Going With The Flow

AM - Headed up to Park City with Allie and James. We ran from the parking lot at Jeremy Ranch to about a mile and a half down the snowpacked Jeremy Ranch Road and back for a total 6 miles of running. Then we took a nice stroll for about a mile afterwards. Beautiful morning up there and so nice to see the blue skies and sun.

Huge congrats to Jake for his 2nd place finish and sub-1:06 at Rock and Roll Phoenix Half!!

AM - 10 minutes on the recumbent bike and 15 minutes of speedy weight training. Jake was talking to the coach of 42 year old Dorota Gruca that ran 1:15:56 yesterday, and he emphasized eating lots of meat, high mileage, and strength training. I've been such a slacker on the strength training lately, but the positive effect it has on hormones, injury prevention, and a whole lot more makes it silly for me to not be doing it. I still can't be doing much lower body yet except for specific PT exercises, but it turns out there's an entire upper body too :)

Day off from running. I always like to take advantage of the weekend, so Mondays are a great day to rest as I'm still recovering from injury. I feel a little achy this morning in my groin and hamstring. 

AM - 3.8 miles outside. Felt very cold this morning which it was (~5 degrees). After 2 miles, I decided to throw in a hint of speedwork - 6 x 1 minute on/1 min off. Ran the "on" portions at about 5:35 pace and easy jog for the "off". It was hard to move faster with 5 lb of clothes on and cold, so this was a great start. Small steps forward.

Lunch - It was a little too soon to run again, so I used my Alter-G time mostly to loosen up. 65% bodyweight (75 lb) and 9 min pace. Ran for 10 minutes then one of my groin muscles cramped so I took a 5 minute backwards walk break, then 15 minutes of running again. Hard to count this as running, so I adjusted the total mileage to 65% (1.8 miles).

AM - 2.1 miles. Speed work was too much, my psoas muscle is throbbing and the glute pain is back this morning. 

PM - Strength training for 30 minutes. Then 2.6 miles, met Jake halfway through. Felt a little better, psoas loosened up more during the run.

AM - Seriously - 20 degrees and raining?! Ran 2.5 miles. Injury feels better today (whew!) but probably needs another day. The short two-a-days make me feel the best so I'm going to be doing a lot more of those for a while. Plus, as Bam pointed out, splitting up the runs is easier on my tendons and ligaments as I'm increasing mileage.

The drive in to work was terrible - 28 cars on the side of the road on 6 miles of highway. Extremely icy and scary conditions. Be careful!

PM - 2.6 miles with Jake on the tempo loop. 

AM - 5.5 miles with the TADA! crew at Sugarhouse Park. The loop was very icy, but we only had two falls total so I'd call it a success. Probably should have considered bringing the ice skates though! Best part of the run was Allie running through the ice layer/snow instead of the sidewalks and yelling "Take that Woodlands!". Hahaha, still laughing about that. 

AM - The last few days I've had a lot of ups and downs with injury pain so I wasn't sure if I was going to jog this or use it as a tempo run. I felt pretty good on the 2-mile warm-up with Allie and James. So tempo it was! Ran a pretty consistent 6:16 pace throughout. No problems with my hip and only a little fatigue towards the end. I think the fastest I could run with my current fitness is high 18s...not too bad. A great workout! I did not cool down at all because the race was enough stress.

Lulu was nice enough to take some photos. Here are more pics of the race.