Hottest day of the year = more ear sweat

 76 degrees at 6am this morning and it was muggy as hell (I assume hell is muggy or is it more of a dry heat?!?).  

I remember when it first started heating up this summer it hit me particularly hard.  I think it was because I was coming off a really good training block and wasn't mentally repaired for the reduced speeds and increased efforts that come with the heat.  The good news is that I'm mostly acclimated now, but it's still not exactly enjoyable to be sweating your ass off.  

Also, for some reason I have been particularly mindful of my ear sweat.  I don't remember ever noticing this before but it's really been bothering me.  Forehead sweat is a close second in the annoyance category.  I used to kind of enjoy a deep purifying sweat so I'm not sure what's changed.  Maybe I need to shift my paradigm.

In spite of the heat (just about literarily in this case) I decided to run a 10 miler.; my 5th "mid-week" 10+ miler of the year.   My legs still didn't feel that peppy from my speedwork on Tuesday but I wasn't planning to run too hard in this heat anyway.  

Hovering around 8:20 pace for the first 5 miles...  at the 5.5 mark I got harassed by a dog and had to start walking to keep it from chasing me.  After that I picked it up for about a quarter mile and then I really started dogging with the pace dropping to 8:30 even though I was trying to maintain a decent effort.

I had talked myself into 9 miles but I had stopped my watch during the dog-walk portion of the run and subsequently my splits were a bit behind the usual points on my route.  Subsequently, when I got close to home I decided to do a short detour into the city park to make up the extra .05... I then continued into the park and soon convinced myself that the whole 10 was back on the docket.  I looped through the park, around the lake, then around the neighborhood and back home... as I entered my garage I heard the first roll of thunder in the distance... perfect timing.

Final Stats:
10.16 miles
1:25:10
8:23 pace

Good start to building back up the midweek mileage as I start to put a bit more focus on my potential upcoming marathon.  I still haven't signed up but with a good stack of 50 mile weeks starting to pile up and two 18 mile runs and one 16 mile run in July (included in four total 2+ hour runs) I'm setting up to be in at least a decent position to reasonably complete a marathon in October.  First focus is the 5K on August 14... once that's done, I'll start thinking Marathon.