Clyde's Comeback!

12 mile morning run. It rained yesterday, and last night so I had to avoid any dirt areas. So today I just ran up into GS and did two loops there and back around Middleton the long way to hit 12 miles.

What an amazing morning. The desert smells so good after a rain. Today there was a thick fog up around the golf course area. It looked awesome and reminded me of doing runs in northern England.

The run felt pretty good for a Monday. I'm going to tapper off pretty good the last part of the week and with the race only be around 70-80 miles for the week.

(White Cumulus 182.2)

8 mile run tonight. Up to the water tank and around industrial. Pretty windy on the run- I hate wind! Once I started down off the ridge and had the wind at my back for a while I just tried to relax and run. Also worked on a few breathing exercises to help open up the lungs. My allergies have been horrible the last couple weeks. Everything here has been growing and in bloom. From what I remember it usually goes away sometime in May.

(Landreth 69.4)

9.2 mile run this morning. Over to GS the long way and up over the hill back home around Middleton. Kind of a new version of an old loop. A lot going of for me this week so some tapered mileage will feel very good.

(Red Stratus 247 )

7.3 mile run this afternoon. GS loop backwards and the short version. Worked my butt off today and about 4 miles into this run I was getting dizzy and light headed (kind of in this trance). So I decided to kind of push the pace to wake up a little. I ran hard all the way up the sand trail to the powerline. I'm not sure on pace but it was tempo effort uphill in sand. Then once on top I relaxed for about a mile and picked it up again on the trail down into Middleton. Got done and went to watch the Dixie High Baseball team play Snow Canyon in a close region game. Dixie 3, Snow Canyon 1- it was a good game.

(Blue Cumulus 270.3 )

9.2 mile morning run. Same loop as yesterday morning. Really didn't want to go today but pushed myself out the door. The two ball park franks that I ate at the baseball game last night gave me some problems along the way.

Would you classify a hot dog as "processed food"?

(Blue cumulus 252.4)

5 mile run this afternoon. Just the GS loop. I was only going to do 4 miles but the 4 miler and 5 mile loop are right by each other and the 5 mile loop is basically just as easy as the 4... my wife knows what I'm talking about.

7.5 mile run this morning. I felt really good today after using the sick last night. It really helps work some of the kinks out. I did the GS loop and finished long around Middleton park. Another busy day ahead. We will be driving up to Orem this afternoon to start our little mini vacation up north. We will be staying in Orem tonigh, the Red Moose Lodge on Friday night, and the Little America hotel in SLC on Saturday night before going to GC on Sunday morning at the new convention center.

(White Cumulus 189.7)

5 mile run this morning in Orem. It was chilly but not as bad as I thought it would be. We are going to drive up to the lodge now and check in and try to relax the rest of the day. I'll try to do a couple more when we get up there.

3 mile run this afternoon here in Eden. We drove up to the lodge and checked in- then spent the rest of the day relaxing in the room. I finally got up and did and out-and-back 1.5 miler to take my mind off the race... yeah right. When I finished I was met by Brent and Sylvia, and Kim and Tom who were talking in the lobby. We all later went to dinner together at Eden Eats.

I finally get to blog my race! To start off I just have to say my official time was 1:14:17 but it should have been something like 1:13:55 or something. I'll explain why below.

1 mile early at the lodge before going to the bus. 2 mile warm-up at the start with the blogging gang.

The weather turned out to be better up at the start then we had thought the day before. As the race started my goal was to be semi conservative at first and then work into the race. Here's the play-by-play.

1. 5:23- just working into the race. After the dust settles I'm sitting in 6th place as the guys ahead of me take off a little faster than I'd planned on going out.

2. 5:26- 6th place and just moving down the canyon

3. 5:26- Same position all the way to 7 miles. The downhill here really isn't that fast.

4. 5:30- Feeling good but not as smooth as I should be. So I start trying to relax and breath deeper.

5. 5:30- Same

6. 5:29- Getting close to the turn and running down the same road as my 1st leg of Wasatch Back!

7. 5:42- We make the turn here and start fighting the WIND and the rollie pollies...

8. 5:40- I pass the guy in front of me as he looks to be pretty much done.

9. 5:50- At mile marker 9 I look at my watch and still feel like I can finish pretty strong. So I want to make it to mile 10 around 55 min's or so... but this is the start of the horrible miles and the wind starts to beat me down to the earth.

10. 5:49- Just hating it and working for every step.

11. 6:06- A long uphill along with hard wind in the face. This sucked because my goal is to have all race miles under 6 min's this year and well... that didn't happen.

12. 5:57- Along here in some spot Steve A. took a (wrong) left hand turn and at that point I'm about 45 seconds-1 min behind him. As I come through the intersection I see him going the wrong way and I keep going the right way... but I start to second guess myself and so I turn around and run back through the intersection to where I can see the sign that was pointing out the right way to go. I was in fact going the right way to begin with and ended up costing myself 20 seconds+ and a 1:13 something. Anyways that was the part I was to explain from the top.

13. 5:55- Really trying to finish hard now after the screw up but I'm not going very fast.

.1 32 seconds or 5:10 pace for the last tenth.

So overall not too bad. I really wish I woudn't have turned around so there was no question about my time. The conditions were bad I guess. I mean the first 6.6 was fine... a little cold for me at around 35 degrees. Then from the turn in the wind just sucked the life out of all of us. The best part about it was that I got to see the Ogden course and prepare my mind for that race. Also today was a good workout to prepare for upcoming races.

Good job to all the other bloggers!

(Speedstars 80.3)