Recovering From Microfracture Surgery

AM - The UHM with Sasha but today it was only uneventful if one describes the pace. However, it was eventful in that the trail is all ice and snow still and it was 24'F. It made for some slow going and some close calls. We were sub 8:00 average but not by a ton. The only thing that I worries me about the ice is my knee. It was ok today but I felt it a few times when I slipped. I need to be cautious with the ice and make sure I do not take cause more issues. I think for the winter it becomes a base building phase because of the weather. Plan is to keep the miles up but probably less quality as weather dictates. I would like to convince Sasha to go to the indoor track for a workout every once in awhile if the weather prevents us otherwise. We will see how things go.

PM - Added 3.2 easy miles tonight with boys.

AM - 14.1 miles on the Provo River Trail with Sasha at 5:00am in the dark and cold (19'F). Started a little fster than yesterday and slowly got faster. Even with the dark, snow and ice we were able to get under 6:30 eventually. Average pace for whole run was 6:48.

PM - No PM run. Family had other plans and I guess I just didn't feel like it. I am making myself feel better by telling myself that it is ok to not double every once in awhile. I guess it is sad in a way that I have to justify to myself that it is ok to not run a second run occasionally. Some would call this a sign of an addiction but in this case I guess it is at least a good addiction. Still looking at getting 90-100 miles this week as long as the knee doesn't act up. Then upwards and onwards from there!

AM - Had work commitments this morning at 5:30am so ended up running at 7:00am and decieded to run indoors on the BYU track. It is 5 laps to the mile so I did 50 laps. I am not a big fan of the indoor track but the BYU track is pretty nice and at least their is no ice on the ground. I figured I would just run comfortably and just try and gradually pick up each mile based on how I felt. I did not have a tempo planned but this sort of turned into a tempo as I went. The first mile felt very easy and was a 7:10 so I just kept rolling from there as I kept going I realized every lap was getting gradually faster and each mile kept dropping without a lot of effort so i just went with the flow. At 5 miles I realized I could catch the 6:30 guy without much effort so went after him. With two miles to go I realized I had caught the 6:30 guy and decided to keep up the effort and see if I could hit 64 minutes for 10 miles. I ended up at exactly 64 minutes so 6:24 average for the 10 miles. Splits are below (I only listed mile splits instead of listing all 50 boring laps):

1	7:10
2	6:38
3	6:30
4	6:24
5	6:23
6	6:21
7	6:15
8	6:12
9	6:08
10	5:59

PM - Took James and Jared over and joined Sasha for evening run with kids followed by an easy 5 miles. So 18.1 for the day total.

AM - Very cold morning at 15'F. Easy uneventful 15.1 miles at 7:24 average. However, someone passed Sasha and I going the other direction at about 8 miles into our run and when we turned around Sasha starting picking it up. I was not in the mood to pick it up so was a little cranky when he did. He said he wanted to catch the person and we could do so running 6:00 pace. I just was not in the mood to go any faster than 6:30. Physically not much holding me back from doing so just mentally I was not willing to do so. So Sasha went ahead anyway and I just stayed stubborn and grumpy and chugged along at 6:30 pace. I caught up to Sasha and the other person, Tyler shortly there after. Met Tyler and found out he was a decent high school runner and is trying to get back in shape. So I think we convinced him to join the blog. If so he has potential to be pretty fsat with the right training.

PM - James wanted to do a 1 mile time trial today so I took him to the BYU indoor track and we did 1 mile warm up then 1 mile time trial then 1 mile cool down. He was sick with the cold and cough that I have had so I was not sure how he would do but he wanted to do it anyway so we went ahead and did it. The BYU indoor track is 5 laps to the mile. James started pretty fast the first lap and then settled in. He struggled a little on laps 3 and 4 but then finished well. He was pretty happy since he set his PR with no competition on an indoor track and with a cold. He really wants an FRB singlet for running 5K races so I guess I will have to order one from Steve for him. Anyway his splits were as follows:

1:03, 1:06, 1:07, 1:09, 1:05 = 5:30 mile
 

AM - Uneventful 15.1 miles with Sasha. We chated about a lot of things this morning which makes the run much more pleasurable. We averaged about 7:30 pace overall. Other than the fresh snow making it slick outside it was pretty uneventful.

PM - 3 miles with James easy pace average 7:40. Off to a work Christmas Party.

AM - 16.1 miles at 7:15 average. Just an easy run with Sasha along the Provo River. Measured stride length in snow and discovered I have some big differences in stride length from left to right foot and also some big differences in how the feet strike and leave the ground. Not sure how to fix this or if it is fixable but I'm sure it does not help my running. This was not a surprise to me because my shoe wear patterns are very different as well. I think it is a hip issue but I am not sure who to go to to get it checked out and ultimately adjusted or fixed.