Vestige

8 miles at 7:15 pace - mostly on roads... Road running is insufferable, but luckily I had some Audible credits to cash in.  "Talking to Strangers" - Malcolm Gladwell.  Thus far its been pretty dark and depressing, but interesting enough to get me through a boring run so I'll take it.  Got a wild nosebleed about 4 miles in, took a pit stop to stuff some grass up there and get chased by an old dude and his RC supercar.  

Finished 8 miles on the paved trail system, did 8 x 20 seconds hill "sprints" (pretty dead, not much speed there), with jog/walk down recovery.  That ended up being exactly a mile, then a mile cooldown home.  

Good day.  Starting to feel my legs coming back.  The race has been upgraded to put 3rd place well out of reach and a top 10 finish as a much more reasonable goal. Just gotta keep my head down and embrace the grind.

12 x 400m workout with the mates.  2 miles warmup, 200m walk/yog recovery between reps.

74, 73, 71, 73, 73, 68, 68, 69, 71, 70, 71, 57.99.  Couldn't really get in a rhythm this workout.  Legs felt good, but we probably took too much recovery on most of these.   I should've done 16 but didn't want to finish by myself (lame excuse, I know).  Last rep felt good to open up, still got some speed there.

1.5-mile cool down to bring total to 8 for the day.

PM: 1 mile to the park, 2 miles barefoot laps in the grass, 1 mile home.  7:10 average pace.  Super tired all day.  2 hour nap helped a little, but still exhausted.  Maybe it's just adjusting to more mileage, but I haven't felt this wasted in a long time.  Hopefully it passes soon.  Tomorrow will be a true rest day.

Dragged through the mountains by the Taliban.  8:06 avg pace, 2200 ft elevation gain.  Was hoping to be slightly more impressive for my captor but it'll do.  Had many very close calls with the ankles, but no incapacitating injuries this time around. 3 weeks till showtime.  According to the Garmin, I'm gonna need 46 hours recovery.. but we took a post-run ice bath in the river which should bring recovery time to like... whenever I run next.  Onward to victory.