cheryl

No real running today, but does a really tough hike count as anything?  We went into Zion today and did Angel's Landing.  I've heard about this hike for a few years now from my brother-in-law who has done it a few times and likes to tell me how scary it is, sheer drop-offs on both sides, chains to hold onto on narrow strips of trails with those sheer drop-offs just inches away.  I figured that hundreds of people do the hike every year, and I've only heard of two deaths, one a woman whose husband "allegedly" pushed her off, and another a teenager who was drunk and was obviously not being careful enough.  So I figured as long as I was careful, no worries.  Just to get to the hard part is quite an uphill hike, but if you've run Suncrest, it really wasn't that difficult.  The people I was with have not run Suncrest, so they were struggling.  We made it to Scout's Landing, and then for the treacherous part.  I was ready to turn back several times, but my BIL convinced me it would be ok, plus both my daughters and my older son were doing it and I didn't want to seem like a wimp.  But I wasn't enjoying it one bit, I just wanted it over.  We made it to the top, "enjoyed" the views for a while, then back down.  I thought going back down would be worse because then we would have to see the drop-offs better, but going back down really wasn't that bad.  I was happy to be done with it and said I would never do it again.  Now a few days later I think "maybe" I might try it again if the circumstances were right.  I did run the non-treacherous parts of the trail a little, so I'm giving myself  two miles for the day, just to even my weekly mileage out to 30 miles.

I ran on the treadmill, alternating paces, from very slow to quite fast.  Always enjoy that workout.

A big workout at the track and the roads.  After a 3 mile slow warm-up, we did 4 800's; my times were 3:42, 3:36, 3:34, 3:28.  Then an almost two mile run.  The pace on that was 7:40.  Then about a 1.6 mile run, pace was 7:28.  Then two half miles in Prospector.  My times were 3:37 and 3:39.  It was  a great workout.

Not a lot of mileage, but did put in some sprints on the treadmill.

Today the group's plan was to run 4 5K's.  We like to call them 5k's because it's the old course of the So. Jordan 5K, but whoever measured it got it a little wrong, and it's more like just 3 miles.  But I don't care, it's close enough for me.  That extra .12 miles may have put me over the top today.   So we get there at 5:30 and just take off, turning left and running the course that way first.  I felt pretty good, fairly comfortable.  But that was the plan, stay comfortable so you can finish strong at the end.  The time on that was 26:55 avg. pace 8:56, best pace 6:28.  Hmm, no wonder it felt fairly comfortable.  Will 23 minutes ever feel fairly comfortable?  Probably not.

Anyway, then off for the next one.  This one was harder, I felt fairly uncomfortable on it.  My time was 24:29, avg. pace 8:13, best pace 6:32.

So I try to tell myself we're halfway thru, pick up the pace now.  Did I do it?  No, my time on this was 24:54, avg. pace 8:18, best 6:19

Now I'm starting to hurt, I'm stiffening up, I just want to go home and go back to bed.  But I told myself I was going to run 4, so by golly I was going to do it, even if it took 45 minutes.  The only ones left standing were me, Kelli and Debbie.  We decided we were just going to run slow and just get thru the dang thing!  So we take off, running probably about a 9:30 pace, crest Rustic Roads, start our downhill on 2700 W., and all of a sudden I felt the proverbial "second wind."  Finally, I had some energy, which was nice.  I think my mind knows the misery is almost over, so it's more willing to let me loosen up and run a little better.  If only I can feel that way at the beginning of runs.  Anyway, my time on that was 25:42, avg. pace 8:37, best 5:48.  I guess that's pretty good after averaging probably about a 9:30 first mile.

So while I was happy to finish strong, I wish I had felt a little better on the two middle 5k's.  Always something to be a little dissatisfied about and always something more to work on.  That's the life of a runner, it seems like.  That's what makes running fun!  Congrats to everyone who took on this tough workout, and good job Kelli for sticking it out with me and running all 4.  I hope you felt better than I did when you got home.  It took until about noon for me to feel among the living again.

So I was evaluating why my run yesterday wasn't the greatest, and I realized that my old nemesis (or nemesi), tightness and tenseness, have crept in again (or maybe they never left).  I know I need to run "looser" and more relaxed, so that's what I practiced today.  I didn't worry about pace or anything else, just staying relaxed.  And voila, I had a much better run, much more enjoyable.  I didn't go any faster (probably went slower) but I just felt a lot better.  So that's my goal now for every run, staying relaxed.

PM--I guess I felt so good that I wanted to do another run.  So while my son practiced football at the SJ park, I ran around there for about 30 minutes.  Is that called multi-tasking, running and watching football practice at the same time?

Well, a big goose egg for today.  Not that I planned it that way, it's just that a blister on my foot that I first noticed on Thursday really was bothering me today and there was no way I could run.  Grr, I'm not happy about this, two months out from St. George and I missed a big long run.

Another day of no running due to a small little blister on my little toe.  Who would think a small little thing like that could take me out?  Usually I'm able to run around a blister, but not this one.  The way it feels I don't know if I'll be able to run at all this week.  You know how you can just tell based on pain how long something is going to last?  When it keeps you awake at night burning you know it's going to be trouble.  Hopefully by Thursday I'll be back at it.  I'll miss my group tomorrow and those lovely hills, but what can you do?   I did manage to put in 20 minutes on the Stair Master at the Rec Ctr, so at least that's something.

Day 4 of no running because of the mother of all blisters.  This is as bad as when I broke my toe a few years ago.  With that I was able to put on a shoe and run a week later.  I'm wondering if I'll be able to do that with this blister.  A weird thing about it is that at night it throbs and burns and I have trouble sleeping.  I've never had this experience with a blister before.  We'll see what happens.  I did make it to the Rec Center and spent 20 minutes on the stairmaster.  I wanted to go back in the evening and do more, but I decided I'd rather watch my son's football practice.  So a 20 minute workout yesterday and today.  Not the greatest marathon training.

Progress today.  My toe did not ache last night, so I thought today would be better, which it ultimately was.  I put some liquid bandaid on the blister and that seemed to help.  It was still painful to run with a shoe on, so I went to the park by Marv Jenson's and ran there on the grass with only socks on.  The only problem was that they don't seem to water it too well and there were several dead patches.  Have you ever run on dead grass?  It can get prickly.  Anyway, I ran around there for 30 minutes.  My toe was aching a little at the end.  I later went to the Rec Ctr and did 20 minutes on the Stair Master, then I tried running a little on their track, and interestingly, my toe did not hurt (had shoes on of course.)  So I ran a little there.  We'll see how it goes tomorrow with the group.

I thought I'd give the group a try this morning.  I got there at 5:30, but my foot was hurting, so I skipped out on early miles and just tried to warm up and get to where the blister wasn't bothering me.  After a little running on the Bingham football field, things felt pretty good.  The plan was to do a 6.5 mile tempo run.  I really wanted to practice staying relaxed on this run and having a better experience from last week.  I kept thinking "loose and relaxed, stay loose and relaxed."  I'd give myself about a B minus on accomplishing that.  I felt more relaxed than last week, but still was tightening up more than I wanted.  It's hard to change something that has become very ingrained.  Patience, I must have patience.  And lots of practice.  Anyway, overall it was a fun run, I enjoyed talking with Jody and then Michelle M. at the end when we added on extra at the track.  By that point I had stiffened up from standing around too long, so there was no "loose and relaxed" going on during that run.  By the way, the Garmin says the avg. pace for the main tempo run was 8:10. 

Thirty-six easy minutes on the canal road.  Working on "effortless" running.  Need to do that if I'm going to keep running for the long haul.

Football and kids are messing with me getting in a good Saturday run.  The kids mess me up by staying out late and making it difficult to get to bed at a decent hour, and then the football comes too early in the morning--8:00 the past two weeks.  So I plan to run after football, but you know how things go, it never works out quite as well as if you get your run in early.  Today I went out around 1:00 planning to run for about two hours, I get about 16 minutes in my run and I have to stop and go back home.  Once home, I get on the treadmill and plan to run for an hour straight, but that doesn't happen either.  I probably got in a total 90 minutes of running spaced out, not continuous.  Does that count for a long run?

So I plan to go out today like I do almost every Sunday and take my dog for a walk on the canal road.  Because of my bad run yesterday, I plan to do just a little "shuffle" run, very slow, barely faster than walking pace, just to shake out my legs a little.  So I'm doing that and then I look behind and who do I see but Debbie running--really running--with her dog.  I hate to see her running alone, so I join up with her.  My planned "shuffle" run turns into more of a real run, but I don't care, I enjoyed it, it felt good, and all is well.  My husband said I didn't plan to sin, it just happened, so it's not as bad as if I had planned it.  That makes me feel much better.

So I'm on this new "Chi " Running thing where the most important thing is to run relaxed.  Nothing else really matters, just staying relaxed.  It is so nice, now I know why I was starting to not enjoy running, my upper body was way too tense and I'd come home just a tense, stiff mess.  Today's run was on the canal road again.  I went about 4 miles.  Then I came home and ran some sprints on the treadmill, which I felt strong on.  Good day of running.

Whoa, what a 24 hours.  After yesterday's run, where I felt really good, I was actually looking forward to today's BBK run.  Monday evening I went to watch Tim's football practice, feeling good, no problems.  And then, POW!  I've read before that the way you can tell if you have the flu is it comes on suddenly, one minute you're feeling good, the next you're feeling pretty miserable.  That's exactly what happened with me, one minute good, the next not so good.  No warning or anything.  Let's just say I had one of the most miserable nights of my life.  Today I'm feeling a little better, but unless I start feeling quite a bit better, there will be no running today.  Hopefully I'll be ok for tomorrow.  I don't recommend getting the flu, so everybody, stay healthy out there!

Wow, what I was hoping would be just the 24 hour variety of flu must be something worse.  Coincidentally, I had a physical scheduled for today, so I went to it and the doctor didn't seem concerned about my issues--they didn't rush me in to be cultured for swine flu or anything.  I probably just have to outlast it, but in the meantime, another day of no running.  Last week I was hobbled by a blister, this week's it's the flu.  SGM is taking a hit.  By the way, I got two vaccinations today, one for DPT, one for pneumonia.  By the evening it felt like somebody had punched me in my arms as hard as they could; both my arms were really sore.  It's been a while since I've had any shots, so maybe I'm just "soft."  So along with all my other pains, my arms hurt and I wasn't a happy camper!

Still no running.

I finally felt well enough to run today.  The only problem is I waited until the heat of the day to do it, which probably wasn't too wise.  I thought I'd just go for 30 minutes and see how I felt.  I felt a little weak and was glad when the 30 minutes was up.

Felt pretty good this morning.  Ran along the canal road with the dog and actually enjoyed the run.  I went about 4 miles.  Of course, that's not nearly enough if you're training for a marathon, so I went back out later and added 2 miles.  That's still not enough for marathon training, but it's what I could do today.  The next few weeks I really need to hit it!

I ran on the canal road. Tried to keep things comfortable, but not overly. Mainly just tried to keep my upper body relaxed, succeeded for the most part. Avg. pace was 9:10

The group met down at the church at 124th So. and about 1100 W.  I got there for easy miles.  Started out by talking with Michelle and Cheris about their great Hobblecreek race.  They were taking it easy, so moved up to talk with Jody about her Hobblecreek race.  She wasn't overly happy with how things went, but hey, if I had run 1:39 I would have been very happy.  That would be a PR for me.  Then moved along to talk with Lisa about her and her husband's bike accidents.  Lisa's handlebars came off her bike and she took a bad spill.  Her husband was attacked by a dog on his bike.  They've had a few bad things happen to them lately.  Then we were done with easy miles and regrouped at the church.  My pace for that run was about 8:47, give or take a few seconds.

Because just about everyone had raced this past weekend, we decided to take it easy today and just run and put in the miles.  I made the mistake of starting out with Melanie and then just felt like I needed to keep up.  So I ended up running with some of the faster members of the group, so this supposedly "easy" day turned into probably more of a tempo effort for me, which was fine, I actually kind of enjoyed it.  My goal lately has just been to run more relaxed, especially keeping the upper body from tensing up too much.  I feel I succeeded really well today, I felt pretty good on the run.  We ran 5.37 miles, the avg. pace was 8:18.  Then I just ran by myself for about 10 minutes until it was 7:00, thinking that would be it for the day.  Then Peggy wanted to do more, so I ran with her.  We ran about 2.2 miles, avg. pace 9:55.  At the end we wanted to even out our miles, so we decided to run around the church at a faster pace.  This is where I'm especially happy, hitting a 7:02 avg. for the two minute run, with best pace at 5:22.  How do you maintain that pace for a longer time?  That's my question.  It felt good to put in 12 miles, it's pretty easy when you do it like we did today, and I enjoyed the fast running at the end.   

Today was treadmill day. I ran slowly, then put in some fast hill sprints. It was challenging but fun. Need to get more mileage in though.

The group met at a church out by Daybreak.  I like running in Daybreak because the neighborhoods are pretty plus there are hills to be found.  Got there at 5:30, ran up by the new temple, that was very nice.  Then the main workout.  We were running along 40th West and it was kind of dark and along came two bicyclists who apparently didn't see us in time and they seemed to run into each other.  No one hit the ground or anything, they seemed fine but a little startled to see a group running along there.  Then John all of a sudden pulled up lame.  I thought he was joking at first, but apparently he stepped on a good sized rock and sprained his ankle.  Lisa was nice enough to say she would run back to her car and pick him up and take him home if necessary.  By then I was getting a little worried wondering what was going to happen next.  My plan was to run the big hill by the temple a few times.  Then we saw bicyclists coming down the hill fast, so I was afraid something might happen there.  We went ahead and ran the hill up and down and over and back twice (probably should have done it one more time).  No mishaps there.  Then to 104th So., and we ran up there west into Daybreak and back down, about 2 miles.  My pace on that was 8:02.  I was happy about that because I was trying to keep things at marathon effort.  I kept thinking "pretend it's mile 6 of the marathon and you have 20 to go.  Could you maintain this pace?"  I kept thinking I felt I could (maybe I'm fooling myself, who knows?).  If I could maintain about an 8 minute pace for the marathon, I would be around 3:30, which I would be very happy about.  We did have a mishap on this run--on the turn around, Julie hit the sign, then I think as she was turning around, she fell.  She had a nice scrape on her hand.  Hope she and John are both ok.  I was just happy to get back to the church and no longer to be responsible for any more mishaps.  I enjoyed the run, I felt strong and comfortable--upper body was pretty relaxed.  Since I've worked on relaxing more, I've enjoyed running much more.

PM--3.5 miles on the treadmill.

Four miles on the treadmill.  It took about 35 minutes.  Caught up watching a few TV shows I had DVR'ed.

Before today, I had not run anything beyond about 12 miles at one time since last year's SGM.  I decided I needed to get some longer runs in, so I met with fellow BBKer's at Cheris' house at 5:30am for a 20 mile run.  All I can say is now I know why I avoid doing long runs.  It felt hard and painful most of the way.  I think the problem was the group started out faster than I wanted to run, and since I didn't want to be left behind, I tried to keep up.  I was able to keep up fairly well but I wasn't enjoying it.  We would stop a few times and I would think I would just run slower, but I never really did until we were about 12 or 13 miles in, then I just decided to slow and try to get some feeling back in my legs.  Time was getting to be an issue because Tim had a football game at 8:00 and it was 7:30 and I was just at mile 15.  I realized I wasn't going to make 20 today, so when the group turned off of 9800 So. to 3200 W., I just kept on running down 9800 So.  I called my husband when I got by the elementary school and told him to pick me up, which he did.  I quickly changed, and then made it off to the game, which Bingham won by the way.  So I didn't run 20, I made 16, which considering how I felt, was plently for me today.  I loved the company but did not really enjoy the run.  Maybe I need to do more of those long ones and they'll get easier.  I'm not sure what our average pace was because I didn't turn off my Garmin when we had some fairly long water stops, but I would say the majority of the run was sub 9:00 minute miles.  Now if my marathon goal pace is somewhere around 8:00-8:15 minute miles, and Jeff Galloway says you should do your long runs up to 3 minutes slower than goal pace, what did we do today?  This was counted as a fast continuous run.  Actually, if you don't count the last two marathons I've run, this was the longest run I've done in over two years.  I wish I could learn to love the long run, what is the secret?  Everybody else seemed to be enjoying themselves.  Hmm...I'll figure it out one day.

I ran 7 miles on the treadmill at various speeds/inclines.  Then I pool ran for 30 minutes.  I'm counting 15 minutes as a mile.