Blake Bennions running

Ran the Gully Longer run with Kramer, David and pulpy, it was great to see Kramer again and hear about his mission! Jacob Alred was there too, it was awesome to see him too! Then Coach Murphy took us to breakfast, great day!

Ran with Kramer, Jacob and Coach Murphy. I did 2 flying forties and wow, I have not sprinted in a long time! It felt like I ripped my quads apart haha. That's something I need to remember, I haven't even started any speedwork yet so if I'm already as fast as I was going into senior xc coming off a 4:31 1600m and speed is that foriegn to me, I think I can do great this season! I ran some more after we did core work in the gym.

7 easy miles at Porter Rockwell. Ready for a good alts run tomorrow and then Friday and Saturday I will do like 7-8 mile runs.

I feel great! Definitely feel I am at an improved level of fitness, I don't think I've ever felt so strong on an alta run. I felt great going up and the campground loops felt awesome, the way back was a lot of fun too. So I'm feeling confident about things! I need to get my speed back though, tomorrow I will do a few flying forties with some interval work. And of course I need to improve my core. Also today was the first day of the year that I've done a long run without having bad bowel problems. I also finally started on the vitamins I'm supposed to be taking for suu so maybe that's a factor in me feeling better too! So tomorrow I need to get up early for that workout, and then saturday I'm not sure if I'm going to do a 3 mile run or an 8 mile run. Or its possible that I will take saturday off and run sunday instead. I guess we will see. Time to start taking the weekends harder. I have no clue when the next time I race is, and I'm not sure what the progression run is that I am doing my first week at suu. But I feel like I'm going to do really well the next time I get to test my fitness!

An good paced 7 miles, kept it under 6:45 per mile and did 4 flying 40s on the Brighton track, I also got a lot of strength training in helping my brother move all day. Saturday was off, my body was feeling a little drained from all the lifting and stuff. Sunday will be a normal run, probably like 6 miles. Then one last week of training with Alta before I move on down to Cedar City! I guess I have 9 days before that mysterious progression run.

Felt a little off today so I just ran 4. I was feeling a little more normal towards the end. Gully tomorrow!

Hmm, mediocre feeling run today. I slept in today and missed running with the team so that was sad. So I took today to run faster paces instead. I ran 1.5 in the park outside of the rec center at under 7:00 pace after hot tubbing and then went inside for 4.8 on the treadmill at 6:20 pace. I was going to do 6 miles on the treadmill but I was short on time.  I probably would have finished just for the mental boost but I was already running a little late. At 3 miles I was thinking of cutting it off at 4.5 because of the time and then when I got there I thought I might as well run 30 minutes on the treadmill. Then I hurried off to work. 6:20 pace felt a little more uncomfortable after the first 2 or 3 miles than I would like, not too bad, but not as good as I would like. But I only need to be running 6:45 pace on my runs at SUU this fall so its ok if 6:20 isn't as easy as I want it to be. I also saw that there were no swiss runners fast enough to represent them at the European Athletic Championships in the 800m, 1500m, 3000m steeplechase, or 5000m this year, so if I can get a lot faster over the next few years hopefully I can represent the Swiss in one or a couple of those events. I don't know exactly what times I need to be allowed to compete, but I will find out and those will be my goals! My dream is to get to compete there for 2018 or 2020! The actual qualifying standards are pretty dang fast but if no swiss runners reach those times they can send 1 unqualified athlete. So my goal is under 1:50 for the 800m, and the standard is like 1:47.6 so I'm hoping if I run like 1:49 my senior year then that will be good enough that they will let me in :p. But who knows, I haven't even started my college running, maybe I will reach these goals earlier and shoot higher, or maybe I will never run faster than 1:55. Maybe the 800m won't be a strong event in college, and I will be a 5000m runner, this year I'm just starting and getting into college running shape. I'm just going to do my best and enjoy running, but still having something really cool and exciting to hope for is motivating!

Haven't been feeling too fast this week, I ran treadmill and then over to Brighton track, I did 4 flying 40s and then I ran back to the rec center. I ran into Tayte at the track and we ran together for a little, that was cool! I slept in to 8:13 today so I missed going to practice again, I have been going to bed early but then getting up has been harder, weird weird week. Oh well, I got todays workout done. Tomorrow I will be at porter rockwell for sure! Also last day of work so that's good. So I will run a good 25ish miles the next 3 days and then I will do like 4 saturday, sunday off and then monday is the first practice with SUU!

Nice run with the team today, felt solid. Tomorrow will be a nice long run and then at Alta, last one of the year and my last practice with Alta. It's coming quick!

10 miles at Alta I ran with Brandon mostly, we stayed with David and Fin on the way up. It felt pretty good. Last practice with the team today, both girls and guys teams are going to do really well this season, a lot of young strong runners who can make Alta a powerhouse in the coming seasons! Tomorrow I will run with Kramer and Andrew and then Saturday going to Cedar City!

Ran with Kramer, Andrew, and Brady, first time meeting Brady so that was cool! Today's run was a lot of fun, we ran 3.5 miles up dimpledell road from Kramer's house and then back. Those guys are going to be so good at byu, I want to keep up and be as fast as they're going to be!

I will do anything easy shakeout run with Tayte this afternoon and then that will be the last run before I leave.

3 cool down miles with Tayte after his track workout we ran from Brighton to the rec center and around that area, felt good. Just getting the last stuff ready to go I'm leaving in just 16 hours!

Ran with guys from the team for the first, ran with my roommates and 3 really fast guys from the team. My roommates are really good too, on has a 1:53 800m, another has a 8:30 3000m and Sub 4:00 1500m. So they're fast guys! The run was really fun and decently fast, like 7:00 I like it here!

Ran with the whole team after a team meeting, lots of fast guys, I like it. We ran at about 6:50 and I went with the group that went 7-8 instead of 10 because I wanted to take it easy before the progression run. Which apparanatly is a warm up at 7:00 then 6:45 then 3 laps at 6:00 to keep warming up, then 5 at 87 per lap, 6 at 85 per lap, 4 at 80 per lap and then like faster a second each lap until 75-76 and then a mile all out. I just have the mentality that I'm not going to drop off until after the 80s. I know I can make it past the 5:40 pace and then all I need to do is be tough for those next 4 laps.

Progression run today, just got home. I felt good going through the 5 lap first progression, the last 2 laps I started feeling it a bit, the 2nd progression was 6 laps and I was feeling good the first half and the. It started getting harder and harder, when it dropped for the 3rd progression it got really tough haha, I struggled to hang on the first lap and then the 2nd lap everyone behind me had fallen off and the 3 guys in front of me started falling off and I fell with them and I got pulled off at the end of it. So 2 laps away from finishing the 3rd progression. Dang. I still stayed on pretty far, a decent amount of guys fell off before me. Nothing to be embarrassed about, not even that dissapointed. I wish I had made it past the 3rd progression but this is where I'm at and I'm going to build on this until I'm with that very top group that went 4:40s for the last mile.

I made camp!! So I'm leaving in less than an hour, I got all my gear except my uniform this morning haha, I'll have to get that sorted out. Definitely keeping me on my toes, I think I will be able to get in a rhthym after the first week of school, 6:30 practice everyday will be interesting haha

4 miles, hard for a 4 mile run, no such thing as an easy run now a days haha. Also got to hot tub and hang out with the team,awesome lodge we are staying at, got a ton of free gear today!

I feel a little out of league right now haha, so much talent, such high level runners and everyone at this camp is really fast. We did a shake out run this morning, we do a form mile to warm up before every run that doesn't count as official mileage but for fastrunningblog purposes I'm counting it because it kind of throwing me off that the mileage is so hard and the I put in a low mileage day.

I got to meet with my coach today and we discussed what the plan for me is, he said I did great in the progression run and I'm ahead of where I need to be so he's going to have me start speed and everything now and get me racing :). I am redshirting though so I will have to go to races on my own but I'm really excited for that. Coach Houle is amazing, he really believes I can be as great as the best runners on the team and I really want to work hard and eventually I will get there. It can be hard not to let all this struggling get to me, its not been easy to have to try so hard on each run and still just be hanging on the back of the pack haha. Today we ran a shake out run in the morning where i got 3 miles and then I did 10 miles at Navajo lake in the afternoon. I kept with everyone until mile 2-3 and then I had to bowel problems and I had to dart off the course and lost a few minutes, I tried to catch up but eventually I hit a fork and I decided it wouldn't be good if I got lost and made everyone wait my first week so I turned around haha. That place is beautiful though, the valcanic rock and the lake and everything is just great! I just need to keep on trying hard, it just feels like my trying hard is little pathetic right now haha. But I need to remember when I started out at alta I was the slowest kid on the team my first alta run and I didn't do so hot for a little while but I just did what coach Murphy told me to do for a few years and I ended up where I needed to be despite a lot of rough patches and failures. I had some great successes!

Bleh, I ran the full 10 mile run after the warm up and got my butt handed to me, I came in a few minutes after the next to last person. With 4 miles left I felt compeletely dead, like I didn't have half a mile left in me. But I made it through and Hayden came back and finished the last mile with me which was nice. I don't think I've ever felt so wasted after a run, I don't get it, like I was fine at Alta last week. Oh well, these things take time. It was a very hard run but I think I pushed through it well. I just need to trust in the coach's and the veterans and keep believing that if continue working hard and doing everything asked of me then I will get faster and adapt to the collegiate level. Coach said I need to keep it to 6 miles per day the next 2 weeks, which including the warm up is 7 which if I run every day is 49 miles so that's good. I might take tomorrow off from running, actually I will take tomorrow off and then I will do an easiesh run sunday. The other thing I need to remember is that I can't always be at my best, I will have rough patches like this and I just need to get through them. Also since I've been avoiding gluten the past 6 months I haven't eaten the best food for running at camp haha, so there are a lot of factors. I need to get back to cedar and find my groove and just get to work.

We did a shake out run this morning, I turned around with the first group because today is recovery day. Last night was fun!

Ran with Bryan and Brady, 2 Nevada 800m state champion freshmen, they were in the 2 biggest divisions. Brady is my roommate and runs 1:53 and Bryan will soon hopefully be my roommate too and he runs 1:55. So we ran 3 miles up the canyon and then turned around and raced back and I got back to the track first! That was a lot of fun, my classes were good, I want to get straight As this semester! I think my online class could be challenging because its not only higher level, I've never taken an online class but I am working ahead and will read yhr text book very carefully!

Ran with Bryan and Brady again and kind of same story we went out 3 and turned back and the last 1.5ish miles we started picking it up and by the last mile or so we were racing again and I got back first again! Brady came in last and he ran 5:30 for the last mile so I went pretty darn fast :). We averaged about 6:30 for the run which is great, and the first mile of the 6 is easy so I started 7:20 and ended like 5:20 or something, maybe faster. Just a great run, I want to get do I can run under 5:00 for that last mile without trouble!

Seriously got 2 hours of sleep last night, I got in bed right when I should have but it took me 6 hours to fall asleep :(. But I woke up and went to practice and I did a super fast run, o dropped everyone in my group by mile 3 and kept going hard. We went to this giant grass loop and I didn't have a gsrmin so I was relying on other people, when I had done 2 I saw coach who was riding on his bike and I asked him how many would be 6 miles and he said to do 4 laps so I did 4 but when I got back I found out that Brian and Brady had done 2 laps and gotten 5.5 and the loop is over a mile. So I did a little more them I needed, it felt great though so its awesome! I guess all that grass running this summer payed off haha, its not as hard for me anymore. Road race is Friday so tomorrow I will take the pace a little easier. Today the last guy keeping with me said we were going sub 6:00 pace so I slowed to it like 6:20. But yeah, fast and fun run today!

Pre-race today, lots of grass running. I tried to take it easier but still did 6:20 or faster for most of it. The last mile I did easier. Afterwards we did 5x100m hard. We are being split into teams for the road race tomorrow, some people arent racing but out of the 24 guys who are, like 4 of us slowest/getting into shape runners are on the same team of the 3 haha. I don't think the guy who drafted our team is very good at of lol, we have some really good guys though and it will be a lot of fun. But the great thing is that 5 guys of 8 on each team score and my teams number 5 is wide open for someone to take. The top 4 are pretty solid, but I'm going to race hard to get the number 5 spot on our team and minimize the gap!

Another interesting thing, originally there were about 13 freshman runners and now there are 8. Of those 8 I took 5th on the progression run and one of the guys ahead of me is only doing 15 minutes per day right now, the top 3 are all pretty good so I want to catch up to them this season!

We had the road race today, pretty intense, flotrack is going to regret not ranking our team in the top 30 when they see we are even stronger than last year. Again I only got 2 hours of sleep last night, I need to stop taking naps. I forgot about one of the freshman who beat me on the progression run, so I actually took 6th out of 9th on the progression run I think, maybe i took 5th i cant remember. And today I took 6th out of 8 freshman. One of the freshman isnt much faster than me and he's straight out of high school so I know I can catch him soon, another one has lots of natural talent but is at like 2 miles a day, he trained inconsistently this year but he's been training inconsistently longer than I've been training consistently, but I know I can catch him the next time we will race at the SUU home meet. Then there are the top 3 freshman right out of high school who all put in good summer training and are really good runners. By the end of the year I want to have caught up to that group. My goal for this race was to run under 27:00 and I got really close! Especially considering I was sore and not well rested. The race is pretty much an 8k, shortened a bit to make up for altitude. Its the first time I've really run a race of this intensity over the distance of 5k so it was a good experience.

Good long run with Mark, Mark is a transfer from community college level running, he took 4th in the 10000m national championship for community college track which is awesome! We did 11 miles at an easy pace, the last 4 were on the track but it didn't seem like we were on there for that long. Running with company is always so much easier than on your own. Then after the run we talked for another hour, it was really cool to get to know him! To give you an idea of how good our team is, Mark took 10th at the road race yesterday with a 24:50. Yeah for an 8k. Hes redshirting this year too. There was a big dance thing going on across from the track, I promised myself I would never have to go to another one of those things after high school but unfortunately people still do them in college. I'd much rather be running! Pretty good day today :)! When I don't eat in the dining hall with runners I eat with the international students and that's always a really cool experience, today I found out that one of my friends from austalia ran a 1:52 800m and he's trying to get a SAT done so he can compete for our track team this spring!

Drill laps, form mile and then a 7.5 mile run with Brady and Brian, but Brady did his weekend long run like 9 hours before the run and he fell off so I just ran with Brian most of the time. The first couple miles felt a little stressed but then it opened up and I felt great going about 6:30, felt pretty easy somehow. I kept picking up the pace thinking I needed to go faster to get in the goal range but then Brian would be like, you're going under 6:15 per mile pace so I would slow back down. We did 5x100m at 75% afterwards so that was good. Then we had weights and then I sprinted to the PE building to shower before my class at 10:00, 15 minutes after weights ended. So yeah, being a student-athlete is fun. The first 20 minutes of every day I regret my life but then I feel good once I wake up all the way haha.

Good hard workout today, first track workout of the year, I ran pretty well, its definitely a lot harder than it was back when I was used to be in good shape before my mission haha. It will come back though, I'm really happy with my aerobic fitness and my efficiency. And both of those will dramatically increased by the end of the year, and since I just barely started doing speed/strength, I'm going to be really fast in a few months, I think I will be able to run some good PRs this year.

Warmed up and did form mile and then started our run of 7 miles for me and Brian and less for everyone else in the group. We stayed in the range until the last mile it was slightly downhill and there were lots of girls walking to their classes who we needed to impress so we ended with a 5:41 mile haha. Then I did 6 100m striders. Weights were nice, its really nice because at the athletes weight room they keep food for us. I always have a gronola bar and a cup of chocolate milk after my run and before weights, so its perfect for recovery. Weights are pretty easy right now, mostly teaching us how to do everything properly. I am sore from yesterdays workout haha, I love being sore, it means I'm getting faster.