Clyde's Comeback!

14 miles in the a.m. A good morning run here in Torrey. Out and back 7.15, the altitude this morning was kind of hard on me. I just ran nice and easy on the way out (7:18) pace 52:06. Then on the way back I tried to do marathon pace or marathon pace effort (6:12) pace 44:13. With the altitude and hills it was hard to push it too much harder-plus I didn't want to kill myself after a harder workout on Saturday.

Glad to get the run in. Now we are off to hike Calf Creek then drive to Bryce Canyon and then back to STG. So a long day ahead.

6 mile hike up to and back from Calf Creek. A very good hike at a brisk pace, mostly in sand. If you haven't been there you should go.

1 more mile hiking at Bryce Canyon. Bryce is ok but I've never really loved the place.

When I got home I was trashed from a long day. I don't usually count other things as mileage but today of the 7 hiking miles I think I'll count 2 of them as easy miles.

13 miles this morning with Ted. He was down here for some business and we hooked up at 5:25 this morning to do a run. He wanted to do around 13 miles and we were going to leave from his room at the Ramada. I told him that I'd never done a 13 miler from the Ramada but would see what I could come up with.

We ran from there down River road to the trail that run along the river down to the Dixie Center. We stayed on that trail and looped around Bloomington Hills back to River Road. Then we hit the trail up to the Dinasor tracks and then up to Telegraph and back down past the factory stores to finish up. The distance ended up being pretty close to what the Dr. ordered.

We just ran at a relaxed/talking pace for the run. Good run this morning. Glad to be mobile after a long marathon type of day on Labor day. 

8.6 miles this morning. Did the GS extended loop. Went out early and it was nice and calm. I felt pretty good and am ready to pick it up the rest of the week after a pretty weak start. I took some "other" roads and thought it would be the same distance...but it wasn't. Later in the day I started to wonder about it and had to check it out. So instead of getting nine in this morning I only got 8.6.

11.5 miles run this afternoon. I had some things going this evening so I needed to get my run done early, and the treadmill sounded like the worst thing in the world. So I got myself pumped up and went out just before 4 p.m. It was 103 when I left and 101 when I got home. There was a small breeze in the air that made it possible to be out, but it was just flat out hot. I did the big loop run that Dave and I did last week. Then when I got to the golf course I ran up and down a couple fairways to get some water and that extended it. About 6 miles into the run I was feeling the heat and the gnome’s voice from Travelocity was running through my head (yes in an English accent) saying “Am I going to die.”

Luckily for the water on the golf course I lived. I made it home an began to drink every recovery drink I own one by one and within 4 ½ hours I started to feel better.

Glad to have pushed through the run. Looking back it wasn’t that bad- it made for a good endurance training run. Hopefully it won’t wipe me out for my runs the rest of the week.

14 miles this morning. BIG WORKOUT! After my hot dehydrating run yesterday afternoon just getting out for an early morning run was a victory. I had planned to do my 8.2-mile tempo up to water tank and down through the industrial park and back home. This is a very challenging place to do a tempo workout. The first 3.5 miles you just climb up a rocky, sandy dirt trail, and the last .5 of that is a killer hill up to the water tank.

So anyways I did 3 a three-mile warm up over to GS and back to my house. Then I grabbed a drink and started the tempo. Goal was to PR on the course and finish the whole workout that included another three miles of cool down.

So I’m off… The first 3.5 I was doing 5:20 min/mile effort and was only getting rewarded with 7:15-25 min/mile pace. It was just killer and by the time I got to the top and hit the road all I wanted to do was to stop the tempo and jog back home. But I pressed on defiantly feeling the effects of last nights run in my legs. Once on the road it took a half-mile to change gears and then I was around an honest 5:30 pace down to about one mile left and then I was done. It was like I got ran over by a truck and I limped home on a 6:15 min/mile pace to finish up at 52:14 for the 8.2 - a new PR on that course (old PR was 52:49 on very fresh legs). I was happy and kind of mad because had I not totally died on the last mile I could have been 51 min’s and something. This was a very good effort under the circumstances. I had to dig deep and push most of the run. Although the overall time was like 6:24 min/mile pace on a regular road in town this effort would have been at least 5:30 or lower even with some hills.

After I finished the tempo I got another drink at home and did the 3 mile cool down (same as warm up).

Workouts like this are very hard. In fact this could have been my hardest running workout ever. I think with one or two more workouts like this I’ll be ready for a big PR at STG. I was 145 lbs after run and after drinking some PowerAde. This ties my all time low since high school.

9.1 miles tonight with the running club. We did the Entrada loop. All at nice and easy pace. I wasn't going to push it even if the other guys wanted to take off. But they didn't so we just had a good run. We did most of it in the dark- the days are getting shorter, and we may need to meet at 7 p.m.

9.2 miles this morning. I went out around 8 a.m. and the it still wasn't too hot out. I did the powerline/GS loop extended. Just a steady smooth pace. Feeling a little tired today. But the only thing I've got to do other than run today is play golf at 1:30 p.m.- I guess it will be very hot then. I hope to play as good as I did last week. However golf is a lot more unpredictable than running.

21 mile club run this morning. We meet up at the running store and did the same 20 miles that we did a few weeks ago. It’s basically the middle 20 miles of the SGM course. From where we started it was almost 4 miles to the start of the Veyo hill, and then we hit the 20 mile mark just above the running store.

We started out and I had really nothing planned for the run. The only thing was that I wanted to get around 6 miles at marathon pace. So for the first 7 miles I just run easy pace with the guys- just slow trying to get warmed up way early in the morning. Then from miles 7-9 I just tried to pick it up a little and ease into MP. The last 11 miles I decided to run at marathon effort or so. I actually thought at mile 9 that if I pushed it in I may have a shot at breaking 2 hours for the entire run even with the 7 slow miles. Things got interesting during the last few and I had to go a little harder than MP to get there but I made it.

1:59:37 for the 20 miles @ an average pace of 5:58 per mile. This ended up being a very good effort considering the very slow start.

1. 6:56

2. 6:46

3. 6:28

4. 6:51- just easy

5. 7:45- Veyo hill easy

6. 6:30

7. 6:17-starting to warm-up

8. 6:29

9. 5:59-last warm-up mile

10. 5:46

11. 5:41- It takes a couple miles to get rockin

12. 5:25

13. 5:19-snow canyon area for next few

14. 5:20

15. 5:25

16. 5:34-up Winchester Hill

17. 5:19-Time to get going if I’m going to make it

18. 5:12

19. 5:16

20. 5:06-Felt good today and finished it off

When my Garmin chimed with two miles to go I had like 10:45 or so to do it in and I almost abandoned ship thinking it wasn’t going to happen. However I put my nose to the grind stone and kicked the last two out and ended up with around 22 seconds to spare.

A great workout for me. If I can run anything like this on October 6, I’ll be in the sub 2:30 club for sure- maybe even the sub 2:27 club. Jogged one mile at the end to help the legs cool off- even though they were pretty pumped and wanted to do more I decided to be done and now it’s time to rest for the weekend.

Took a little trip down to Las Vegas for the afternoon/evening. This trip was all about the food. I had In-and-Out burger when we got down there for lunch and then a great trip to the Rio buffet-world class. It was straight from the angles. After a good hard week I'm always down for a good meal or three. We walked about 3 miles up and down the strip to show our Japanes boy the whole sha-bang. It was good to kind of walk the legs out and streach here and there. No mileage counted for the walking tonight.