Well, after doing that incredibly hilly 12 1/2 miler yesterday, the plan was to do a back-to-back run and follow it up with 11 1/2 moderately hilly miles today.  Of course, I was the only dupe who actually did it … d’oh!  Seriously, it was fun.  I met up with Jay and some of his gang before the run and we took off for parts-well-known.  I did make sure to stop for water at every opportunity, which helped, and at the 3 mile stop Jay was asking around to see who was doing Bonnell and who was just doing Scenic.

I don’t think I really needed to do Bonnell after yesterday, did I?

Anyway, I stuck to my original Scenic plans, which meant that Jay (not training for a fall marathon) and I were the only two out of our group to take the short way ’round this time.  I took a couple of Gus along the way, and ran it even and relaxed; it seemed to go pretty well.  The hills still bug me but not like they used to at the start of the season, I never felt like walking, for example.  My legs were tired, but not terrible, and my cardio felt great.

Once we got back to MoPac I pulled in for a few glasses of water and a cool-off underneath the shower while Jay powered on ahead.  He said that he wasn’t going to speed up, but I did, and I was very happy to catch him at the North end of the Pfluger bridge.  Well, I say catch, I got to about 20 seconds behind him and never closed.  It turns out that he’d picked it up as well and was running 8:00-8:15s.  That puts my pace right around 8:00/mile, which is pretty nice for a final-two pickup on a hot, muggy day like today, after a couple of back-to-back hill workouts.

Next week, we have a pace run on Monday followed by mile repeats (again?) on Wednesday.  Sounds hard.  Then on Saturday, its time to meet at 5:30 for the first 20 miler of the season.  After all, there are only 16 weeks to go before White Rock.  I’m still not sure if I’m going to try to go faster in Dallas or in Austin - one of them should be a hard long run, the other a race - but I’m not even going to worry about that for at least 10 more weeks.

Oh - after the run I was good, and did some strides, but then I was bad and skipped the drills, but then I was good and did a lot of stretching on my own, but I was bad and then ate breakfast tacos instead of joining in the group stretch.  I also did four pull-ups, which may sound like nothing much but considering that I couldn’t do any a month ago, I’m pretty happy with it.  That is all.

_{(*) Today’s guest headline brought to you courtesy of Thon.}

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