Going With The Flow

AM - 5 miles on the bike path in Park City. 

PM - 22.2 mile mountain biking on Spiro to Mid Mountain. Quite a ride! A little longer than expected, but great single track trails. I would definitely consider myself a beginner when it comes to mountain biking (except for the endurance part!!) and these trails were perfect. 

From Random July 2011

AM - EASY 4.4 miles horsepark loop. Ran about 8:15 pace this morning, but I feel like I deserved it. I've decided that I like my Asics Speedstar shoes better than the Saucony Getgos. The Getgos seem to be more rigid and not as cushiony.

PM - 2 miles on the treadmill and 10 min on the elliptical.

My massage was good, still wished they would work on my back more!

AM - Early morning workout. 3 x 1600m with 400m jog between. 5:58, 5:55, 5:41. I was aiming for 6 min miles, so I was happy with that. I probably could've set my target pace faster, but this was my first workout in a long time and I had no idea where I was at. Jake joined me in the workout, although this was more of a jog for him.

Quick rant - It is really not that difficult to keep one lane open for runners. The cheerleading team and football players were out on the track this morning (not sure what they were doing, besides standing around looking at each other). Despite the fact that a track is an oval, they never seemed to understand that runners would be coming through every 2 minutes or so. It came to them as a total shock every time! We weren't really asking for much, just one lane to be clear. If those kids really want to get in shape for their respective sports, they should've been doing laps with me!!

PM - 4.6 miles easy around the roads and such.

Anyone interested in running 10 miles with me tomorrow morning somewhere around SLC or Sandy around 6am??

AM - 10 miles up in the Millcreek area. I was just trying to go a comfortable pace, which turned out to be ~7:05 pace. Hopefully that means I'm getting in better shape!

PM - 20 min on the exercise bike while reading Runner's World.

AM - 5 miles with the Alta XC team. 8x200 at ~38s w/ 2 min jog between. Two strides were barefoot, which actually felt better than shoes. Wish I could've gone to their annual breakfast, but I had to get to work :o(

PM - Easy 2 mile jog around the track.

AM - Didn't sleep great last night. My back was tighter than it has been the last week or two, so that was probably a factor. Ran easy horsepark loop with Jake. I'm trying really hard to get excited about the race tomorrow morning!

PM - 1.8 shakeout, trying out my new Saucony flats.

My last race was two months ago at Utah Valley, so you could say that I was a little rusty in terms of the racing scene. Expectations weren't too high, but I definitely wanted to have a relatively comparable time to my spring times.

 I was very happy with 17:57. This was a tougher 5K course, with about 40 ft of net uphill and a significant hill for the last 1/2 mile.

First mile was 5:30. Good pace, mostly gradual downhill. It was good to have Emily there so I didn't go out too slow or too fast. Mile 2 was 5:43 - overall pretty flat. At this point, I figured that if I could run a 6 min mile for mile 3, sub-18 was possible. That hill at the end was pretty brutal! I hit the third mile at 6:05. In the final stretch I saw 17:50 on the clock, sprinted to hit 17:57 at the finish line. 

It's good to know that I haven't lost too much fitness in the last two months. I took it pretty easy with running for about a month to heal my back, but did lots of cross training to maintain the workload. My core was the first thing to tire this morning. I'm going to focus on strengthening that and get some more long runs in. Then it's TOU half marathon time!

Warmup 2 miles and cooldown 4 miles with Stefanie Talley, Emily, Susannah, and Jake. Fun group - the best part of the morning. Worst part - there was no more Chick-fil-a when we got back!!!

 PM - Mountain biking out-and-back to Dog Lake ~1000ft and 6 miles. The trail was very smooth and gradual, which made for a nice ride. The best part, though, was seeing the cutest Vizsla puppy (I love dogs but can't get one right now, so keep me in mind if you need a dog-sitter)! On the way down the canyon, stopped at Pipeline trail and ran about a mile out, then saw a rattlesnake!! Turned around immediately after that. 2 miles for the shakeout.