cheryl

I met with Peggy at 5:30am and we ran from her house down to the trail, up in Parkway Palisades and back.  The distance was 8 miles and the time was about 1:12 on the dot.  We discussed, as she said in her blog, all the issues of the world today.  I don't think we solved any of them though. The pace was brisk for me, I never felt totally comfortable but not too uncomfortable either.  What is that pace called, between comfortable and uncomfortable?   Comfortably hard?  Was I running tempo pace?  I think it wasn't quite as fast as tempo pace.  Hopefully 9 minute miles will start feeling totally comfortable soon.  Overall it was an enjoyable run.

I was up at 4:45 so theoretically I had plenty of time to get ready and meet my group at 5:30.  But in reality I was so tired that I just couldn't get going.  After dragging around, I got on the treadmill and did a short warm-up.  I started to feel better, so I headed off to meet the group at 6:00.  We met at the trailhead at 123rd So. and the Jr. River Parkway trail.  There was a pretty large group today--and even an ex-BYU quarterback joined us, Paul Shoemaker, who played in the early 1990's.  I knew my 17 year old BYU fanatic son would be interested in me meeting him--even my 51 year old BYU fanatic husband would be interested in that too. 

Anyway, we ran down the trail and then back, supposedly alternating between 8 minutes easy, 8 minutes hard.  I think Brett Jenkins summed it up when we were halfway done, and he asked, "When does the easy part begin?"  I was amused by that.  It does seem like the pace doesn't really alternate between easy-hard, but more like hard-harder.  I wonder if it would be better to make the easy part easier and the fast part faster.  I guess I could just do that myself, but it's hard to really slow down when you are with a group. We all want to push the pace a little, I think.  Anyway, it was a fun run overall.

We were in Las Vegas today on vacation.  I thought about getting up and running down the strip, but unfortunately it remained just a thought.  I did run the stairs that were by our room.  We then drove to San Clemente in CA and went immediately to the beach.  So I did what any runner would do and ran barefoot on the beach for 30 minutes.  That was a lot of fun.

We were still by the beach in San Clemente.  I got up early and went out running. There was a great path that paralled the beach, lots of runners and walkers using it.   It was very pretty and relaxing to hear the ocean as I ran.  I went by time, 1:05, so I will count that as 7 miles.

Still by the beach.  This time I concentrated on hills, lots of hills to run, so that's what I did.  I went for 1:05, so once again I'll count it as 7 miles.

Later we went to Sea World.  We were all amazed by how they're able to train those sea creatures to do all those tricks.  I'm almost as amazed that they're able to train cats to do tricks. Being a cat owner my entire life, I always thought cats were untrainable, but I guess I was wrong.

Last day at the beach.  Once again I concentrated on hills during the first half of the run, then I went to the beach and ran on it for about 20 minutes.  The total time was 1:25, so I'll count that as 9 miles.   I had three very enjoyable days running at the beach.  I think running at sea level is easier than here in Utah, at least I wasn't breathing as hard as I usually do.  Maybe I wasn't running as hard, I'm not sure what the explanation is.  All I know is I had fun running in San Clemente!