Training report of the last two weeks:

Everything was smooth for the first part of week 7. It was nice and cool for my 15-miler on Wednesday, and I ran a 7:30 average pace and it felt pretty easy (I went sailboat racing after the run).

Then by Friday the hot weather was back. I attempted to run an LT run outdoors on Thursday, but I got overheated and dehydrated. My splits were 6:10, 6:33, 6:36, 6:34, 6:34, 6:33, 6:42. According to Daniels, my LT pace should be 6:20, and I've done a 6-mile 6:18 LT run just a bit more than a week ago on the firehouse treadmill. So this sucked - again. I didn't call it a failed run though. My heart rate was pretty constant ~168; in fact it jumped to 170 for the last, slowest mile. It shows that my exertion level was probably appropriate. It was just two hot. I sweated through my shoes again.

Nevertheless, the 22-mile run just two days later on Saturday was fine. It was still hot during the day, but I waited until 6:45pm to start my run. It was completely dark for the last hour for this 3-hour long run, but it wasn't super hot. I still got drenched by the end, but I completed the run and finished relatively strong (7:25 last mile). It took quite a bit out of me though.

So I did struggle to recover, and the prevailing hot weather didn't help. I had a 5x600 workout on Tuesday my splits were 2:09, 2:10, 2:10, 2:08, 2:12. I got drenched again by the end, and I still felt the 22-miler in my legs.

I ran 14 miles on Wednesday, which I did by running four 3.5-mile laps shirtless in the neighborhood. I didn't want to carry water, so I just periodically returned to my house. It worked well. I may do this for other medium long runs, until the weather gets cool enough to get away with just the water fountains along the way.

Then two days of recovery runs (the first 6-miler on Wednesday was run in 97 degrees), and I'm racing tomorrow. A 10K tuneup, and Esther runs the 5K. It would be great if it wasn't going to be 76 degrees by the 10 o'clock start. Probably over 80 by the time I finish. It will be hard, but I'll try to go out at 6:20/mile, and see if I can hold it in the rising temperature. It will be a very small race, so chances are, I'll run alone (hopefully in the lead).