Friday, August 29 (tempo am, 30 pm)

Time to go now
Time to train
Fitness you just
Cannot feign

Old arroyo
tempo loop
Sun is rising
give a whoop

First one: cruised it
felt just fine
Next one: faster
all aligned

Third one: still there
going strong
Fourth one: problems
something's wrong

I have to poop
what to do
Never look back
but run on through
run on through, man
run on through

I think my splits for 4xarroyo tempo were 8:56, 17:42 (8:46), 26:34 (8:52), 35:50 (9:16). As alluded to above, I was feeling pretty good until I had bowel problems on the last one, but I decided just to keep running and try not to explode in the middle of the trail. I made it, but as you can see was forced to slow considerably.

My impression from this run is that no particular component of my fitness is especially lacking. My aerobic and muscular fitness seem in line with each other. Both are really pretty good. But everything is down a notch or two from my peak fitness. It'll take me some time, but I'll progress steadily to new levels if I just keep training intelligently and do my various injury-preventing routines. I need some endurance-building long runs, some strength-building hills, and some speed-building fartleks and intervals. I've got to toss it all in there, and keep on practicing these threshold runs with an eye towards a couple good cross races in preparation for the half marathons.

In the afternoon I jogged it out with the team and did a very difficult ab routine, guided by Katherine. There was a lot of rest in there between exercises, which ideally one would try to avoid. But my abs were in poor enough shape that they needed it. Lifted a little bit with Dennis afterwards, but I was too tired from moving stuff to the new apartment and not eating a proper lunch to go at it very hard.