WEEKLY SUMMARY (September 2-8): 75 miles (95% at easy/long and 5% at tempo paces)
  Sunday: 9 miles at 7:56/mi.
  Monday: 2 easy, 4 x 1 mile (1 min.) at 6:19/mi., .2 miles easy (6.2 miles total)
  Tuesday: 10.7 miles at 7:47/mi.
  Wednesday: 10 miles at 7:48/mi. on a treadmill
  Thursday: 6.1 miles at 7:59/mi.
  Friday: 22 miles at 7:55/mi.
  Saturday: 2.5 miles; then, 4 hours later, 8.5 miles at 7:43/mi. (11 miles total)

This week was tough. Compared with last week, mileage was the same but my paces and the humidity were up even more. The remains of a hurricane from the Gulf of Mexico deposited a tropical air mass on us that just sat around for a week. It didn't rain much, except on Thursday morning, but the humidity and dew points were constantly very high. When I was a kid, it was thought funny to put a plastic turtle in a bowl of water and call it turtle soup. When "running" this week, I felt like that turtle swimming through soup. The humidity was most tolerable on Monday, especially by the afternoon when I ran. But I rarely run well except in the morning. On this occasion I felt great for the first few tempo intervals, easily finishing them well under my goal time (6:20) and not begrudging the mere one minute of rest between intervals. I thought I had all eight of the mile repeats on Daniels's schedule in me that day. But my lunch intervened. Stupidly, I had eaten something spicy a few hours earlier, and it came back to hobble me on the fourth interval. I couldn't even jog home. But I was happy about how easy tempo pace felt before then, especially since I plan to race a half marathon next Sunday at around that pace. By Wednesday I actually preferred the treadmill to running outside again, and I went slowly because (Mondays and) Thursdays are slotted for longer/harder runs on my schedule. But various events conspired against my schedule, so I ended up struggling through six miles on Thursday and then doing a steady long run on Friday. That was supposed to be my primary quality day for next week, but I couldn't imagine getting through the long tempo workout on Daniels's schedule for this week. So I'll switch the primary workouts for this week and the next. Friday's run wasn't pretty, but it was my first 22-miler this year and took almost as long as I expect to be running in the marathon race (2:54). So I needed to do that and will do it once more before the marathon, but now that the weather is clearing my focus can shift back (from just surviving the mileage this week) to tempo workouts. According to the weather forecast, Fall is arriving on the heels of a severe storm that swept through here this afternoon. It cut short my run, which I had to finish in the evening. I felt surprisingly strong, considering that by the end I had run 33 miles in two days - perhaps a record for me. Supposedly cooler, drier air will be the norm this next week. I'll drop my mileage around a third for a recovery week before the half marathon next weekend. The tempo workout that I was supposed to do this week but swapped for the steady long run will be my only hard workout, probably on Tuesday. I'm looking forward to running faster in autumnal air.