cheryl

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.