The sun is up, the air is fresh, the stone is old

Relaxed run along the Logan River Trail

Track today at Logan High.  3 mile warm up, 8X1 mile with 400 slow jog in between.  3 mile easy cool down jog.  Aiming for 5:50 pace and ending up between 5:48 and 5:53, so pretty happy with this workout today.

I ran the Logan trail to Bridger trail to Crimson trail today up through the snow level at 7,000 feet.  Very sore knee from the last five days of running but really had a good time.  I rate  Crimson personally as one of my top ten trails in the US and it's virtually in my backyard.  So much freakin fun.  Not epic but fun.  It was good to get some of it with the Gopro since I've ran it a lot but never got pics.  This morning I also got my sponsorship pack from Gopro which is pretty neat and has a few headband mounts for runners not even on the market yet.

Strange enough considering 8 months of mediocre races, I received an elite invite to Bloomsday this weekend to race as a Master.  I'm sure it's only since a real master dropped out but still fun to get.  It looks like a fun race but seeing my total lack of conditioning it would be embarrassing.  Plus the kids want to go somewhere with the motorhome and I'm not driving that thing to Spokane.

 Follow up on the knee today and it hasn't gotten worse so I'm going to live with it the way it is for this year and take lots of vitamin I. 

I used the word fun four times in this report.  I'm considering using it to replace epic. 

1 mile easy, 6@6 pace, 1 easy.

Nice level pavement run.  Taking it easy today.  Again.  My daughter and I have been prepping for some time for her first debate meet today.  At 11 years old I have been pretty sceptical about this being anything useful.  But the kids did a great job.  It could be the subject matter; if parents should limit screen time and game time to one hour per day.  She was given the opposing presentation, that kids should not be limited.  I was wondering what she would say since we have no defined limits on things (but we have no internet or cable either).  

The other team made their argument first, explaining why TV and games hurt society when watched too much, showed obesity stats in the US, and how TV "rots" children's brains.  Natalie's partner then got up and explained how his hero Jackie Chan learned English by watching TV and ended up more successful than all the adults in the room.  So the other team came back with yeah, but he's one in a billion, and showed more stats on how average game and smart phone time for children in the country is up to 4 hours per day and costing the US 7 billion a year in lost productivity.  But then Nat got up and said she agreed with all of the other team's points and that they propose screen time be even less than the pro argument at three hours a week, but instead of forcing limits on kids their parents should take them out to do things more fun than video games and the whole issue would be resolved.  That kind of ended the debate since the other kids didn't know how to argue a point with someone who seemed to agree with them.  

The debate judge loved it, and I might have found something my daughter likes doing besides taking care of stray animals. 

6 mile Fartlek, low effort.  I need a tempo run tomorrow so I've been looking at any halts around.  Walter got me an entry to the Dino Half in Vernal and I was able to get an entry to the Provo Half.  Dino Half is a faster course but further to drive.  But the kids want to see the Wall of Bones which is finally open again.  I'm thinking we will decide tonight.

Just happy to have survived this one.  I promised my kids and the neighbors that I'd take them camping, and I really wanted to run this Half with a friend.  The kids and I did our bonfire on the beach until midnight and I finally got them asleep in the RV and drove back home so my neighbor could take over.  By that time it was 2:30 am and just enough time to hop in the car and drive down to Provo to meet my friend.  It was her first Half so she was pretty nervous.  

At the start she went for what looked like a 40 minute line for porta pottys and I went for a warm up.  I found James and we ran together for a bit which was cool since I haven't had a chance to talk to him for a long time.  The start was as smashed as I've seen in a while.  I couldn't find a place to stand so I squished in about 3 deep back just ahead of the "fast women".  I asked them kindly to please not run over me at the start.  One told me to get behind them then, where I belong.  :-)  Yes, she was serious.

I felt a 5:45 pace would be a good goal and just focused on running that.  I wasn't paying attention and did two 6:10 miles when the course leveled out.  I had to pick it up for the last two to make some of that up.  Great course, not as fast as Timp.