"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves"

I wanted to do a six mile tempo run today but once I set out, my body let me know that I was actually doing to recovery run.  Maintained a slow, but painful 9:00 for the first mile while I stretched out and then I started moving a bit better and got up to 8:30.  Still wanted to keep the pace low, though. 

Wasn't what I wanted, but what I needed.

I woke up this morning and really didn't want to run, as much as I knew I needed to.  But I remembered the 10 excuses to miss a run and knew I was right in line with some of them and pushed myself out of bed.  I felt really good, but didn't have the GPS with me so the pace is an estimate from my watch and the mile markers that I know.  The pace felt a bit faster than I would usually go so I marked it as marathon pace. So yeah, 9.5 miles on a day I didn't want to run.

8 mile tempo run today.  I woke up tired again, but still went running.  Splits:

 1.0- 8:46 nice warm-up mile right on.

2.0 - 8:04 Took it a bit faster, but still let my legs warm-up.

3.0 - 7:27 I was trying to hit 7:30 and it felt pretty good.  Just two weeks ago I normally ran at this kind of a pace.  It was easy to maintain, but I really hope these slower times are helping my running like McMillan says they will.

4.0 - 8:25 Rest mile

5.0 - 7:18 Trying to hit 7:15 but missed it by a little.  I struggled to set my pace this mile and was going all over between 6:30 and 8:00 pace.  Body now has enough water on it to overflow Hoover Dam.

6.0 - 9:35 Didn't mean to go this slow, but I took a little break and got some water, plus there was a steep hill where I gained over 300 feet.

7.0 - 6:42 Wanted it to be 6:30 but I was feeling the previous days' run.

8.0 - No time, but half of it was barefoot! Their were two different pavement methods used on my street.  One produced a nice flat surface which is good for running, whereas the other uses gravel and hurts my feet.  Barefoot running dominates.

I was feeling a little nauseous this morning and convinced myself that I didn't need to go on a run even though I felt better right when I normally start running.  So I sat around at home until I was about to have a morning nap around 10:30 and looked at this site.  Felt guilty and checked the temperature and pulled off an 8 mile run.  I did something of a tempo run yesterday, and did more of a Fartlek today. Same course, but backwards.

Warmed-up for 2 miles or so and started striding out to 5:30-6:30 pace.  It was a bit uneven pacewise, but I would stride for two lamposts and jog for three lamposts.

 Halfway through the fourth mile I had to "take care of business" and finally discovered a useful purpose for tamarisk trees, if you know what I mean. This break let my breakfast and yesterday's miles catch up to me and I dealt with quite the stomachache for the rest of the run. (Only reason I mentioned my break)

I'll be participating in an "active recovery" run tomorrow rather than a "passive recovery." This site has helped me so much.  Thank you Sasha, you are definitely my running hero. I look at your blog entries whenever I'm feeling down about my running and see what can be done if I just go out and work.

Pulled off a 16.5 mile run. I ran up through Ivins and over to Bluff Street.  I went up the marathon course four miles and turned around.  It was really hard going backwards, but once I started going on the actual course, it felt really good (around mile 12) and I started moving a lot faster.  The marathon is going to be great.