Same Time, Same Channel

Threshold Run
2 miles easy
2 x 10 min. @ half-marathon pace w/2-min. active recovery
3 miles easy

6:31 am, 53-57° F, 50% humidity, wind 1 SW, sunny.

I have no idea what my half-marathon pace is and I figure if I ran a half-marathon right now I wouldn't be very fast. So I decided to shoot for about 9:00 pace on the two 10 min. at 1/2M pace portions. I ran the first one, which was mostly uphill, a little slower than that, and the 2nd one, which was mostly downhill, a little faster than that. The worse mile was the first of the 3 easy miles at the end. That mile had a lot of uphill and I slowed way down for it.

There were no day laborers at the garden center today. I guess the job got done last week.

There's nothing else really to say about this run.

AP: 9:45. Splits: 10:26, 10:21, 10 min. (1.09 miles) @ 9:11, 2 min. (0.2 miles) @ 10:06, 10 min. (1.15 miles) @ 8:43, 10:10, 9:51, 9:32.

Easy run.

6:23 am, mid 50s, cloudy and then sunny (no precise weather information because wunderground is not working)

Waking up to the prospect of 9 miles did not thrill me this morning. The plan said 9 miles easy and that is somewhat of an oxymoron to me. I understand that "easy" refers to the pace, but there comes a point when there's enough distance that even easy is no longer easy. So I set out today to really keep it easy the whole time, and I think I managed it.

AP: 10:06. Splits: 10:40, 10:09, 10:16, 9:55, 10:26, 10:06, 9:47, 9:47, 9:49.

Easy run + 8 x 8 sec. hill sprints.

6:48 am, 51-56° F, 48% humidity, winds 2 SSW, sunny.

I took it pretty easy again today. My average pace is especially slow because it includes walking down the hill between hill sprints. The pace on my hill sprints was more consistent than it usually is.

I have a standard 4-mile route that starts and ends at my house, but today I wanted it to end at the bottom of my hill sprint hill, which is about 0.2 away from my house. I did my regular route but took a couple of small short cuts. It came pretty close. I was just a little past 4 miles when I got to the bottom of the hill.

My hill sprint hill leads from the main trail in the green belt up to my street, so I'm really doing the hill sprints in the green belt. There were a lot of runners and walkers in the green belt when I was doing the hill sprints today. I guess that's a popular place to be around 7:30 on a sunny summer morning.

After I finished the hill sprints, I walked home. There was a guy on my street who was watering his lawn with a hose. If I had been running instead of walking at that point, I would have asked him to spray me with the hose.

AP: 10:22. Splits: 10:48, 10:00, 9:49, 9:54. Pace on hill sprints: 7:09, 7:01, 7:01, 6:50, 6:48, 7:01, 6:49, 6:47.

Progression Run - 10 miles w/ last 20 min. moderate.

5:34 am, 52-59° F, 55% humidity, wind 4 SSW, sunny.

I had to get an early start today because I needed to be home before my boys left for young men's high adventure camp. My husband left with them because he's driving a group up to the camp site and then coming home. I had to be home to say goodbye to them and so that my daughter wouldn't be home alone after they left. I started out a good hour earlier than I've been starting lately, but I still wasn't early enough to be the sun. Actually, there was a good bit of shade at first because the sun wasn't very high in the sky.

This wasn't really a progression run for the whole run, just for the second half. I intentionally took it easy during the first half, because the first half has a lot of up hill, particularly in the 3rd and 5th miles. The elevation gain for the first 5 miles was 594 feet, with 415 feet of elevation loss. The elevation gain for the second 5 miles was 308 feet, with 485 feet of elevation loss. So I saved the faster running for the net downhill part. I'm a wimp that way.

Actually, I feel like quite a wimp looking at my splits today. Those last 2 miles were really hard for me, and they weren't that fast.Of course it was 59 degrees and sunny by then and I'm a heat wimp. 59 degrees and sunny kills me. Also, I really think I need to lose some weight if I'm going to get back to the shape I used to be in.

AP: 9:51. Splits: 10:49, 10:25, 10:27, 10:10, 10:32, 9:54, 9:29, 9:19, 8:48, 8:40.

Exceedingly slow, easy run.

7:07 am, 58° F, 65% humidity, winds calm, partly cloudy.

I should call this a recovery run. I was really slow the whole time, but particularly the first mile. I'm not sure I've ever run a mile slower than 11:00 before, but I did it this morning. I really could not get my legs moving until after that first mile. I'm still sluggish from yesterday's run, I guess. But at least I got out and did it. And I'm not nearly as sweaty as I was at the end of my run yesterday. I wonder if I can pull off 11 miles with the last 20 minutes hard tomorrow. I'm going to have to do it by myself. I can't find anyone to run with me.

I stayed up kind of late last night and watched Temple Grandin. That was a really good movie.

AP: 10:23. Splits: 11:04, 10:15, 10:06, 10:07.

Progression run of sorts.

6:45 am, 53-65° F, 62% humidity, winds calm, sunny, but with a fair amount of shade.

I ran the roads from home this morning instead of driving to the trail in order to save time. I've got a visiting teaching brunch appointment at 10 am.

When I run from my house, I typically run to the south and the east, which results in uphill for the first half of the run and down hill for the second half, generally speaking. This morning I decided to run west for a change. I ran down past my office and then back home and the little bit around the hood. This meant generally downhill for about 4 miles, up and down for 2 miles, then fairly significant uphill for 3 1/2 miles, downhill for 1 1/4, and then a steep uphill for 1/4.

I told myself that I would just do the distance and bag the 20 minutes hard at the end that I was supposed to do because I would get plenty of hard in the 3/12 uphill miles from the end of mile 6 to 9.5. I did in fact get plenty of hard during those 3 1/2 miles, but then I hit the nice downhill for a mile and a quarter after that so I decided to try to speed up a bit. I tried to keep up the past I had reached on the downhill as I ran the full length of my hill sprint hill and onto my street at the very end (when I run hill sprints, I run less than half the length of that hill). With 0.05 to go, I started retching. Nothing was coming out because I hadn't eaten anything, but I was running down my street retching. Some lady was in front of her house with her dog. She must have thought I was crazy. So I guess I finished hard even though over all I was pretty pathetically slow. It was pretty hot by that point, so that probably contributed to my losing it.

I've been trying to decide between running the ADT marathon on Labor Day and the TOU marathon 2 weeks later. On the run this morning I came up with a third option. Don't run either of them. If I run a marathon this Fall, I will certainly run it slower than my two previous marathons because I simply am not in the shape I was in when I trained for those marathons. And frankly the thought of long marathon training runs is somewhat daunting to me riight now. Maybe I'll just focus on the Deseret News 10K and then do the Georgetown Half in mid-August and just work on building mileage slowly and losing weight and then maybe look at a marathon next Spring. I think I prefer Spring marathons over Fall marathons because I'm better at training in the cold than in the heat.

In other news, I get to meet Tracy and her family tonight! Yippee!

I've got to go hurry and get showered now and go to brunch.

AP: 10:03. Splits: 10:59, 10:16, 10:15, 9:58, 10:08, 9:49, 10:22, 10:14, 10:08, 9:31, 8:56.