Recovering From Microfracture Surgery

Well, I joined Sasha and jeff at 4:30am to go up to Park City. The main reason I went is that I really do not enjoy doing my long run by myself and if I did it by myself I would not have pushed as hard and possibly not have gone as far. So, the first goal was to be very conservative on the first half as it was uphill and then if I felt ok put in a tempo effort on the second half. Like Sasha dscribed the course is a tough one with the climbing and the elevation along with the fact that the majority of the trail was a loose gravel surface. The climb the first 3 miles was a very gradual increase each mile which was noticable but not grueling. Then the climbing really started and became more and more of a challenge the last 3 miles with the final mile the steepest and at close to 7000'ft. At the first mile I linked up with two other runners that were running (Kieth and Brian I think) at what I felt was a comfortable pace for the climb. I did not want to feel as if I was racing until after the turn around and that is how I pretty much felt. At the first mile I was in 10th overall with Kieth and Brian right in front ( I was comfortable drafting at this point). The next runner was an unknown and then two Wasatch Athletics runners and way out in front was Paul, Jeff and Sasha followed closely by Chris. It stayed like this until about 4.5 miles and Kieth, Brian and I caught the two Wasatch runners. At this point some of the old racing instinct kicked in a little and I actually picked up the pace and went past them and started to drop Brian and Kieth. As I did this I felt good but realized that I did not really care to run the rest of the uphill by myself and slowed up a little and looked back and asked Brain and Kieth to stick with me. We linked back up and continued as a group until the half way point. Just before the half point I saw Sasha and Jeff in the lead and I noticed that Jeff actually looked very smooth and relaxed and thought to myself that he looked a lot better than Sasha. Sasha looked ok but Jeff looked better at this point. Then came Chris and Bob pretty much together followed by the unknown runner. Brian, Kieth and I made the turn at 44:11 and the Garmin read 6.57 miles so pretty much right on. Shortly after the turn Brian's shoe came untied and he stopped to tie it and I did not see him again. Kieth stuck with me as I gradually picked up the pace knowing that I felt decent and it was time to put in what felt like a true marathon pace tempo effort. By the 7.5 mile mark Kieth had slowed and I was on my own until the finish. Their were several turns on the trail that were sharp and narrow on the gravel that I actually had to slow a bit for to avoid slipping or swinging to wide and catching the fence but other than that I was able to maintain a pretty steady effort the whole way to the finish. I ended up 6th overall with a time of 1:23:28 running 39:17 for the second half which gave me a 4:54 negative split. Overall I am happy with the workout and think that I actually ran a faster effort that the Provo 1/2. I am also pleased as I ran well and will be at 99 miles this week on six days of running. Just need to keep the miles up and hope for a chance to get into St. George. My splits and info from Garmin are below:

Mile	Splits	Avg. Heart Rate	Ascent	Descent	Net Elev. Gain/Loss
1	6:33	155	121	108	+13
2	6:30	160	95	45	+50
3	6:44	163	80	20	+60
4	6:50	165	165	54	+111
5	6:50	167	191	61	+120
6	6:50	170	192	52	+125
1/2 Way	44:11	175	115	4	+111(+590)
7	6:30	167
8	5:55	165
9	6:09	165
10	6:02	165
11	5:59	167
12	6:04	170
13	5:59	170
.11	:35	174

Plan on running a couple more miles with the kids this evening.

Ran 3.65 more miles with Jared, James and Jordan. Jordan just turned 3 and begs to go run with us so I let him run around the block which is .31 miles. He did the first 400 in 2:37 today and the .31 in 3:30. Overall averaged about 8:30 for the whole run.