Clyde's Comeback!

The last day of August 2008. Wow this year has flown by so far. Here we are one month away from the STGM again! It seems like I was just here last year at this time. What a year it's been so far- as far as running goes. So far this year I've spent more time running, getting ready to run, and trying to recover from running than any other time in my life. I've logged more miles per week on avg by far than in the past and as of late have completed 5 weeks of a 10 week Big workout schedule. So for my efforts where am I? That's the million dollar question. So far in races this year I've never ran to a satisfactory level. So I really don't have a bench mark to know where my fitness is. Last Saturday was the closets look I've had so far in 2008 when I ran a "workout" 20 miler down the STG course. I was able to run harder and more energized than last year during a similar workout... but like I said it was a workout and not a real race. 

With the stress of family and life I really don't know where my running will go after the STGM in a little over a month. It seems this lifestyle of constantly being sore, tired, and hungry is taking it's toll on me and I'm taking a toll on others around me. So this could be my last real race... Unless things fall apart there like other races this year and I'll have to try something else to hang my hat on.

For now I'm just going to focus on enjoying September. Staying positive and happy around the house. I've got one more month of hard training and this could be it so I might as well enjoy it while it lasts. Yesterday was one of those days. I had a good run in great weather conditions early in the morning with the guys. Then enjoyed the opening weekend of college football to the fullest.

So for now I need to keep my family happy. Get my legs together- in doing that I need to find a good solution for my nagging hamstring and then be fully recovered by race day. I also need to stick to the workouts that the circle of trust has planned unless injury says otherwise. Then in the meantime I need to try and decide where we go from here? 

16 mile Big Nasty Workout! It sucked but I'm glad I stayed in and didn't pull out short. All weekend my legs have been very sore, and tight. My left hamstring that has been an issue most of the summer and both my calves refused to loosen up after last Saturday. I was feeling very beat up  this morning and told the guys there was a good chance I'd skip the speed stuff or cut it short. But we warmed up nice and easy for 4 miles and then I decided to try it. 

The plan was to do a 4 mile, 3 mile, 2 mile, 1 mile set all at MP with a 2 min jog to recover. Thats how it looked on paper- out on the trial with my sore legs it looked a lot like where all the bad people go after this life.

4 mile set: Avg- 5:50 pace. My legs didn't want to go from the start. It was so hard to just get going up to speed and within a quarter mile both Logan and Dave are long gone. I just try and relax and take it for what it's worth.

3 mile set: Avg- 5:45 pace. This one should have been the hardest. Don't ask my why, but there are a lot of reasons. However I just stuck it in gear and was able to hit the goal time back up the trail.

2 mile set: Avg- 5:46 pace. Basically the same effort as the 3 mile set. Right where I wanted to be ish.

1 mile: 5:37- Being the last one it was easier to try a little harder on this one. We did have a pretty hard head wind as well so a good effort a the end of a wicked workout.

Then we did a slow and easy 2 mile cool down.

Looking back at my splits I am really happy with the results considering how I felt today. Other than my legs being jacked up, the rest of my body and mind were pretty trashed too. So a good workout with a crappy body. Really glad I just did it. I was so close to bagging it for the day and just doing an easy run instead of the speed stuff. I just hope I didn't do any damage to the sore parts of my legs and if not hopefully I'll recover by Wednesday's mile workout! Ouch!

(Black Stratus- 116.5) 

5 mile run this afternoon. The weather has been a little cooler and that was nice. The legs actually felt better on this run than they did this morning.

(Blue Stratus- 471.9) 

12.2 mile morning run (out and back) up by overpass. It was nice and cool this morning. It showed 60 degrees at my house and I was loving it. My hands actually got a little cold up around the golf course on the way out. The Wildbull ran me down as he was finishing up his run. Always good to see the bull out running. I took it way easy this morning and actually never really got into the run- just kind of poked along. I'll try a couple hours of recovery and then go back out for 7.8 more so I can be done before this afternoon as we have company coming. 

(New Landreth- 89.9) 

 1 hour and 40 min rest/ recovery and then back out for the second run. 

7.8 mile GS loop. Blah is about the best way to describe this run. Just getting in the miles. The cool temps made this one doable.  

(Blue Cumulus 487.8) 

12.2 mile morning run. Overpass out and backer. Another cool morning. The Circle of Trust had planned to do a mile repeat workout this morning, but Logan called last night and we decided to do it on Thursday instead. That ended up being like Christmas in September to me. There would have been no way under the sun or stars that I could have did a big workout today. Hopefully a day will bring some fresher legs.

(Landreth- 401.2) 

7.8 mile run today at noon. I wanted to switch it up and get off my regular routes so I ran from home down to our new office. It ended up being right at the 7.8 miles that I still needed today. I didn't push it but kind of wanted to get out a this little rut. So I went at a brisk but easy pace (6:55 for the run). It seems like every time I run it's a easy recovery or warmup or basically hard and fast. There is never a nice inbetween paced run. This afternoons run felt pretty good. So we'll see how tomorrow morning goes.

(Blue Stratus- 479.7) 

16 miles early (4:30 a.m) this morning as part of a Big Workout with the Circle of Trust. The plan was to warmup with 4 miles then do 2 miles at Tinman Tempo pace (6:00 min) then 6x1 mile repeats @ LT pace (5:30 min mile projected pace) w/200 m recovery in between and then cool down. 

I've been feeling very trashed this week but today I felt a lot better than the last two days- what a blessing because this workout would have killed me if I'd have been feeling like I did early this week. The warmup went by fast like always and then we started the Tinman. It was nice to kind of get the legs going at that pace. The problem with the whole workout was it was dark and very hard to see the trail. Now to start the miles and I'm really stressing about it. For some reason I feel like a lamb walking to the slaughter...

1. 5:18- Got out strong and trying to get a feel for the workout. Like I said running in the darkness is weird.

2. 5:24ish- I didn't start my watch on this one so when I finished there was nothing. Dave was a short distance back and said this is a ballpark of where I was at.  

3. 5:25- Just trying to get through this- halfway baby!

4. 5:23- Locked in to a pretty good little groove on these middle one's. 

5. 5:19- I can see the workout coming to an end and I'm getting butterflies.

6: 5:16- A really good mile. I felt really strong coming up the trail here- at the halfway point I checked all the sensors and my body said you can go faster so I tried to finish hard. There is a small hill on the last quarter so a hard finish here is a good finish.

Cool down back up past the parking lot. Very glad to have this one in the past. Considering how I've felt lately I was happy to put together a solid workout for once today. Last time I did this workout a few weeks back it trashed me for a good week or more so hopefully I'll recover a little better from this one.  

(black stratus- 132.5) 

3 miles this afternoon. I didn't feel too bad as far as the legs go. The sun did feel really hot but the temp was only 95 or so... so I guess it wasn't that bad. I like 3 miles in the afternoon rather than 8 any day of the week. I did a little over a mile of this barefoot up at the GS park. I kind of just ran little crazy loops all over the grass.  

13 miles this morning. The plan was for 9 miles this morning and 4 this afternoon. However I'm going to Provo with Logan's x-country team and we are leaving this afternoon. So once I got out running this morning I just though I'd get it all over with now. I did a little different version of my GS/Overpass out-and-back course. I like this one a lot better and will most likely move in that direction on future runs. I'm just in love with the morning weather we've been having the last few days. Just perfect! The afternoons are still a nightmare but what can you do...

(New Landreth- 102.9)

22 mile run early this morning in Provo with Dave, Logan and Greg H. joined us for a while as well. Basically we ran from one end of Provo to the other and up the canyon and then some. This was a hard one for the Circle of Trust. We were all trashed to begin with and 22 miles don't come easy  on tired legs. The last 5 miles we did a progression tempo which was really hard to shift gears but we managed to pull it off. Nothing really fast.... I think the fastest mile was at 5:39. 

After that we spent a LONG day at the BYU meet. It was fun, but very long. It was good to see all the high school kids run so well and also some older guys from the blog who ran the open 4 mile race. Good job everyone.

(Black Stratus- 152.5)