Blake Bennions running

Neck got strained while sleeping over the weekend, I guess I slept on it funny. Kept spasming whenever I moved wrong for a couple days and had slowly been getting better.

Felt alright today, legs felt heavy and rough and my neck was tight and sore. Did some slow strides getting up to maybe high 5 minute pace.

I'm supposed to be racing a mile this weekend, we'll see how it goes.

4:47 mile at the Weber state classic. I was in the slowest heat and there were 20 runners and they put 8 of us in the 2nd row which kinda sucked. My plan had been to go out hard and try to take the lead or close to it and then hang onto lane 1 and see how long I could hold on. But starting in row 2 I had to start in the back and pick people off. I prioritized staying in lane 1 which killed my momentum on numerous occasions.

Painful race but I pushed through pretty well. My goals were pretty much run 4:40s and not embarrass myself and I feel pretty good. I took 12th in my heat and beat a UVU guy. I think I actually enjoy track more now in some ways, I don't take the races as seriously as I used to and there's not nearly as much pressure as I used to feel... track lung definitely sucks though. I'll definitely do some more of these and try out some different strategies. Fun to do a track race again!

Gully long run with a bit of warm up and cool down. I ran it pretty close to max effort, probably like 80-90% of a race effort. Finished 6.4 miles in 41:30, averaged 6:29/mile. My goal was just to go out and have a fast fun gully run and keep under 7 minutes for every mile, I ended up running 7:02 for mile 4 but overall it went well and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm happy I'm getting back into pretty good shape, the numbers and specific goals I set for myself would be nice to hit but the real thing I want is what I have- being able to run fast on a challenging course and feel good.

Also I thought the gully long run was only 6.25 miles so I might have started or finished at the wrong point. Either way, beautiful run and great time!

Feeling very grateful to be where I am and doing what I'm doing these days, life is good. Lots of stuff coming up that I'd really like to knock out of the park!