Mon 9/6 - AM 80 minutes incl. Mt. Greylock road race

Never easy, this time seemed a bit harder than usual though. Still, able to finish the thing off and hold off the nearest competition with a time under 54 minutes in cool sunny conditions. Didn't sleep especially well last night after the owl serenade at 2:30. Also still feeling the deep-seated exhaustion that's been plaguing me since last week's slog through the heat and humidity. In hindsight, packing three hard efforts in 8 days was not the smartest thing ever. As such, felt quite lethargic warming up. Not much of a warmup as a result. More than happy to let others set the pace early, that lasted a little over the mile before I found myself unwittingly and unwillingly in the lead. The early steep switchbacks were particularly onerous, mainly because I wasn't fully alert yet. Just before halfway it felt like I had overestimated what pace I could reasonably recover from on the lower steeps before the middle, flatter portion. At this point I was convinced I would be passed and left behind. Came close to being passed at the water stop but after that some kind of second wind kicked in and I was able to maintain a higher work rate for the flatter stuff. The one notable hill between 5 and 7 miles nearly put me under which left me very worried that I'd get hauled in on the final mile, an uphill death spiral. Focused on short strides and being efficient and this ended up being enough. Finished feeling more wiped out than I have recently after any effort, I dug deeper on this one to be sure. Cooldown was a light jog in the summit parking lot before eating lunch and then hiking down on the AT, which was good except for the ridiculously steep descent off of Prospect Mtn. Left adductor and psoas sore but not to a debilitating degree, happily.