A clydesdale no more!

Felt "off" this morning so I skipped the planned run.  Assumed I would end up with a goose egg for the day but had the chance to run right after work.  Becky left from her daughter's dance and I left from home with the plan of catching up to her (she had less than a mile head start).  Ran the first mile in 6:30 (slightly uphill) and felt light headed.  I am not used to running in the afternoon and it took a minute to get into a groove.  Got to the point where our path's met and couldn't see her in either direction.  Decided to continue going for another mile and would turn back if I didn't see her at that point.  Ran the second mile in 6:20 and felt really good.  Turned around and realized I had gotten ahead of her.  Waited for her to catch up and we ran 5 miles together at a comfortable pace.  Dropped her off and decided to ran the last mile at 5k pace.  The first 1/2 mile was slightly downhill which certainly made it easier.  Finished the last mile in 5:50.  These were all bonus miles and felt good to get them in.

Between running later yesterday and only getting a few hours of sleep, I was very tired and had little energy during the run this morning.  To top it off, the wind was really blowing making it difficult to maintain 9:00/mile.  Not a very enjoyable run but got the miles in.

Just an easy few miles.  Crazy that 2 days ago it was 60 degrees and I was running in shorts and a t-shirt and this morning I was basically ice skating.  Typical Utah shizophrenic spring weather.

Short on time so I had to cut a couple of miles out of the run.  Ran up to the mouth of Mueller Park canyon and back home.  Decided to change it up a bit and ran 0.25 miles hard and 0.15 easier while going up.  Felt very strong.  While coming back down, I couldn't get my legs to turnover very fast.  I really wanted to push hard on the last mile but the legs just wouldn't move.  I wasn't tired and felt like I could push a lot harder but my legs wouldn't respond.  Ended up running the last mile in 6:30.

Schedule said 17 with 14 at marathon pace.  I have been a little concerned about pacing the 1:35 group at the Riverton half so I decided to use this as a test run.  I wanted to run a little faster than the 7:15 average to account for course difficulty and the possibility of wind.  Ran 2 easy miles (7:55//mile) to the LPT then transitioned to 7:00/mile.  Pace felt very good.  I was able to lock in the pace and hold it for the entire run.  Had a little headwind on the way back which was good practice.  I started to feel glycogen depletion the last 2 miles which was a little disappointing.  I only had 12 oz of Gatorade and 1 GU so maybe with a little more fuel I could sustain the pace longer.  Splits for the MP miles were: 7:00, 7:04, 7:00, 6:56, 7:00, 7:00, 6:58, 7:02, 7:00, 6:57, 6:59, 6:58, 7:00, 6:57.  This definitely eased my concerns for pacing Riverton.