Sometimes I am my own worst enemy when it comes to publishing a post. Yesterday I started reading Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield and got lost in the book and forgot to get back to this post, which should have been published last night. Oh well…a good book is a good book.

It does not seem possible but 45 years ago today, I enlisted in the United States Coast Guard. Little did I know that it be one of the best things I would do in my life and it became more than a career. Being a Coastie became the foundation of the person I would become and I would spend the first 20 years of my post-high school life as one.

Forty-Five years as a Coastie, it is been a good ride and now being one is simply a part of who I am and I will keep it going as long as I live. Dana Libby if you read this, we met this day all those years ago and while I have not seen you since boot camp I still call you – friend. Some things are done that bind people together for a lifetime, bootcamp was that.

Once a Coastie, always a Coastie.

The Run

Planned run and focus: 10 x .26 and either 4 x 200 or two telephone pole strides. Wearing the New Balance Beacon v1 to see how they compared to other go faster shoes in my collection.

• Course: No track Philbrick Road
• Weather: Mostly sunny, 72°F, Feels like 73°F, Humidity 90%, Wind 5mph from S
• Distance: 4.01
• Time: 4.01
• Pace: 36:29

Lap	Time	Pace	Comment
1	1:45	6:43
2	1:41	6:28	3rd best time on this segment
3	1:45	6:43
4	1:52	7:10
5	1:58	7:33
6	1:52	7:10

What did I do well?

I finished 5 out of the 6 x .26 at faster than my latest 5K race pace.

I tied my fastest time on this segment for the 3rd time – now to break 1:40 when the temps/humidity cooperates or I find the extra gear that I know is still there.

Stopping after the 6th repeat versus continuing to abuse myself in the humidity and while ’70s are not that bad, when combined it made for a tough workout.

What do I need to work on?

Digging a little deeper to continue the pace during the middle part of a quarter repeat.

I didn’t finish the planned workout and due to the humidity let myself give in to the resistance (we had an appointment at 11:00) to shut down the workout a lot earlier than I needed to despite the heat. One of those good and bad things where you finish sooner than you could have, but stopped before the suffering became stoopid.

This is a workout that I would have finished a few years ago, but now the heat/humidity does affect me more than it used to. It is the extremes that get me now and acclimation seems to take that much longer.

Shoes:

New Balance Beacon v1 – I wanted to find out if I could run faster in the Beacons compared to other “real” go faster shoes that I have. Today I found out that even in tougher conditions than I have been running my No track workouts that my times in the Beacon v1s were slightly better and much more comfortable than my other go faster shoes.

This causes quite a dilemma for me since I planned on using the Beacons more for tempo or fartlek types of workout, but if I run more comfortably and faster in them, why do I need “flats” or race day shoes. It does bring up a few questions, so next Tuesday I will go with the Razor 3-8.5s to see if the larger shoe size makes a difference with the comfort levels compared to the size 8.0s which were just a tad tighter than I wanted on my right foot.

What was I thinking?

That running in that kind of humidity sucked, but I got to my minimum number of repeats for a workout.

Damn I am running faster than usual and my feet are not paying for running faster.