Elite Jogging For Dummies

The weather was outstanding and I felt better today, so I decided to check out the conditions on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.  The conditions were muddy.  Felt like I was wearing a pair  of Sasha's ankle weights for much of the run. Still, it was a gorgeous day for an easy run with a little climbing. 

Decided to sleep in a little bit, woke up at 6:20. Had to shovel some snow when I got out the door. I ran a funky loop past the law school and through the middle of campus, up through Federal Heights, and over to 11th Ave. While running east the snow was not bad at all; but while running west, I was really getting a lot of wind and snow in my face. Not a great morning to be out very long while still recovering from a cold, so I cut it a little short. I plan to get in a few more miles this evening.

Video interview with Ed Eyestone here. (I haven't watched it yet; mainly posting this link to remind myself . . .)

In the evening, added 4.25 more; running a nice route up around the capitol; easy pace; legs felt fresh.

Black sheep workout in the St. Mary's neighborhood above Wasatch Blvd.  This is the same workout I ran with the group in the fall, only longer. After a 1.25 warmup; we ran 6x steep hill repeat (40-45 secs).  Then 6 x steeper hill repeats on a different street. These were lung burners, Casey's specialty.  Then 6 x half n' half loops.  These are about 500 meter loops that are half flat and half uphill. The form felt good on the flat; always a struggle to hold the speed moving into the hills.  But that's what I need.  We cooled down back to Wasatch blvd.  The group headed back to our Foothill Village meeting spot, but I continued up into Bonneville Golf course for some more easy running, followed by 6x strides of about 60-100m.

Added another 3.5 tonight, up through the campus at the U.

Zoo/Golf Course loop, easy, under a gorgeous sunrise.  Last night I downloaded a few podcasts on thefinalsprint.com and I listened to a couple of them on the run.  Last night, I listened to an interview with Alan Culpepper.  Today, I listened to interviews with Todd Williams and Billy Mills.  I loved that movie "Running Brave" when I was a kid. 

Radda Run. This was my first outing with the Garmin 305, which arrived yesterday (purchased through the Fast Running Blog Store). Yes, I finally had enough of the Suunto t6 and have jumped onto the GPS bandwagon. (I feel a little guilty getting a new one when Clyde just destroyed his, but what can you do?)

I spent a little bit of time last night sorting through the features, which I was pretty impressed with. It is much more oriented toward running performance than the Suunto. The Suunto's strength is in the training effect analysis, but on a daily basis what matters more to me is accurate pace and distance information. I found that the Suunto's foot pod system was unreliable over time.

I like the size of the display on the Garmin, so I can see lots of data at once. I found that the pace information does not necessarily adjust in real time (unlike the Suunto), which is probably a function of waiting for satellite info, but on the other hand maybe I just wasn't speeding up as quickly as I thought.

I had the AutoLap set for 1 mile splits, and after 4 easy miles with the group, I did a two mile tempo run on Wander Lane. I started the run a little after the beep went off and I went through the hillier first mile in 6:07. The second mile has some rollers too, but it was 5:58. I felt like the effort was right even if the times were a little slow. I blew timing the tempo on this last week and reported faster splits, but I don't think they were faster. The GPS doesn't lie, which is why I got it. I'm ready to add another tempo mile to this workout, the only problem is that the half mile preceding my start point is pretty steep, not a great place to take off from, and the roads at the end aren't much better. I'll have to figure that out.

Snow!! Lots of heavy, wet snow. The new snow made a nice running surface, but there was plenty of slush after the snow plows rolled through the neighborhood.  Just meandered around the Avenues and Federal Heights, very easy.

Strider's Series 10k. Perhaps a better name is Sadist's Series 10k.  The first half was very ugly, the second half was generally fast.

It was cold on arrival at 8am; just 22 degrees according to my car. Warmed up 4 miles around the neighborhoods near Dee Events Center. I avoided running the course during the warm up. I was already familiar with the first couple of miles and I didn't want to know what lay beyond that. From Paul's profile, I only knew that it would be ugly. 

By start time, the weather had warmed a bit and I went with shorts, long sleeve shirt, gloves, and headband.  It was the right call for me. Fortunately, the pace at the start was reasonable.  No one seemed to have any illusions about trying to make a big early move.  It was a solid pack of lead runners up ahead of me and I tucked in behind Dennis Simonaitis.  The first mile had one notable climb coming out of the Dee Events Center parking lot, and then some flat.  Split was 6:01.  The first big climb begins early in the second mile. I felt pretty good on the climb, but kept it conservative. Opened up a little on the downhill. Split was 5:54.  The third mile climbed and climbed. Split was 6:40.  I lost sight of the leaders and focused on Dennis up ahead of me.  I thought maybe I had a chance to catch him, until I realized that he was just executing a strategy; when the course began to descend, he took off like a shot and started hunting down runners on his way to 5th.  Well done. With Dennis gone, I focused on Lion Gallegos.  The fourth and fifth miles are actually great; a very runnable downhill grade on long, relatively straight roads. Fourth mile was 5:33. 

At the end of the fifth mile my split was 5:25.  At that point, the I was gaining on Lion as the Dee Events Center also came into view.  Unfortunately, Lion followed some kid who was not in the race into the Dee Events Center parking lot.  There was a cop right there at the turn and the cop didn't even say anything. When I got to the turn, I saw the course marker arrow pointing east (uphill), but Lion was running north. I stopped briefly, asked the cop if Lion was going the right way or if I was supposed to be running uphill and the Cop kind of shrugged and said the race goes uphill and didn't know why "that guy" (Lion) was going that way.  (Well . . . maybe it's because you didn't correct him, officer?)  So I yelled to Lion and waved him back on to the course, having taken over his place in the mean time.  I debated whether it would be more sportsmanlike simply to wait for him to catch up to me than to keep running, but I was at the bottom of this hill and I just wanted to keep running.  It's not like the race victory was on the line, but I did question whether I was making the right call.   

The rest of the race was uneventful, except that I managed to continue running in control and feeling pretty good.  Last mile, with the climb, was 5:47.  My Garmin 305 calculated the distance at 6.35.  I know others had measurements between 6.25 and 6.3 as well. I guess I blew running the tangents. 

Overall, not a bad day of racing for me.  I am still racing a tier below the top runners (many of whom are our fellow bloggers), but I am glad to be competing against them and I look forward to improving.  My effort overall was a little better than in the 5k.  I felt more in control of my race today; probably because the 5k doesn't give you the chance to do anything but hurt. The hills were not fun, but everyone had to run the same course so no one had it any easier than anyone else. 

It was also another strong showing for the Wasatch Racing Team and the Fast Running Bloggers, a few more of whom I got to meet today.  Congrats to everyone.