Elite Jogging For Dummies

No running. Swam 500m at Steiner. 

Man, the haze this morning made the January skies look good by comparison. 

I parked at Steiner and ran a loop up on to the BST, and down through This is the Place.  Nice run, no time for the planned swim at the end though.  

Black Sheep workout from Popperton Park (Virginia St. and 11th Ave.). After .75 warmup, we ran 1min on/1 min off from the Fire Station to the Capitol. Then easy down into Memory Grove and over to the stairs at 4th Ave and A St. From there, we started the traditional "up and over" from 4th Ave and C St. up to 11th Ave. and L street. Easy on the flat, hard on the hills. It never fails to kill me. I wish I could say the same for Casey, who was flying up those hills, leaving Josh and I in the dust. Ran 2 mi cooldown at the end.

Drove to Steiner after the run and swam 500m.

ALSO, I'm thinking of hosting a little gathering for bloggers and friends at my house after the Des News 10k if I can rally some support for that.  Nick will be in town and it might be fun to get a few folks together for a bite and a chat.  It's just a concept at the moment, but I hope it will work.  If others read this, let me know if you're interested. We live just about 2 miles from both the start and finish of the race, so it should be pretty convenient.

AM-4.5 miles. Will try to get more later.

Also, I talked with my friend and neighbor Mark Oftedal this morning about his son Eli's performances at the USATF Youth Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Eli is 10 years old, racing in the Bantam boys division. He finished second in the 800m in a time of 2:23:86, missing first place by a tenth of a second. In the 1500m, he finished second again to the same kid, in a time of 4:49:28. He also made the final in the 400m, finishing 7th. Eli is already a great runner, I look forward to many more good results ahead. He'll get another chance shortly to race against the same boy (he's from CA) at the Junior Olympics.

 PM--managed to squeeze in another 4.5 before Sam & Kelli came over to visit us and the baby.
 

Run from Radda. It was humid this morning, felt like Texas. I noticed that it looked like there was some dirt from rain on my car but I didn't see any other evidence that it actually rained at any point. Man, we need it though.  

Anyway, the group ran the canal route. On the return, Sam and I backtracked on the Heart of Holladay course, weaving up to Wander lane and the standard return route from there.  No energy this morning for any spicy miles. Just glad to get some solid time in.

From Steiner, I ran four miles solo and then ran 3.5 with my old HS friend, Dan.  His background is as a competitive swimmer and he's just getting into running. We agreed to swap tips.  Of course, there's much more to swimming technique than running technique for the most part, so it was a pretty one-way operation. After the run, I swam about 500m at Steiner; improved a few things, but recognized far more that still needs improvement. 

Canyon to Canyon Half Marathon.  I signed up for this race last week because I wanted to have a reason to stay consistent with my running through the arrival of the baby and also so that I could have a reason to get in some faster, longer miles. Fortunately, Heather is very supportive of my running, even as she has the biggest share of responsibility for our baby.  We're working on finding the right balance. 

The race started at 7am from East Canyon resort in Morgan County, which meant a long but scenic drive to the start.  I warmed up for two miles. I didn't really see any other competitive runners that I knew, but there were a couple of guys with a speedy look. There is both a 10k and Half M race and I didn't know who was doing what. 

The first mile of the course is on the road, but then it heads south on the dirt road that connects East Canyon with Jeremy Ranch. Technically a "trail race," I suppose. I have trained on this road many times but never raced on it.  "Rolling" is probably the best word I can use to describe the terrain, but that's a bit of an understatement.  There are a lot of hills, none very long, but a few rather steep.  The course is out and back. 

I went out from the start with a guy named Steven Ault, who just finished running for the U. of Portland. He was doing the 10k and took off within the first half mile.  No problem. Then another guy passed me, who I also figured was doing the 10k because he looked like he was chasing Steven, but when we got to the 10k turnaround after some steady climbing, he kept going. (My splits to that point were 6:13, 6:33, and 6:37).  Ok, so we had a race! (He had Clyde's build, but not his speed). I kept a pretty close watch on the gap between us-- between 20-25 seconds until the Half M turnaround. (splits for 4-7 were 6:41, 6:36, 6:26, 6:15). On the way back, I noticed that the leader was slowing a bit on the hills and not getting much turnover on the descents. Mile 8 split 6:03.  On a steeper descent at around mile 9, I let gravity pull me past him and worked on building a lead.  Mile 9 split 6:05. By mile 11, the lead was about a minute.  My splits for 10-13 (where I earned back some of the time I lost on the slow hills on the way out) were 5:55, 5:46, 5:37.  So, a bit negative split. I think I won by 2-3 minutes or something close to that, but I'll have to look at the resultswhen they're posted. 

It's no circuit race, but I'll take the win.  It's a challenging course and if I could borrow Sasha's intuitive course calibration sense,I would say my effort today was about 1:16 on a flat course.  I also realized that I have kind of missed racing something longer than 5k. The 5k has been good for speed, but I feel like I can make better decisions in a longer race. 

This was a Sports Am race and James always does a good job of putting together a fun event. Plenty of food, shade, and live music at the end at the East Canyon resort.