Elite Jogging For Dummies

Speedwork at East High, 5:35 am. I had to get to work early, so I couldn't join the whole Black Sheep workout today. I started early and overlapped with them a bit toward the end of my workout. They were doing 12 x 400.

I started with a 1.3 mile warm-up through the neighborhood. Got back to the track and ran 4 x 100 meter strides w/100 easy jog.

Started the workout with 4 x 800 meters. My target was 2:40-2:45, which I only barely managed, running 2:46 a couple of times. I didn't feel great. I ran 400 meter recovery jogs between each.

Then ran 1 x 1 mile in 5:30. This felt better than all of the 800's.

Then two more 800's: These were better: 2:40/2:45.

I then ran 2 x 400 with the Black Sheep in 77 each with 200 meter recoveries. These felt easy. Josh Steffen was out with the Black Sheep today and he was helping to push the pace.

Then a mile cooldown.

I felt slower than I should have today and didn't nail my splits like I would have liked. I did have some problems with my watch, but I am usually able to stick to my splits more intuitively and keep things consistent. Strange workout for that reason.

I skipped a run on the Pipeline trail with a few folks so I could sleep in for a few extra minutes and save some driving time.

So, I was out the door at 6:15. It was nice and cool for the first time in what feels like months. Looked like we got some more rain overnight.

I ran down 4th Ave to the base of Memory Grove, looped back up 1st Ave, down 6th East to Liberty Park. I ran 3 loops on the 1.4 mile wood chip path at a very comfortable 7:30 pace. It's somewhat monotonous, but that path is very soft and gives plenty of shade. Then returned home via 6th East to the Aves.

Starting from 11th Ave & B Street, I headed toward City Creek Canyon with Brian Kamm and his son, Connor Kamm. Connor was a track and cross country standout at Skyline High and is on his way to run at Williams College in Massachusetts this fall.

Connor and I ran an easy pace up City Creek, with Brian a bit behind us. The conditions were excellent and the climbs toward the top felt modest. We turned around at the top of Rotary Park.

For the six mile descent down the canyon, I wanted to stay under 6:10 pace, and we did that, averaging closer to 6:00-6:05. The miles felt easy and I suppose I could have pushed harder, but this is just the the start of my downhill training so no need to blow out the quads on this run.

After finishing at the cars, we jogged back and picked up Brian about .4 behind us and ran him in.

From Cucina, JWood and I ran up through Federal Heights past the JCC and up onto the Shoreline trail. We turned left and ran up into Red Butte Canyon just as the sun was rising and it was spectacular. Descended down the road in Red Butte, into Research Park and circled back through Fort Douglas, the Legacy Bridge, and back through Federal Heights. My Suunto is being serviced, so no specific pace information today, but it was a very moderately paced easy day run.

Originally, I thought it was just going to be me and Sam, but it ended up that a group of six of us met at 5:45 and headed up to run the rail trail in Park City. We dropped beverages on the way at the Silver Summit junction (miles 5/13.5) and headed to the trail head in PC. As anyone who has run the rail trail can tell you, it's difficulty lies in the fact that you have a gradual, almost imperceptible loss of elevation on the way out, and then what seems like one long slow climb back to the finish on the way back.

Our miles were generally in the 7:30-7:35 range. When a couple of us stopped for a drink at Silver Summit, Adam Wende powered on ahead, so he ended up getting 21.0 by adding a few extra minutes to his run. He's getting ready for TOU and he looks strong. He was telling me about how he has a spreadsheet for all of his runs since '97 and he displays the results as a circular graph showing how far around the world he has traveled if you add the miles end to end. It's something like 24,000 miles, and I think that's landed him somewhere in the middle of the ocean right at the moment.

I finished my 19 in 2:31 and the last couple of miles were fairly strong and I felt decent during this run. Sam was also really strong; he's getting ready to run the Jupiter Peak Steeplechase this next weekend. We had no wind which can be deadly on that route, and the weather was mild.

In the evening, Heather and I met over at Sam's and a group of us headed up to Albion Basin for a hike up to Catherine's Pass for a picnic dinner. We got up there around 8pm, and got to see the sunset and some amazing electrical storms in the distance.

On our hike down in the dark, lit by our headlamps and a 3/4 moon, we heard coyotes wailing like mad and that was cool.

A few minutes later, we came across a couple of moose that were about 50 yards or so off the trail from us. It was dark enough that you only knew they were there because of the way their eyes glow up when caught in the light of the headlamp. We were fine, but decided to give them a wide berth and we hiked up on to a ridge to avoid them. It was fun.

Easy miles to stretch the legs.

More easy miles to stretch the legs; three loops around liberty park. They added new wood chip to some of the path and it's like running in sand. Nice and soft, but very slow.

East High track workout. Mile repeats were on today's schedule. I started with a one mile warmup, then 4 x 100 meter strides.

My goal was to keep the mile repeats between 5:35 and 5:40. And perhaps more importantly, I wanted to keep my pace steady throughout each mile.

Mile 1: 5:40 /800 meter jog

Mile 2: 5:37 /800 meter jog

Mile 3: 5:37 /800 meter jog

Mile 4: 5:32 /800 meter jog

Mile 5: 5:36 /800 meter jog

Then one more mile to cooldown.

For the most part, I managed to keep my splits very steady. The only deviation usually comes in the first lap where I always start a little fast and pick up a few seconds, but then settle into an even pace for the remainder.

Avenues to the Capitol to 3 mi mark up City Creek Canyon, back down at 6:36/6:31/6:27. Caught up with John Straley for a mile (he was running to work) and then headed home via 4th Ave. Fairly sluggish today.

Fort Douglas/Research Park Loop. Easy.

Easy run to taper for Provo River 1/2

Provo River Trail Half Marathon. Finished 3rd overall behind Sasha and Ronald Greenwood. My time was 1:15:29, which improved my PR for this distance by a couple of minutes. The course has a lot of downhill, so I do take the result with a grain of salt. But I will take it!

The race started surprisingly slow with no one wanting to get out front. So I did that for the first quarte mile; well, until Sasha came blazing by (he had begun at the back of the back so he could start the timing equipment) and that was more or less the last time I saw him.

Sasha was followed by a young guy in what looked like gym clothes or basketball clothes.

Then Ronald Greenwood and I traded places through a couple of miles, trading third. We came upon a group of runners that were jogging up the hill and they joined Ronald. Ronald picked up the pace with them and they were off. These guys, I think there were 4 or 5 of them, all continued to run bandit through the end of the race, I believe.

I passed the gym shorts guy (who was very nice when I talked with him after the race) at the turnaround after running back up the canyon after Bridal Veil falls. I then started to run down the bandits, but the Sasha and Ronald were long gone. I kept my pace steady through the bottom of the canyon, and heading toward Riverwoods. Mile 12 is a labrynth of parking lots and office complexes that confused me a lot (I almost ran through the drive up teller at bank), but I did manage to follow the orange cones in the end. I tracked down the last bandit at 12.5 and tried to hold through the finish.

I went down to this race with Casey and Straley, who also had very strong races. Mark Holland finished 8th as well. I need to check on the final results, but Ingunn had a great race too.

Easy miles to move the legs after racing.

I am in Los Angeles now, having flown in yesterday for a week of work/vacation. I'm staying with my friend Tory at his house.

This morning I got up at 6am and drove out to Studio City, where I used to live, to run up in on the Betty B. Dearing trail, where I used to run consistently when I lived here. Most people think of LA as a vast concrete wasteland and they are 90% right, but the other 10% is spectacular. The little portion I'm talking about here is the Santa Monica mountains, which divide LA from the San Fernando Valley. I lived for four years on Laurel Canyon, right at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills and right next to the trailhead going up into an extensive network of side canyons and trails.

Starting at the trailhead off of Laurel Canyon, I ran up through the single track trail into the meadow and then continued on the spine of the mountain. I crossed over Coldwater Canyon, and then dropped down into Franklin Canyon, which is protected parkland/habitat area. It's amazingly close to a lot of chaos, but remarkably isolated and there is a lot of solitude to be found there. I was disturbed, but not surprised to see that a few more hilltops had been leveled and replaced with hotel-sized mansions. I ran down through Franklin Canyon to the Hastain Trail, and climbed another 300 feet before turning back.

It is a challenging run wih lots of climbing-but one of my all time favorites anywhere in the world.

The solitude of yesterday's run found its exact opposite with today's run. It's Tuesday, so speedwork, but where to run today? The plan was to head over to John Marshall High School to run on their track, but when we got there, school was in session and gym class was in full effect, so we decided to look elsewhere. We couldn't find anything close, however, so back to JMHS. This school is in the Los Feliz neighborhood in Los Angeles, and is the site where the movie "Grease" was filmed.

The "track" is an unlined dirt path that roughly circles a multipurpose playing field. I ran a warm up mile, and discovered from my time and effort that the track was about 40m short of 400 meters, so it would be a little awkward keeping track today and my times below are not based on any accurate measurement.

I ran a 4 lap warm up , followed by 4 strides. Then

1 x 4 laps in 5:05/ 2 laps easy

1 x 2 laps in 2:20 /1 lap easy

1 x 4 laps in 4:55 /2 laps easy

1 x 2 laps in 2:18 /2 laps easy

1 x 4 laps in 4:52 /2 laps easy

4 laps recovery

4 laps walking with Tory.

Tory ran 9 laps and then we walked together. He's just getting back into shape and it was great to be out there with him.

The funnies thing about this run was the setting itself. About 20 minutes into my run, out come the kids for another period of gym class. They milled around for a while and then started jogging some laps en masse. These are city kids and I stood out like a sore thumb, but it was so much fun to be out there among these kids.

Easy miles in Tory's neighborhood. We started out running up into Elyrium Park, which i s a small enclave leading up into the hills, but the trails fizzled quickly and we ended up coming out on a street within a half mile or so. The interesting thing there was the skunk that was about 10 feet off the trail (didn't get sprayed).

I ran up through the neighborhoods and checked out the Mt. Washington area, which reminded me of Pasadena.

Big travel day; I drove from LA to Orange County for lunch with my brother and then on to San Diego where I picked up Heather from the airport, and we drove up to Carlsbad, where we're staying for a couple of nights.

Saturday won't make a good day for a long run, so I had to get it in today. Heather and I went out this morning at 7am or so, and headed out along the Pacific Coast Highway, running south toward Encinitas. Heather turned around at 5 miles out and I pressed ahead. I ran past the surf shops, bars, campgrounds, motels, beach houses and assorted small businesses that line the PCH in this area. The run felt great through 15 miles, when I started to break down a bit, but I picked up the pace and pushed fairly well from 16 through 19. Most miles were about 7:30-7:40 pace, which felt hard on the pavement/concrete I was running on. I was pretty wiped when I got home, and dripping wet owing to the humidity.

An early easy run before getting on the road to head up to Newport. I ran north from Carlsbad up into Oceanside, and turned around when it stopped being scenic. I headed back south through Carlsbad on the PCH to Cannon Road and then back to Carlsbad. Legs felt decent considering yesterday's longish effort.

Today I ran on Catalina Island, having traveled here yesterday for my friend Adam's bachelor party on another friend's large boat. I got up around 6:30, and headed up a steep single track trail, gaining altitude rapidly. After about 1000 feet of climbing, I ran into a buffalo in the middle of the trail. I startled him when I dropped into a small saddle. We had a staring contest for a few minutes, during which he was absolutely still. There was really no way to get around him, so I headed back down the mountain and up a fire road where I did some surges. It was a gorgeous morning and the view over the ocean was spectacular.

Felt sluggish for the first few miles of this run, but managed to get it together eventually. I ran from home and did three laps around Liberty Park, easy.

Speedwork with the Black Sheep, starting at the Rose Garden at Sugarhouse Park. We ran a loop around the park and then to the Highland track.

Part A: 1 x 800m/accelerating strides on the straightaways, easy on the curves.

Part B: 8 x 800m with 400m jog recovery between each. My goal was to hold 2:40 pace throughout, but it took a few to get me there. Here were the times:

1. 2:49

2. 2:45

3: 2:37

4. 2:40

5. 2:39

6. 2:41

7. 2:40

8. 2:40

Part C: Finally, we ran 1 x 1 mile. The goal was to run sub 5:40, and Josh Steffen, Brad Anderson and I ran 5:26 or 5:27 depending on which of us started the watch at the right time.

Then a one mile easy cool down.

In the morning, an extremely moderately paced (i.e., slow) run around Capitol Hill, the Avenues and the University. In the evening, Heather and I went out for another 2.5 miles of slowness.

From home, up around Capitol Hill and up to the 3 mi. mark in City Creek Canyon. It was a little windy at the bottom, but not so bad in the canyon. It was also cool up there! It got slightly chilly in just the singlet, and it's clear that a change in the season will approach fairly soon--even though our days are still warm. I messed up timing my splits on the way down, but I surged for a couple of minutes and it felt decent. I was slow again zig-zagging back down through the Aves to home.

Amy S. is back from 17 days in Peru and we ran easy this morning together and she told me about her adventures. Cool trip.

Hobble Creek Half Marathon, 1:12:38. 5th place overall, behind Superfly.

Here are my splits: 5:20/5:20/5:14/4:55 (short)/5:39(long)/5:15/5:49/5:23/5:58/5:51/5:37/5:40/5:59 (for the last 1.1)

My strategy was to push hard through he first six downhill miles and see how it went after that. I slowed considerably after that but stayed pretty strong. In the last mile, Clyde passed me and I didn't really mind, I was looking forward to finishing and just wanted to focus on hanging in there for the rest of my race. The last few miles were tough!

Ran a warm up mile before the race and Casey and I added another four extremely easy miles in Mapleton after the race.

Easy miles with Casey and Jan to stretch the legs after racing.

I had an 8:15 dentist appt. so had to cut my run a bit short this morning. I ran from home and did two loops around Liberty Park, easy. I was fairly sore and a little sluggish. Since I had to cut it short in the morning, I added 2.5 after work here in the neighborhood.

Speedwork @ East High Track with the Black Sheep. On the menu was 10 x 800 @ 2:40 pace with 400 meter jog recoveries after each.

Ran a mile warm up and then an 800 with accelerating straightaways.

For the main course, here were the 800 times:

1. 2:41

2. 2:42

3. 2:37

4. 2:38

5. 2:39

6. 2:40

7. 2:40

8. 2:41

9. 2:41

10. 2:39

The last couple were tough. Josh was hanging in there with me and we (well, at least I) had to push hard to keep the final 800 under 2:40. Then one mile to cool down.

A 7:30 a.m. meeting at work meant I would have to split workouts today. So, I was out the door with JWood at 5:45 for an easy 6 miler to City Creek and 11th Ave.

After work, I added another 4.75 in the gorgeous Morris Meadow on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail at sunset.

Here are a few things I listened to on the evening run on "Lil' Trooper II", my iPod Nano: The Editors/Hot Chip/Mew/Love is All/TV on the Radio/Tapes 'n Tapes/Camera Obscura/Danielson/The Pipettes/Arctic Monkeys/Belle & Sebastian

Met up with Jed Burton at the post office on Sunnyside at 5:45 and we ran up Emigration Canyon, easy pace. Jed told me all about his Park City Marathon race and I'm excited to see the momentum that win will create as he takes the Grand Slam through TOU and STGM.

I didn't track any splits today, but our pace was easy all the way around, though we did pick it up a bit running down the canyon; controlled moderate pace.