I am one with the levee and the levee with me

Final workout before the state meet. I took Saturday through Tuesday off to rest my foot, and it seems to be getting much better. Maybe I'll have to look into some physical therapy, but I'm going to resume training as usual.

8x300m intervals in the grass at the XC course in 47.5ish with 1:15 rest (enough to jog to start). Felt like a very good sharpening workout and the guys looked good.

Ran the state course with the boys.

State meet today. Boys placed 8th with 188 points. Third place came in at 150 points... a lot of mixed feelings about the result. After looking at results around the state, I fully expected the boys to finish 3rd, but it was clear it would be very tight from about 3rd to 6th in the team scoring. Our top 3 guys did not run as well as I thought they could, even given their sickness issues. They just lost more fitness than I had expected. #2 and 3 ran better than last week but I thought they'd make up even more ground. Ah well. From barely making it out of districts to 8th at state... it really could have been worse.

The good news for me is my ankle really seems to be doing better. The scraping has been doing the trick. So next week I'll up the intensity a bit and see if I can't get my miles up. 

5 miles of the reactor run easy.

3 easy miles, ankle seems to be holding up.

I showed up to practice tonight expecting to pace our freshman to a 4:45 1600m, but they didn't show. So the rest of us debated on what our workout should be. It evolved from 1600m + 4x400m to 2x1600m in 4:45 to "let's see what we can do for 3200m." I really did not want to stress my ankle beyond the 4:45 but somehow forgot about it as we got ready to run.

The plan was for me to pace the group at 71s for as long as possible, which I thought was a joke given my recent training and tried to tell the guys I was fat and out of shape. But they didn't listen. So two 71s into the TT and I knew I was in trouble; we slowed to 4:51 through 4 laps and they continued to follow. Breathing wasn't too bad but it was the legs that got heavy really fast. I plodded along, there must have been a 75 in there once or twice, I'll figure it out in a sec, and finally with 2 laps to go Anthony (our stud sophomore) goes by. One of our seniors also goes by and on the backstretch I decided to "push" the last two. Meaning I stopped slowing down. I caught the senior again but was too tired to encourage him to follow and he fell back a bit. I was shocked to see the clock at 8:35 with a lap to go, I figured my death was much worse than that, and managed to close to cross in 9:45. Anthony blitzed a 64 final lap to finish in 9:37. It seemed like a medium effort for him, too, while I was in agony.

The ankle felt fine and I'm honestly ecstatic to have run 9:45 in my current state of fatness. A day later and my legs are angry with me, but it has me excited for getting in good shape this winter.

Splits:

71.5ish

2:23 (71-72)

3:36 (73)

4:51 (75 oops)

6:05 (74)

7:20 (75)

8:35 (75)

9:45 (70)

Ran 5 easy miles of the reactor run. Legs aren't as sore as I expected.

5 easy miles of the reactor trail. Chilly night. Saw a beaver or badger or something weird and a few deer. I heard there was a mountain lion spotted nearby recently and wondered what a person should do if they were attacked by one. 

I need to add some more tonight, but I was short on time. Paced one of our freshman to a 4:55 1600m. Apparently he did not understand he was supposed to follow me and led the first 200m in 33ish seconds. The kid is very good, although he's currently set on soccer instead of track. We'll have to work on that.

Tempo run with Justin. He's been training hard since his illness recovery and is feeling it. Today's workout was supposed to be 5-4-3-2-1 minute surge staircase, but neither of us had a watch so we did 2x1.5 miles at somewhere between 5:30 and 5:35, judging by feel.

I felt very relaxed aerobically, although my legs are feeling a little unresponsive.

7 miles, about 6:40ish pace along the reactor trail. A little tightness in the left hip, need to remember to stretch those out every day. Calves a little sore, also need to work on those.

7 easy miles, downriver on the trail.

8 miles out on the lower canal by Kamiakin. Tried to meet up with a couple of our runners, but we apparently missed each other by about 5 seconds. Oh well. Decent run, legs are feeling thrashed from the raise in mileage.

Taking it easy today for fear of injuries. 40 minutes easy tonight downriver.

Same run as yesterday to push me just over 40 for the week. Legs feeling a little better, mostly just feeling some sharpness in my arches. It always happens when I up my miles and I always expect it to get worse and cause me problems, but so far it's always been okay. I'm satisfied with the week's training. 

8 easy miles on the river trail.

A very late-night 8 miler. HR measured at 115 at the end, averaging 7:00 pace. Surprising HR since my legs feel pretty tired. My aerobic base seems to still be somewhat intact.

Easy 6 on the Provo River trail. Got into town this evening and did an easy run to shake out the legs. 6:50 average first 3 then easier on the way back to let the legs rest. Still feeling a little sore from the mileage increase. Measured HR twice, once at 5 miles (132) and again at the end (125). HR is slightly higher at altitude, but maybe the 115 was a fluke yesterday.

Rolled out of bed this morning to freezing cold temperatures to go run the 4-miler in Orem. I'm not in nearly the shape I'd like to be and was shooting for sub-21 but expecting something closer to 21:30. Typically I don't like to race until I'm in better shape, and the soreness in my legs as I'm writing this reminds me why. But I'm trying to kick the habit and get into more races. I was ecstatic with the result today.

I showed up at 6:30 shivering my you-know-what off and sat in my car listening to music. Guess I got there a bit early. I wandered around a bit but didn't see anyone I knew so I just tried to keep warm. 25 degrees according to the high school reader-board.

Warmed up 15 minutes, did some strides, wandered over the start line. I ran into Danny Moody during the warm-up and talked with him. I was surprised to hear him talk about trying to run sub-20 since I've beat him pretty good in the past. He's done something right in the last year, though; 19:39 is pretty solid. Sasha and Ted were there at the start so we caught up a bit and waited for the eternity it took them to start the race. The starter said there would be a whistle then a gun, which is simply brilliant since everyone took off at the whistle.

I got out quick to keep from getting squished against a car and settled in to what I thought was 5:20 pace. I planned to pick it up later if I felt alright. Guys that took off too fast came back much faster than they should have and I settled in behind one that was close to my pace. Half a mile in some guy passed us going pretty quick and I tucked in behind him. After about 30 seconds the pace felt too hot so I let him go. Mile 1 came and went in 5:13 and I felt better than expected.

Second mile was all alone and I thought I might've slowed a bit. But I reached the marker in 5:16 and was still feeling okay. My legs were starting to hurt, but it was my breathing that felt so good. The guy who passed me earlier had caught up to one of the SUU guys and they both had 20 seconds or so on me. I threw in a surge at halfway and the 2 of them started coming back so I kept it up.

My breathing felt so good over the 3rd mile that I started to think I could make my legs do whatever I wanted. I've never felt such a difference between the two. Legs hurt, breathing's great. What does that mean? 3rd mile was another 5:16 and the two guys only had about 5 seconds on me.

I picked up the pace again but the other two also picked it up. So I pushed it a little harder until they were creeping back to me again. They had separated a little and I caught the SUU guy first. He glanced over at me and I surged a little to keep him from hanging on until he was broken. With a half to go I caught the other one and did the same. It felt so good to break them, and I continued to increase the tempo to gain as much separation as I could. I didn't want to have one of them decide he could outsprint me in the end. I hate that.

Turning onto the final stretch I picked it up, then again as the finish line came into view. SUU dude was closing on me but I managed to hold it to the line. 5:01 final mile.

Official placing was 3rd, but there were 2 or 3 phantom BYU guys ahead of me. Either way, I'm very happy with the result and looking forward to getting into better shape.

1 - 5:13

2 - 10:29 (5:16)

3 - 15:45 (5:16)

4 - 20:46 (5:01)

Ran a super-easy 8.1 with Sasha this morning in 68-something. Legs were killing me and Sasha's sick, so the pace was absolutely perfect.

10 miles with Jeff and Sasha. They felt a little more peppy this morning and the pace was uncomfortable. I wanted to be lazy. Still, I don't think we averaged much faster than 7:20.

8 miles easy on the river trail.