Going With The Flow

AM - 10 miles at Dimple Dell Park. SLOW and tired. 8:45 average pace. Jake and I almost hit a 10 min mile, but managed 9:55. Started at the Dewey Bluth Park and ran to Granite. It turned out to be exactly 5 miles out and all uphill (tough for a recovery run). At least the soft surfaces were good for the legs. 

AM - 9 miles around Millcreek, 8:20 pace. My legs still have some residual fatigue in them but should be ready for a workout by tomorrow. 

PM - 2.8 miles. Felt exhausted. I had physical therapy this afternoon and it was NOT FUN. The PT used this knife-like device (but not sharp) and rolled it across my tendon really hard. It was so painful! He said it was to get the knots out and encourage the right healing (and should make it feel better in a day or so), but I was definitely not a happy camper during the process. It still hurts. My tendon better feel peachy in a couple days!!

Regarding the track 5K - there are basically 3 options and we just want to make it a vote... we can do it any of the upcoming 3 Saturdays...

1. Oct 29th (but it would have to be in the afternoon)
2. Nov 5th
3. Nov 12th (this day we actually are planning to do a 5K time trial anyways, but I hate to schedule something at the same time as Jun's trail run)

So either vote by commenting or sending me (or Jake) an email, and we'll try to have a concrete date by the middle of this week.

AM - Horsepark loop, easy. 

PM - 2 mile tempo at marathon pace (12:37) then 5x200 w/100m jog recovery (40.5 seconds avg). This was just a short workout to get the legs moving a little faster. I was excited to run 5k pace on the 200s without any pain in my hamstring tendon. That physical therapy torture yesterday must've actually helped. Good and bad - it's healing, but now I have no excuse not to go back to PT and be in pain again! Sacrifices...

 From Logic of Long Distance  - This is how it works:

Training is doing your homework. It's not exciting. More often than not it's tedious. There is certainly no glory in it. But you stick with it, over time, and incrementally through no specific session, your body changes. Your mind becomes calloused to effort. You stop thinking of running as difficult or interesting or magical. It just becomes what you do. It becomes a habit. 
 
Workouts too become like this. Intervals, tempos, strides, hills. You go to the track, to the bottom of a hill, and your body finds the effort. You do your homework. That's training. Repetition--building deep habits, building a runner's body and a runner's mind. You do your homework, not obsessively, just regularly. Over time you grow to realize that the most important workout that you will do is the easy hour run. That's the run that makes everything else possible. You live like a clock.
 
After weeks of this, you will have a month of it. After months of it, you will have a year of it.
 
Then, after you have done this for maybe three or four years, you will wake up one morning in a hotel room at about 4:30am and do the things you have always done. You eat some instant oatmeal. Drink some Gatorade. Put on your shorts, socks, shoes, your watch. This time, though, instead of heading out alone for a solitary hour, you will head towards a big crowd of people. A few of them will be like you: they will have a lean, hungry look around their eyes, wooden legs. You will nod in their direction. Most of the rest will be distracted, talking among their friends, smiling like they are at the mall, unaware of the great and magical event that is about to take place.
 
You'll find your way to a tiny little space of solitude and wait anxiously, feeling the tang of adrenaline in your legs. You'll stand there and take a deep breath, like it's your last. An anthem will play. A gun will sound.
 
Then you will run.

AM - 6 miles easy up to Sugarhouse with Jake and back. 

PM - 3 miles around Sugarhouse.

AM - 2 miles on the treadmill. I thought about running outside, but it seemed pretty worthless to get all the cold weather clothes on for such a short run. I talked to this post-competitive triathlete guy, and he told me "Go after it while you still have your mojo". 

PM - Met up with Emily Bates for the BIG WORKOUT. Half marathon 13.1 miles in 1:22:48. Mile splits were 6:21, 6:17, 6:18, 6:11, 6:19, 6:20, 6:19, 6:20, 6:21, 6:22, 6:18, 6:18, 6:15, :45. We stayed very consistent. That was my longest tempo run by 5.1 miles! I felt pretty strong throughout - the pace got harder to maintain as the miles went on, but I didn't feel like I was struggling. Overall, a great effort. I am glad that it's behind me!

I tried out a similar outfit to what I would be wearing for race day - tank top, arm warmers, long socks, shorts. I was freezing by mile 11 - my hands were numb. I may need to rethink my clothes strategy.

I'm still trying to get over the hard effort mentally. Hopefully, I will feel confident about the marathon tomorrow.

AM - 6 miles 8:50 pace. That was about as fast as my legs would let me go this morning. Tempo run last night took all the speed out of them. I couldn't sleep past 4:30am (I never sleep well after hard workouts at night), so it will be a struggle not to fall asleep at work today.

Jake did a short video for fun last night of me running. If you look closely, you can tell that my left leg (with injured hamstring tendon) doesn't swing back nearly as far as the right leg. That's probably one of the reasons that it got hurt. Gotta work on that!

10-27 Tempo Run from Jake K on Vimeo.

We're doing a long run at Jordan River Parkway again tomorrow (3300S). It will be casual - 7:15-7:30 pace. The plan is to do a 12 mile out-and-back headed south and then an 8 mile out-and-back headed north on the trail. Start at 8am. 

AM - 20 miles with another great crew this weekend. Chad, Adam W, Adam C, Emily, Devra, Bryan, and Jake. Ended up running a pretty fast pace, 6:58 overall but 6:50 for the last 16 miles. I felt okay today but definitely still fatigued from the workout on Thursday. Three weeks of the most mileage and hard workouts = I should feel this way (what Adam told me and made me feel better). It will make me stronger for those hard miles at the end of the race. Now it's just doing the taper right. Thank goodness it's taper time! 

Group long runs are the best :) 

PM - 4.5 mile bike ride with Jake. Talking marathon - we are totally obsessed.