I ran thru Millvlle and Providence today. I ran two miles to warmup then did a faster mile in 6:41 to get into a groove then I did 4x4mins @ CV pace. I did the first one into the wind at 6:00 mile pace. The second was uphill at 6:05 pace. The third was flat and with the wind at 5:58 pace. The last one was downhill (luckily as I was beat) at 5:44 pace. I ran the rest of the miles at a decent clip (meaning as fast as I could will my legs to go when they are tired and sore).
My foot still hurts from last saturday. I think something might really be wrong. It hurts only during the first 3 miles of the run and then it feels better (numb maybe). I hope it starts to get better soon.
I think I underestimated the cold today. I was dressed for 20 degrees and above and suffered for it. The run felt good..my hands and cheeks didn't. I started to sound like I was at the dentist getting teeth pulled. My cheeks were numb just like with novocaine.
Paul gave me some tips for my suspected PF injury. I hope that I can have some improvement soon without losing mileage, but we will see.
I massaged my calves to death this weekend and occasionally iced my foot when I felt a bit of inflamation. It felt really good after not running on Sunday, so I decided to continue with my scheduled monday run. It felt pretty good in the morning, I tried to warm it up before taking off on the run. It hurt a bit during the run, but felt better than on Sat and much better than last week.
I ran the Millville and Providence hills loop with more clothes on today. I overdressed this time, so as not to be hypothermic this time. Started with 2 easy miles warmup (7:18, 7:13) then wanted to run a tempo 5-6 miles at 6:30 pace. I started out just right for the first two miles, 6:30 and 6:30. Then the uphill started (6:42 with same effort). The next mile killed me as it was a progressively steeper hill (7:41). The next mile, I was at 6:30 pace for the flat half and then it climbed again for 1/2 mile (7:00). The next mile started at the peak of the hill and was a fast downhill that started to hurt my foot so I layed off a bit (6:14). The last three miles home were slight downhill and at a comfortable pace. (6:25, 7:05, 6:50). I feel good to have got that one over with. The uphill section was meant to help me for the striders 10 Mile race but we will see.
My foot hurt worse today, especially on the downhills. I considered cutting the run short but didn't. I ran through Providence and River Heights at a nice and easy pace.
My foot was feeling better today (maybe from the ACE bandage wrap job on it last night) but I decided to lower the intensity and keep the mileage up and see if that helps. So today I changed my fartlek run to a general aerobic run. My goal was to stay ahead of the 7:00 guy. I did have a chance meeting with Paul on the river trail. Only the dedicated run when its cold and early. Dedicated or stupid, who knows??
Easy miles in Providence Hills. Did 2x20 sec hill surges and 4x20 sec striders. Foot felt about the same as yesterday. The rain during the run was a nice change from the freezing temperatures and snow.
Easy Pace on Landfill Loop. Body felt very fatigued and sore. I did some rock-climbing and a pull-up and bench-press competition on Wed night and it all caught up with me this morning. I am very sore.
Striders WRC 10 Miler (10 Miles) 01:03:01, Place overall: 12, Place in age division: 5
Slow miles
Fast miles
Total Distance
5.50
10.00
15.50
Striders WRC 10 Mile race.
It lived up to its hype of another killer race. After an easy 2 miles to warmup we hit the road. The weather cleared up enough to make the race almost ideal. It was breezy and maybe 5 degrees cooler than I would like, but ideal. Not as many big names came to this race but there were still plenty of people there.
There were some course issues that made the course too short, so I will report my splits based on my Garmin. By the way, it came out to be about .1 mile short.
Mile 1
6:03
Little up Little Down
Mile 2
5:24
All Downhill, people still pulling away from me
Mile 3
6:04
Rolling Hills
Mile 4
6:16
More Rolling Hills
Mile 5
7:03
Start of big hills
Mile 6
7:10
Uhh... hilly
Mile 7
7:43
Kill me now!!
Mile 8
5:42
Finally! Downhill again
Mile 9
6:13
Slower than I wanted, people that I passed on uphill passed me back during this mile.
Mile 10
6:07 (ave)
Passed the people back on short uphill and kicked hard. I passed a guy in the last 100meters.
I feel really good about it as I was able to work the uphills ok. I still couldn't rip the downhills like the people around me. That may be something to work on. My foot issue was not much of a factor. I don't think it slowed me much if any. It is nice that we have a break before the next race as my body is trashed right now.
Some people on the Blog had some GREAT races and Congrats to them. Especially Paul and Ted. They both ran very well.
Ran the Providence - Millville loop this morning. Daylight Savings made it pretty dark and made it seem really early. I was feeling ok after the 10 miler on Sat and decided to try and do a tempo run. I started out easy with two miles in 7:19 and 7:11 then had two hilly miles to the top of Providence 7:23, 8:17. I went hard up the hills but not quite MP effort. As I crested the last of the hills, I decided to run hard the rest of the way home and see how it went. There were a lot of downhill miles that made it easy and made me lazy so that when the flat miles snuck up on me, I wasn't working hard enough. I went, 6:29, 6:08(downhill -felt like 6:40), 6:36(flat miles now), 6:33, 6:21 (really focused that mile), 6:33, and 6:34. I walked around the block when I was done to cool down. It felt pretty good considering how my legs felt. They were pretty sore and tired by the end of todays run.
Ran the Young Ward Loop this morning. I wanted to do another tempo instead of a fartlek to give my foot some more time to heal. It felt pretty good today actually.
The Goal was to do 2 miles under 7:00 then 5 @ 6:30 then the rest under 7:00. I went: 6:59, 6:54, 6:29, 6:31, 6:31, 6:30, 6:30, 6:55, 6:58, 6:58, 6:52. I felt like I was working way too hard for all my miles. The 6:30's felt like 6:15's and the ~7:00's felt like 6:40's. It was tough and I am wiped out now. It feels good though to still hit my goal times inspite of feeling sub-par.
Nothing like an easy long run on muddy trails to soothe the soul. I feel the best I think I ever have felt after a 15 mile run. I got pretty dehydrated but that is my fault for not carrying any water. We started from the Canal Trail and ended up at the campground and wandered back. Other than a few close calls on the ice I made out ok. I was the muddiest at the turnaroud so I won that prize ( I wasn't allowed insideour house until I hosed off first). It sure was nice to sleep in today and run with company (Paul, Jon, James, and Dan...aka the Bible Boys).
Total Time: 2:07:07 (8:27 mi)
Ave HR: 155 (high as a result of heat/hydration)
60.5 Miles for the week and I was able to hold that mileage now for 3-weeks. Time to shoot for 65.
I was not looking forward to today's workout and it didn't dissapoint. I ran a Young Ward loop via the Landfill. I started out with a 7:01 mile then did a mini 2 mile tempo (6:25, 6:28) then jumped right into some 1000m repeats.
I only approximated the 1000 meters as I didn't set the Garmin to metric beforehand. I did 6x1000meters @ goal pace of 5:55 mi with 2-min recovery in-between. I know I could have gotten by on less recovery, but I wanted to try and hit my times and not crap-out. I went:
.63mi in 3:44 (5:56)
.62mi in 3:43 (5:57)
.63mi in 3:46 (6:01)
.63mi in 3:44 (5:56)
.63mi in 3:43 (5:56)
.62mi in 3:42 (5:55)
After the last repeat, I ran an easy mile in 7:43 to recover then tried to stay below 7:00 miles the rest of the way home (6:57, 7:00, 6:55, 6:45 pace (.5 mile)). I was wiped when I got home, but I was glad that was able to get pretty close to my goal pace.
Very Easy miles past Logan High, up the Blvd and onto the canal trail. Footing was challenging on the trail in the dark so took it really easy. I stopped at Logan High Track to do 4x100m striders. They felt, but my legs are feeling pounded lately. The foot is doing great though.
Its a Girl!!! 6 lbs 14oz 18.5 in Healthy Girl. I am the proud father of a boy (now two years old) and a tiny little girl. We couldn't be more pleased with how everything worked out. Both Mother and Daughter (Lily is her name) are doing great and were sick of me hovering, so they kicked me out of the Hospital for a run.
Ran an easy 8 around Providence and River Heights.
Thanks everyone for the comments and support! Everyone is continuing to do well.
Today I took advantage of family sleeping over at my house to sneak out early for a run while everyone is asleep. I didn't feel up to killing myself on a killer workout (my son is sick and I feel a hint of it coming on) so I ran more by feel today than specific times. I started out easy for the first mile and then built in intensity. By mile 4 I was running around 6:30-6:40 pace effort (I ran on lots of hills and for the uphill miles, it was slower and on the downs it was faster). I ran about 4 miles total of higher intensity tempo work, but I wanted to do a bit of VO2Max stuff so I ran by Logan High Track and did an 800 pretty hard to see where I was at. I ran the first 400 in 76 and then ran the next 400 in 80 seconds. (Total 2:36) It seemed pretty hard, as I was tired, but I think I could shave 10 seconds off pretty easy. My 800meter PR is 2:23 so I think I am getting close to that fitness level. With some VO2max training I think I can go for my mile PR record this summer of 5:03 as that is a goal of mine.
Total Time: 1:27:06 (6:56 ave)
Ave HR: 163
Funny story: Today while running in the morning frost. I was running on the sidewalk and a minivan jumped the curb and hit a pole right next to me. It was only 10-15 feet away. Luckily it was not moving that fast. I stopped and made sure everyone was ok. The hispanic family was fine. The windows were so frosted over I couldn't even see in them. They obviously couldn't see out either. I looked over the damage with them and laughed because the hood was rusted from the last time they ran into something. I gave them a lecture about scraping their windows and some sob story of how they almost killed me. They were more scared about me calling the cops and wanted to get out of there.
I needed an easy day today so I ran the Landfill Loop. My family is doing great. We should have my wife and daughter home tonight. My 2-year old son is still jealous, but will now at least look at his sister. It sure is funny.
AM: Ran with Paul at 9:00. I tried to get up to run with Jon but didn't make it. I am not getting enough sleep nowdays. Pace was nice and conversational. Did some striders on the USU track.
Total Time: 57:12 (7:09 ave)
Ave HR: 157
PM: Ran with Paul and James in Blacksmith Fork Canyon. We parked near mile marker 14 and drove up between marker 3 and 4. We were dissapointed to see that we had a pretty stiff headwind coming down the canyon. We had illusions of cranking out some mile splits similar to what we will get in the Striders 1/2 marathon but the wind slowed us down. We wanted to do a warmup then do 4 miles fast. James and I ran together on the fast portion while Paul pulled away effortlessly. We did the 2.5 mile warmup with these splits: 7:15 pace for a half-mile (at that point we were on the TOU mile splits), 6:39, 6:35. For our fast miles, I wanted to see what marathon pace and 1/2 marathon pace (on a downhill course) felt like (6:00 to 6:20's).
We went: 6:15, 6:03, ~6:20, 6:05.
We ran the rest of the way out of the canyon under 7:00 mile average. I felt ok during the run. I was getting dehydrated, and I had to take a bio break during the third fast mile, but felt better for a while after. The last 2 miles were miserable. I need to figure out a better system to keep my stomach in check.
In all, I think I am on track to break 1:22 in the half with a good shot at breaking 1:20. It was a tough week finding time to run this much, and I need more sleep, but I survived and it turned out to be a great week.
This morning after sleeping a handful of hours, I decided to run the First Dam Run 10K as a tempo workout. I ran some easy miles to Merlin Olsen Park and got going. I was shooting for 6:30 average for the run.
Mile 1: 6:22 Not a bad start
Mile 2: 6:36 Uphill and into the Canyon wind
Mile 3: 6:38 Half Up/ Half Down, the canyon wind was bad through here
Mile 4: 6:14 Downhill
Mile 5: 6:15 Flat
Mile 6: 6:20 Flat, was getting pretty tired and had to work pretty hard
Mile 6.2: 1:18 (5:57 pace) No kick, just pushed hard to the finish
39:43 for the 10K. (6:24 ave)
That was 2 minutes slower than I raced it last fall, so I know I have a lot to look forward to this year with my times. This is the year of PR's
I really wanted to get a few miles in this morning, but I couldn't as famly issues arose.
Easy run with the Del Sol relay guys in the evening. Lots of fun, especially at dinner afterward. It was nice to see Dave again and hang out for a while. The run was cold and wet. Perfect training for Del sol as it is obviously cold and wet in AZ (how do you lay on the sarcasm while blogging??). I am getting excited.
Easy Run on Providence-River Heights Loop. After running twice now (in 12 hours) in lousy weather, I am looking forward to sweating it out in AZ. We leave tonight.
Drove from St. George to Wickenburg all morning (6.5 hours due to construction and the traffic around Hoover Dam). We had some good times in the van watching movies and joking around. I was very sick of driving already and we haden't even started the race. Our team started at 6:00 PM and since I was the last of the 12 runners, I still had quite a while before my run (technically my runs didn't start until Sat). I got out and aided people and jogged a bit to stay loose. No idea on mileage, but I will call it 2.
Relay Del Sol (187 Miles) 19:10:57, Place overall: 2, Place in age division: 1
Slow miles
Fast miles
Total Distance
8.00
16.05
24.05
Day 2 of the Relay, but my work is just beginning. Once we escaped from the cops (a story for another day), Van 2 (Laud, Chris, James, Ryan, Andy, and myself) drove to exchange 6 to wait until Van 1 showed up. A band was playing and excitement was high. We stayed in contact with Van 1 and knew that our team had lost about 4 minutes to Google, but it was early. We had blown away from the other teams that had started with us for good, and didn't think about it again. Our van ran some good legs with some of us losing a bit of time and some of us gaining a bit back.
I got the baton at 12:32 AM and took off. I was running all by myself with Google about 10 minutes ahead. I had 3 miles of flat and then a gradual climb over the next 3.5 miles (Leg 12 = 6.9 miles according to the Garmin 305). I started out pretty hot, full of energy and excitement. I could also tell the lower elevation helped. My goal pace (worst case scenario) was 6:30 average. I ran 5:51, 5:58, 6:03, 6:18, 6:13, 5:59, and 5:33 (.9). I felt like I had a lot left, but felt like I was working pretty hard. I heard that I made up about 3 minutes on Google during this leg.
Total Time: 41:58 (6:05 ave pace for 6.9 miles)
Ave HR: 183 Max HR: 187
We then drove to exchange 18 to catch some z's before our next legs. Big mistake. That exchange was at a location with 2 porta pots and dirt everything. I didn't feel like sleeping in the dirt, so all six guys tried to get comfortable in the minivan. Everyone slept a bit, but I think I only slept about 1/2 hour. Bummer. Van 1 came in flying and Google realized a race was brewing. Laud ran an excellent leg. Chris ran awesome, evan gaining time on his guy. James ran a fast 10K for his leg and made up chunks of time, and we were loving it. Ryan took off and also gained some time back. Andy took off and man, that guy can run. He passed people like they were standing still. He came into my exchange only about 1:20 behind Google (well within sight of them).
My leg two (leg 24) was 5.4 miles according to the Garmin, was at sunrise and had rolling hills, but finished with a climb of 150 feet over 3/4 mile. I took off working to catch Google. I knew I could close the gap. I ran 5:45, 5:47, 5:53 (18 min 5K = fastest 5K I have run in years), 5:53, 6:25 (uphill), 2:27 (.4 = 6:17 ave). I closed the gap to 20 seconds and handed off to Dave. I know I could have closed and passed him, but I would have been too spent to run again, so I compromised and closed as much as possible while trying to save something.
Total Time: 32:12 for 5.4 miles (5:58 ave) (my actual time was about 2 seconds faster for each leg as I started the watch before I recieved the baton and stopped it after I handed it off, but I will record what my watch read exactly).
Ave HR: 186 Max HR: 195
After my leg, Van 2 drove to exchange 30 to wait. It was now warm and sunny, we didn't have time to sleep, so we just hung out. We were pretty pumped about closing such a large gap on Google, and we knew it was going to be a race. Van 1 came into the exchange spent but they did their job minimizing the gap. We knew it was up to us to close the gap ( 3-4 minutes, I don't remember). Unfortunately, the Goggle runners ran their best legs on those first two legs and opened up a lead. James ran an excellent leg, running a great time, but was frustrated by running on a stretch of road with a million stop lights. He had to wait at all of them, losing all the time he was making up. I am sure he will comment about this, but the course difficult due to the lights. Ryan ran well, but also got stopped at a light and had trouble getting going again. Andy ran a suicidal pace in the heat, and made up some time but we were down by about 12 minutes (2 miles).
My last leg (leg 36) was 3.75 miles according to my Garmin. Most of it was on paved trails along a Golf Course and Park. It was very poorly marked with branches running off in many directions. I ran what seemed like the right course, having to adjust a couple of times to get back on it. My legs were so trashed by now it was a miracle they even worked. I also had some serious cramping in my chest and stomach (full body side-ache) that didn't help. The heat was so bad (for me at least) that my water-soaked shirt dried in the first .5 mile. I am used to running in the snow and below freezing weather, not 80+ degrees. I ran as hard as I could, but Google never came into view. I do figure that I gained about a minute is all.
I ran 6:04, 6:16, 6:19, 4:37 (6:12 pace for .75)
Total Time: 23:17 (6:13 ave)
Ave HR: 179 Max HR: 185
We finished 2nd overall (71 teams) and first in the Mens Open Division with a time of 19:10:57 well ahead of our goal time of 20 hours. Results are HERE. I am impressed we got so close to winning the thing. Except for 2-3 bad legs, it would be a whole different story, but we put ourselves within reach of the victory. Nice Running Team!
Not exactly sure how many easy miles I ran with warmups and cooldowns and aiding, but I will call it 8.
I figured out I ran 6:04 ave pace for the 16.05 miles. I am very pleased with that result. As my worst case pace was ~ 6:30 and my expectations were closer to 6:10 - 6:15.
