Where's the Beach?

Morning Run This morning the alarm seemed to go off far far too early. The seasons are changing and it's dark until about 6:15-6:20 when the light is just starting to show itself. You know, that period when the sun isn't exactly up, but the stars aren't out. The streetlights are just starting to shut off. So, that means that I didn't see light until about mile 5 of my 6 mile run. That's a lot of running in the dark. Thankfully, my streets are mostly well lit. I love my blinking light. Kind of wish I had 2. And of course there's the mace. So, armed and ready to go, I "picked up" my running buddy around mile 2 and we took off to get in a few miles together. The air was simply oppressive. That's really all you can say. It was so warm and humid that we actually weren't sweating buckets. I mean, we were soaked, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't streaming down our faces. Too hot to sweat? Perhaps. I enjoyed the run, mostly because I ha...

Speed Work I sure wish I could brag about some awesome speed work this morning. I guess I can brag that I actually did 5 x 800's and didn't die. That's brag-worthy right ;-) The temperatures were probably 10+ degrees warmer than last Wednesday and the air was just strange. It was humid, but not extreme. But still dampish or restricting feeling. Not sure how to even describe it. There was a fairly heavy, or maybe I should say steady, wind as well. And it was odd, because I'm a major sweater (and so is "A"), but neither of us was sweating like it seemed we should. Maybe that wind dried us off faster than we realized. Anyway, things just felt off. "A" even said she wasn't exactly feeling it. I was definitely a lot slower than last week. It felt so much harder - kind of like yesterday did. But my splits were at least very consistent even up to the 5th one. I managed to maintain somewhere between a 3:48-3:50 pace for each 1/2 mile interval (r...