The Renegade

AM: Logan was doing a run at Logan Canyon in the morning so I joined them. It was cold as fetch. Marked my first run all summer with a long sleeved shirt, fall is definitely coming, which I'm okay with for now. I assumed it was a longer trail run, but it was actually a threshold on the upper canal trail. So I just ran with Paul and Kalin and paced them, but the last half mile I tried to drop Paul hard for fun, but it was annoying cuz he was doing a better job at "covering my moves" than I expected haha. So the splits for that were probably like 6:20, 6:05, 5:50, but I didn't even consider it a workout. Added to get 5.5. 6:34 ap.

PM: My family and I were in Farmington forever shopping so I headed out for a 3.5 mile run at 11:05 pm. It was so dark, and there werent alot of cars because of how late it was. That was actually pretty cool, it was super calm. Kinda chilly but perfect running temp.Felt good! I ran to Willow Park, did a mile loop around it, and did a lap around Woodruff's field. Either my headlamp needs new batteries or it's just super hard to see when running on grass, so I had to go slow at those parts. 7:16 ap.

Great run today! I wore my running shorts under my pants and just ran from my car after my morning class (I think I'll do that every Tuesday and Friday unless other circumstances require me to run at other times ;). Started by Old Main and headed to the XC course, ran a 1.5 around there, then up the hill on 1200 E, followed the Hwy 89 down to First Dam, and looped back on the Canal Trail. Average pace was 6:38. Felt much like my run last Tuesday, I wasn't struggling at all to run the pace, just pushing it a little more and cruising. I did notice that my cadence was naturally quicker for some reason, which I'm not complaining about. Temps were in the 60s and it was bright and sunny, basically a perfect morning. Toward the ending I was thinking about how easy it is all of a sudden to run that pace and came to the conclusion that  7 minute pace is my 7:30 pace of like a year ago. I've come far but there's still a long way to go.

Slacked off today and did not run. Well, sort of. I came home from a full day of school really tired and decided I would take a nap at 6 and get up at 7 to run. I ended up sleeping till like 10:00 am the next day. That's the end of my Monday-Saturday streack I've been keepin up, but oh well, it's an off week anyways.

Well, I met with the coach and they didn't have a spot for me on either rosters. A little bit dissapointing but I was pretty dang sure I wouldn't get on the xc squad and I was preparing myself in case track didn't take me. He told me he hopes I keep running and I can try out for a spot at the Blue and White indoor meet in December. That's three months from now, so I can get a good block of training in before then, with more emphasis on speed, probably 1500m specific. 

I went for a run after class up Logan Canyon. I wasn't feeling too good, but just went at the effort I usually do which you can't completley call easy. I felt a tiny bit of Achilles pain going up, and after I turned around it starting getting worse and worse and I had to stop and rub it a few times. I noticed it was worse when I hit a steepers section of downhill. For the last two miles it faded off and I just forgot about it and didn't make any effort to go easy like I should have. I wasn't even pushing it really, pace felt like 6:50 pace but my splits were 5:50 and 5:59. That was bizarre. When I got home, the pain was back and it was pretty bad, and I couldn't put any pressure on it. I decided not to run any more this week especially if I'm going to start a new training pursuit next week. Hopefully It'll be good on Monday. I think part of it is the fact that my runs the past few weeks have been faster just because I've gotten fitter, but my musculo-skeletal system wasn't used to it so something cracked under the pressure. It's just odd it happened in one day. Maybe it was some kind of mental-physical reaction to not making the team. I'ts prolly good I'm taking a few days off.

20 minutes of various core excersices. This was something to replace running today but I better start doing core consistently from now on because I'm missing that strength from lack of core and it shows in my form. Also I'm gonna need it for track. The foot feels a little better today.

I did more core today, this time 30 minutes. I guess 20-30 minutes isn't a lot if it's the only thing you're doing, but it was still beneficial relative to how untrained my core is.