Elite Jogging For Dummies

TTIP/Golf Course loop, nice and easy with good weather conditions.

The original plan this morning was to do a tempo run in Liberty Park, but having just run there on Saturday, I decided to mix it up. I ran down to Memory Grove and up to the horseshoe at the bottom of City Creek.  I decided to do a series of mile repeats along the road between the horseshoe and the Captiol, also known as Gravity Hill ("I found my thrill ... on Gravity Hill ...").  It's more or less flat, slightly downhill in the direction I was running the tempo (north to south). 

First mile was conservative as I was still waking up, 5:27.  Then I jogged back to the start and ran the second one, feeling much friskier, 5:04.  Then I elected to mix it up with a two mile effort. So I ran back two miles easy to 11th Ave and G Street.  I turned around and started the two mile run. The first mile has the nice 11th Avenue grade, and then some nice drop to the horseshoe, 5:02.  The second mile was out to the Capitol on Gravity Hill, I struggled a little at the horseshoe where there is a tiny little gain in elevation, but managed to finish reasonably strong, 5:17: two miles in 10:19.  I jogged back to the horseshoe and decided to run one final mile down Memory Grove: 4:48.  It's a nice downhill.

Met up with Josh and Megan this morning. We ran an easy 8 mile loop via the U/11th Ave/Memory Grove.  We ran into Casey and Kathryn, also out for a run, and chatted with them for a bit.  Those guys are planning to do the relay at Ogden.  They should be pretty quick.  

After dropping off Megan and Josh, I added a couple more miles, including some drills on the grass at the end:  butt kicks, high knee skipping, carioca.  

AM: Run with the Radda crew from GFC. We had thirteen people in our group this morning, and for once the men barely outnumbered the women. We were like a herd. The conditions were amazing this morning, nice and cool with post-rain shimmer on everything. The canal section is like running Oregon--very lush. Quite a contrast with the ice and snow from only 7 weeks ago.

Pace was easy this morning. I need to take more time after the run to stretch, as I feel a little tight. I'll try to do it tonight. Need to keep things loose for the next week.

PM: Heather ran down to my office pushing Jack and then we all ran home from my office together. We stopped at the little play area on 4th Ave on the way home so we could push Jack in the swing for a minute.  Strange thing happened.  There was another little boy we didn't know there playing in the sand, probably four years old.  When we arrived, he looked up at me and very earnestly asked "are you Jack?"  Sort of startled, I said, "no, but he is"--pointing to my son.  The boy didn't offer anything more to provide any clue about his intuition. He just sort of acknowledged that Jack was now there and he continued playing.
 

I came to work early this morning, 6:45 with the plan to take off at  11am and hook up with Kevin Tuck for a run up City Creek. I met him at the bottom of Memory Grove and we ran up past the water treatment station. It was sort of raining a bit on the way up, but the weather was ideal overall.  On the way down, Kevin's hamstring started to give him trouble and he urged me to go on. I felt like a bad friend leaving him, but he insisted and I genuinely believed he wanted me to keep going, so I continued my easy run down the canyon. I hope he made it down ok!

This morning I met up with Adam RW, Steve and Josh at Foothill Sbux for one last semi-long run before the marathon. We ran a pretty nice loop with plenty of variety.  We headed up through the golf course, caught the Shoreline trail at the bottoom of Emigration Canyon, and then headed north on the trail to Red Butte. We ran to the Red butte gate, down to Shoreline again and to the bottom of dry creek. We threw rocks at the pipe. Steve hit it on the first shot, it took me like seven tries. Next we cruised down 11th Ave to Memory Grove, then down to the 4th Ave stairs to start the long climb back toward Foothill. I had to stop at my house for a quick deposit, and we continued on through the U to foothill and the finish. Really easy pace this morning. It was a fun run and I enjoyed talking a bit to new Steve. We cooled down at the Sbux where Adam and Josh brought me up to speed on the highs and lows of a life in the sciences.