between 6:22 and 6:38.

I came home and checked my McMillan timings and I actually ran within their recommended targets. In other words, I overestimated how fast I should run.

I really enjoyed this workout. The 1200's were just challenging enough without being painful. The weather is fantastic. It took just the right amount of time.

I would like to take a moment to thank the couple that passed me on my jog home. I followed them for about a mile. I tried to hang back a little bit but still use them to pace myself. I think I made them nervous. So thank you guys and I hope you had a good run this morning.

6.0256 miles; 0:58:16; pace 9:40

I have not been slacking on running but I have been slacking on blogging. Really nice run this morning. It was HOT when I first stepped out. I'm not sure it ever made it out of the 80's last night. One benefit to running early, sprinklers. They all come on about 5:00 and when its nice and warm outside, they do cool you off.

10 miles; 1:47:00; pace 10:42

Hard, Hard run today. I don't know if its the heat or the end of the week but today's run was especially hard.

1x1600; 2x800; 4x400

6.0256 miles; 58:14; pace 9:40

ahh, routine. It is so nice to be back into it. This morning's run felt fantastic. The temperature is down a bit (though humidity is up). I was a bit worried I would feel fatigued after my long run this weekend but I wasn't at all. I started off slow (10:30 first mile), but picked it up over the distance. I'm looking forward to Thursday's intervals. I'm trying to decide if I want to go longer or shorter intervals.

10.358 miles; 1:52:05; pace 10:49

Wow, busy weekend. I got up yesterday at 4:30. I finished up my run at around 6:45. Then rushed off to tee-ball and soccer games. Really felt good during the run. I could tell this was my first week back from vacation. My legs were tired when I started the run but I felt like I got stronger the further I went.

I'm going to have to work on mapping out longer loops around our neighborhood.

6x600; 4x400; 2x200

What a difference a week (or two) makes. Last time I ran intervals I blogged about how incredible they were. This morning wasn't nearly as fun. I blame the 2 week hiatus from running. The workout really wasn't that bad, it was just more difficult than the last time I did intervals. I was fairly consistent with my target times. Typically I was slower on the first run in a series than the last.

I wasn't alone on the track this morning either. There were a couple of other people crazy enough to be on the track at 5:00 in the morning.

6.0256 miles; 1:01:59; pace 10:17

Vacation has ended and it is time to get back into the groove. As you can tell, I took it easy on vacation. No, I didn't run and not blog, I just didn't run. So far, I've started off pretty well. I got to the Y yesterday and did my cross train and got out of bed this morning and got my 6 miles in. It was a little slower than before vacation but not so bad. According to McMillan, I should be slowing down my runs anyway.

I'm looking forward to running a pace workout on Thursday and, perhaps more importantly, sleeping in tomorrow.

4.1 miles; 38:00 (approx); pace 9:16

Haven't had much success in sticking to a schedule on vacation. I'll have to hit it hard when I get back. I did get out to the Roswell Rec Center here in Georgia this morning. Ran about 4 miles. The time and pace are approximations.