Track Tuesday 2

 Today was week 2 of my 8 week commitment/experiment to hit the track every week for 8 weeks.

Last week was 48 degrees... perfect weather for a workout.  Today it was 72 degrees with 98% humidity (at least it was cloudy and it poured rain just about immediately after I was back at the house so I dodged that too).  Subsequently, I got a really solid sweat going... probably the most I've sweat this year.

I wasn't feeling quite as snappy this morning as I'd like... I think I still had some fatigue from the 15 miles on Sunday.  I was able to mentally shake that off though and get myself into a good headspace.

My warmup felt pretty good.  2.5 miles at 7:33, 7:10, and then 7:06 pace.

I stopped for just a bit when I got to the track for a few leg swings but didn't waste much time before I got things going... I mentally set myself, jogged a small bit more til I reached the start line and then hit the lap button and took off.

I had a loose target of 85s in my head and that's where the pace pretty much wound up.  Really I would have been okay with anything under 90.  It took a couple laps before my legs felt right but after that I didn't really feel as lactic as I did last week.  

The hardest part was the heat.  Halfway through the workout I was drenched and dripping sweat.  At that point the recovery intervals started to stretch out as I started to do some walking before getting back into a jog.  The HR was getting into the mid 170s and peaked at 178 on the last lap.  

I don't see the weather being too much better for the next 2 months so I should probably get used to this...  really I don't mind the sweating so much and it does help get the HR up and makes me push myself mentally... I do think it makes the recovery intervals harder.

After the workout I forced myself to get a cooldown in.  I was at 6:59 pace at the 7 mile point (about .25 miles after the last lap) and I really wanted to stop the watch to keep things under 7 but forced myself to keep going for another 1.33 miles to get to the 1 hour point.

Final stats:

8.33 miles
1:00:01
7:12 pace

Longer intervals planned for next week (maybe 1000 or 1600), but I might run a 5K this weekend so we'll see how things shake out.