Blake Bennions running

We ran an easy 7.5 miles, the best buy loop and then a mile on the track. I've been feeling sick ever since the day after state, but I started feeling better close to the end of work. It was windy, and my lungs hurt during the run but that was just because I'm sick. Besides that the run was ok, the pace was a little slow for an easy long run but it wasn't too bad. I'm ready for the very tough month of training that I am about to begin, I'm willing to go through any training and do my best, whatever will get me what I need for nationals. I figured that to compete with lone peak all of our top 5 guys would need to be under 16:00 or close to it at Nike Southwest. Its a fast course but I still need to train a lot and improve a lot before I can talk about breaking 16:00 on that course myself.

Today we ran to the gully and did an workout of 8 hills at a hard effort, at the top of each hill we would alternate between 25 push ups and 25 sit ups. It was a really good workout for me, I'm still a little sick and my lungs are feeling bad, I've been wheezing a lot this week. But I pushed through and had a good workout, then we ran back to alta and did 8 laps on the track, 200 of each lap was hard and 200 was easy. This was also tough but we pushed through and I felt good about them, it was a good workout today.

Am: 6.25 around the school and on the track. It was easy but I also was a little tired.

Pm: We ran the best buy loop, it was sort of annoying because we started out really slow and I kept on saying stuff like "so we're supposed to be doing this in about 45 minutes right" and everyone would sort of be like yeah. And I was a little annoyed at how slow we were going, so when we hit mile 3 at 24 minutes I started picking up the pace down the hill, we ended up finishing the best buy loop with a 6 minute mile which in my opinion was really stupid because we didn't run a single mile of the workout like we were supposed to. The top group finished in 46 something. My lungs are still hurting, and I'm still wheezing a lot. This kind of workout makes me really just want to go back to playing soccer or something, also I'm a lot better at soccer and it's a whole lot easier. I am very frustrated.

Am- We ran 6.5 around the school and on the track, it was easy and I was less tired than yesterday during the run.

Pm- 2 mile warm up followed by 2x1600 with 1 lap/5 minutes rest. My 1600s were horrible, 5:12 and 5:29. I felt very bad, overall I've been feeling less sick but my lungs are still feeling bad. I can't breathe deeply, I don't know if it's just that my asthma is getting worse or if I got some weird sickness. My lungs haven't felt like this since I was much younger, like over 10 years. My wheezing is still bad, it makes a weird noise when I breathe deeply. But I'm sure it will go away soon. My arms also hurt a lot on these. I'm getting more and more frustrated with this. I think I need to concentrate and be more positive, but its tough because I don't know what to be positive and confident about.

6.4 easy miles with the team. I felt pretty good, we did the upper half of the best buy loop, then a mile on the track, and then the lower loop. I'm going to Ender's game tonight!

Am: We ran at liberty park today, it was ok, I like liberty park but I didn't run very well. I saw my team as a I was driving in to park and they were well over half a mile ahead of me so I ran at a hard pace for the first lap trying ot catch them. I caught up after about a lap and then we did 3 laps easy before 2 more tempo laps. The tempo laps were very bad for me, my lungs are getting worse if anything, and I was really tired and I just ran bad. My foot started hurting pretty bad at some point in the run and it kept hurting until I got home, it feels ok now. But my lungs are a huge problem, theyre making me feel like crap when I am and when I am not running, I've been wheezing and when I take a deep breath my lungs react really weird, make a weird noise and sometimes do this weird shaky thing. I've been taking my asthma medicine zrtec or cingular, I'm not sure. But I've taken that every day since I've been running this season pretty much, and I've taken albutoral a few times this week, I really want to avoid the inhaled steroids because they mess with my throat a lot. All I can do is keep running and hopefully it will get better before Nike SouthWest. I think I will do another 2.6 today so that I can get 60 miles for the week, that would be a good acomplishment.

Pm: I got home from work and did another 2.6, i did about a mile of it with my brother because we were checking to see if the tennis courts were open. My lungs feel bad, which makes me feel bad. I don't feel like I'm in good shape right now, mostly that's because it's been a long hard week and my lungs are having trouble. But I got over 60 miles this week!!! I'm really happy about this, I'm excited to think that next year I might be able to hit 75 some weeks, maybe 80. I think at the end of next cross country season I might try to do a 100 mile week. But thats far away, lots of things I want to do before then.