New Shoes! Back Recovery! Wind?

My new Asics Hyper Speed 4s arrived today. They don't look a lot different than the 3s I wore at Berlin and Sacramento. The old shoes were beaten to a pulp, and the new ones felt pretty plush when I took them out for a 40-minute spin today—especially for what are essentially racing flats. They'll have maybe 15 miles on them for Sunday's race, which is just fine for such flexible, lightweight shoes. It's the big clunkers you've got to break in for a few weeks.

What else? Oh, that career-ending back injury I suffered yesterday shaking a carton of unsweetened whole-grain beverage (it's darn refreshing stuff, but where's the warning label?) is doing much better. I took a couple of ibuprofen soon after I was stricken, and that helped quiet the spasms, which were centered between the shoulder blades at their most southerly reach. The pills—I pretty much never take pain medication—also left me woozy, out of sorts. It sucks to be out of sorts. Sure, you can get sorts at any filling-station food mart, sorts and a microwaved breakfast burrito, 24/7, but that's cheap sorts from China and I don't go near that shit.

By bedtime the pain was a dull ache that had migrated toward my neck. Slept well. Woke up stiff. My back, geez you people are terrible. But gradually, through the course of today, I've felt better, unless I sit at the keyboard too long writing stupid Race Day Outlook updates.

Oh, yeah, the race day outlook.

I noted in this morning's quick hit that the forecasts were coalescing, and no bombs have been thrown today to blow up the process. We begin to transition out of this week's cool, rainy weather late tomorrow. There's a little talk of a weak system riding over the building ridge early Saturday, but not much is expected of it, and anyway it's gone by late in the day. Sunday is nice. Sunday is Race Day. Sunday is nice. Got it?

The roundup is below but first, about that wind that's keeping Sam McManis up at night: Accuweather is hanging in there with crazy-windy conditions for Sunday. The National Weather Service in its graphical forecasts has things slightly breezy, but in the neighborhood of 5-10 mph on Sunday morning. My buddy Dan wonders if Accuweather is plugging in the wind forecast for 850 millibars, which is, like, a mile above the ground. They've might have their head in the clouds, you could say.

National Weather Service
Overnight low: 40
Afternoon high: 63
Precip: 0
Conditions: Mostly sunny
Winds: E @ 5 mph early, then NW @ 5-10 mph

Weather.com
Overnight low: 43
Afternoon high: 64
Precip: 20 percent chance
Conditions: Partly cloudy
Wind: NNW @ 12 mph

Stupid Accuweather
Overnight low: 38
Afternoon high: 60
Precip: 0
Conditions: Mostly sunny and breezy
Wind: N @ 17 mph, gusts to 34 mph

Intellicast
Overnight low: 43
Afternoon high: 64
Precip: 20 percent chance
Conditions: Partly cloudy