Per Aspera Ad Astra

Winter Series 10k

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Location:

Salt Lake City,UT,United States

Member Since:

Dec 08, 2012

Gender:

Male

Goal Type:

Local Elite

Running Accomplishments:

13.1: 1:09:58 (2018 Des News)

26.2: 2:37:45 (2019 Mesa Phoenix)

Short-Term Running Goals:

Stay healthy!

 

2019 Running Schedule

Feb - Mesa Phoenix Marathon (AZ): 2:37:45. Lingering flu didn't help, but I still got a PR.

April - Bonneville Shoreline Trail Marathon (UT). Mostly just going to be a training run. Finally got myself into the sub-4 club last year, so I'll just have fun with it this year.

May - Stillwater Half Marathon (MN). Goal race for Spring. Looking for ~1:12.

October- Chicago Marathon (IL). We'll see where I'm at in Fall, but probably will be looking for low 2:30s.

Long-Term Running Goals:

Stay healthy, make improvements, maximize my potential.

Personal:

I am a bioengineering PhD currently working as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Neurology at the University of Utah, where I design and improve neurosurgical approaches for treating movement disorders.


Summer 2018 update: I'm lazy about copying over from Strava, so find me over there for day-to-day runs until I eventually get around to copying everything over here.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
116.6039.5028.100.00184.20
Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00Weight: 0.00
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
19.000.000.000.0019.00

Started at 9PM, wore a huge reflective triangle, 200 lumen headlamp, flashing red LED blinker, reflective ankle strips, and reflective gloves, so I was basically a moving traffic barrel.  Down Beck Street to Downtown.  Hit the 5 mile split in :36, felt absurdly easy, which is a good sign, and I had been running quite a bit out of my way to avoid black ice (slipped and slammed about 3 minutes in), so it was even slightly long for the split, probably by a minute or so.  Kept going, hit downtown, looped around and came back up Main.  Followed Main up Columbus and then all the way up the hill and onto the trail that connects to the upper neighborhood.  Planned to go up and over the radio towers, but quickly realized that was a terrible idea due to snow, so I figured I would stick on the trail into the mine and pop down a mining road.  Getting in there, I realized that wasn't happening.  Snow was way too deep, could barely run and I was losing time like crazy.  Also, I got about a quarter mile away from a spot where I suddenly recalled seeing a super ominous cave with bones outside of it a summer or two ago, so my animal instincts kicked in and I high-tailed it back off the trail and up to the nearest road (gated community at the top of Capital Hill).  Ran back down the hill, down to 300 W (instead of taking Victory Road, which is insanely dumb to run on at night), then came back up Beck.  Total time of 2:26.  Figured I averaged about 7:00 pace on the road (last 5 mile split was :34 and it still felt really easy), but I lost about 15 minutes off my pace in the snow on the trail (it was packed in for maybe 2/3 of the way, but still bad footing and slow and horrible for the other 1/3 to the point that I was probably going 11 minute pace for a mile or two in there).  Not the most inspired run ever, mostly due to being pretty tired the whole time (long run starting at 9PM is stupid...), but I'm glad that I got it in as I'll be skiing for most of tomorrow and there's no way I'm putting in 20 miles afterwards.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.000.000.000.000.00

Skied for nearly 7 hours and then hung out with people afterwards until Midnight.  Skiing isn't such a bad leg workout, right?  Not really the mileage I imagined for this week, but I got in the key days.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.000.000.000.000.00

Lazy, oops.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
1.004.004.000.009.00

9 miles, TM.  Opening mile of 6:50, then alternating between roughly MP and tempo, starting on the slow side of each and progressing faster.

1: 6:50

2. 5:55

3. 6:27

4. 5:52

5. 6:22

6. 5:48

7. 6:18

8. 5:45

9. 6:15

 

This wasn't intended as my main workout of the week, or it would have been longer (main workout will be on Wednesday).  Rather this was just a run that would force me to recover at marathon pace (I'm really trying to make MP feel as easy as possible over the last few weeks of training).  It wasn't really all that hard, which is good.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
7.000.002.000.009.00

62 minutes, mostly in the ballpark of 7:00 pace, but threw in a half mile surge somewhere in the middle and also did the last 1.25 in 7:22 (40 ft of uphill over the last quarter mile).  I got absurdly lost in Foxboro NSL to the point that I was going North for about a mile thinking I was going South. Hah.  I guess that's what happens when you go out for a run on very winding roads starting at almost midnight.

 In other news, today is one of those days that just makes me incredibly thankful for running.  My labwork is going really well lately, but my personal life has felt like a bit of a roller coaster of late.  While I am good at being in a relationship, I am terrible at playing the whole pre-relationship courting game.  Every time that I think I finally understand the psychology of women, it isn't long until I realize that I'm completely clueless.  It's nice to be able to use running to clear my head...

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.0014.502.500.0017.00

17 miles TM, mostly marathon pace-ish (6:22 to 6:27, never slower, which averages to about 6:20 equivalent on a Phoenix-type course) with 2.5 miles of surges built in (6:00 to 6:07 pace).  Most of the surges were quarter miles with one half mile at 6:00 mixed in for good measure.  Overall, this was quite hard.  My right pinky toe blistered up, which hurt, and my legs just didn't quite feel like they were at 100% (maybe Monday's workout was still slightly in them?).  I wanted 18 and I expected it to be "hard", but I ended up doing 17 and it was "very hard" (the type of workout where I'm literally muttering not so nice stuff under my breath over the last couple miles, and I think more than 1 more mile would have annihilated me).  I also only had a total of a .75 miles of surges after 13 or so (right at 13 for a quarter, another quarter at 15.5, then the last quarter) and each one of those felt crazy hard.  I think I could handle as much as 20 like this on fresh legs, but I would guess that it would feel about as hard as running the marathon itself.  I do think that 20 miles with 2.5-3 miles mixed in at 20-25s per mile under marathon pace should actually be nearly as hard as the marathon itself (someone correct me if I'm wrong on this), so the fact that I was close to that today probably shouldn't be discouraging.  Overall, I felt pretty close to a train-wreck afterwards (light headache, slow-moving, and generally sore), but a good dinner cleared it up for the most part.  I may do another one of these next week as it seems like I've pinpointed another type of run that can help my fitness dramatically.  That said, I have 3.5 weeks until the race and I still feel really fresh (mostly due to laziness over the last month), so I'll probably work hard up until ~7 days out and just get in as much quality as I can before then.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.000.000.000.000.00

Stupid stuff going on.  No time or energy to get out the door.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.000.000.000.000.00

Extremely frustrating week on all levels.  Don't normally let myself get stressed out about stuff, but I can't always help it.

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Race: Winter Series 10k (6.214 Miles) 00:37:08, Place overall: 15
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
2.800.006.200.009.00

Warmup+cooldown totaling a little under 3 miles, 10k in 37:07.

 

My goal coming in was to run about 36-flat.  I figured a 36 flat at altitude would be a good performance for me right now.  With that in mind, I knew I would need to run 5:48s.  I've struggled a lot in 10ks in the past, so I decided the only smart plan would be to run really even.  I realized that the weather would be slightly more annoying on the way back, but really underestimated it.  I hit the turnaround in 18:03 really easily with all my miles between 5:46 and 5:52 and thought I had it in the bag.  However, as soon as I turned around, I instantly entered survival mode.  I had a more generous tailwind than I had realized on the way out and as soon as I was going the other way, it became a nasty headwind.  I was constantly getting tons of stinging snow in my eyes and the wind was really strong, so my pace immediately dropped to 6:05 to 6:10.  Physically, I was fine and never really got out of tempo mode until the last .22, but with the wind and snow, I just couldn't quite work it at any point. Mile 4 was somewhere in that range, and despite not being super exerted, I was struggling to push hard in mile 5, dropping to a 6:15.  Realizing that I was being kind of a sissy, I picked it back up to 6:03 in mile 6 and then ran 5:39 pace for the last .22.  Effort wise, I averaged a HR of 174 (really consistent throughout the race other than the first and last quarters), so I really wasn't killing it (last time I did VO2/metabolic testing, a few years ago, my tempo effort was 177-179, so I was probably just in tempo mode the entire time).

 

Seeing where I finished in the field (one spot behind a guy who ran 2:39 and 2:40 last year, one spot ahead of a woman who ran 2:49 last year, and 2 spots ahead of a guy who ran 2:44 last year), I guess I'm where I need to be.  Also, it appears that mostly everyone was in the ballpark of 2 minutes of their 10k PR and running at or slightly slower than half marathon pace, so I guess I'll take it.

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Comments(1)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
8.000.000.000.008.00

6 miles by myself at 6:58 pace on a hilly route in NSL/Bountiful with 300 feet of climb, wanted more, but no time.  Jogged another 2 miles with my pooch Holly.

 

Wasn't paying attention to time the night before, so I accidentally stayed up until 3:00 am playing piano (somehow I practiced for 3 hours before I realized where the time had gone?!?).  I ended up sleeping in until 11 on Sunday (sorry for missing the group run, everyone), but needed to practice piano (I'm making this a daily part of my life again, despite how busy I am) and give Holly some play time.  I went running, but didn't have much time as I had to get over near campus to tutor in the afternoon.  After tutoring, I was in the lab for a good 5 hours (not common for me on Sundays) taking care of a few odds and ends in addition to getting a surgery done, so I didn't get home until very late.  Oof...

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
1.000.0010.000.0011.00

I was going to put off my first workout of the week until tomorrow and just do 8-10 miles of whatever today on a treadmill, but after 1 mile of what would've been the equivalent of warm-up pace for a tempo (a bit under 7:00), I realized that I felt great and decided to do the 10 mile tempo today.  Reset the treadmill and locked in at 5:52 pace.  Over the next 10, I did a bit at 5:49, but mostly at 5:52, until somehow I had enough left to drop the last mile in 5:36 for a total of 58:29 (5:51 average).  Out of curiosity, I wore my HR monitor and found that, for whatever reason, it took a little while to increase up to my tempo HR range (literally almost 2 miles, despite sub-6 miling) even though I would've thought the effort was about the same the entire time.  Despite this long build-up (didn't break 170 until a mile and a quarter), I averaged 1 BPM higher heart rate than I did in the 10k on Saturday (176 to 175), so I was actually working harder than I did in the 10k race for most of the workout (was sitting as high as 181 after mile 8 with tempo pace and got up to 186 in the last mile).  Besides the fact that I'm a classic workout warrior, I think that this is because I have a hard time pushing myself all out in short stuff on the road, whereas I simply force a fast pace that I know I'm capable of in treadmill workouts, which requires me to either hold the pace or fly off the back. :)   In any case, it's obviously a bit easier to run on the treadmill than in a snowstorm, but I split 10k in 36:23 today (compared to 37:08 at the race), feeling like I was working hard, but confident about my ability to hold it, and continued on with another 3.8 at a slightly faster average pace.  This was a major mental boost to me.  Even if treadmill pace isn't totally accurate, I definitively proved to myself that I'm in better shape than I showed on Saturday based on my ability to hold a higher cardiac effort for 50+% longer than I did in the race.

 

 

By the way, does anyone see why I went without a Garmin for awhile?  All I do is think about numbers when I have one. Hah. 

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.000.000.000.000.00

Got home late, could still feel yesterday's workout in my legs a little, was lazy.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
11.000.000.000.0011.00

11.25 miles according to mapmyrun, 11 according to my Garmin, 81 minutes, pretty hilly (700' gain according to MMR, haven't plugged in Garmin to see its overinflated stat of that yet... hah...).  My building on campus to Kevin's, with him through the aves to City Creek, up to the 1.5 marker, back down, around capital hill, down, back up 2nd avenue, he ended at his house, and I went back to my building.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.000.000.000.000.00

Left at 8:30, got home at 10:00.  Wanted to run, but too busy. :(

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.005.000.000.005.00

Progression from a little under 7 to a little over 6.  Didn't have time to do more.  I'm so busy it's ridiculous.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.0016.000.000.0016.00

Weekends are great...  Have time to do decent mileage.  Emigration Canyon with Kevin and Fritz.  Mostly about 7:30 pace on the way up, which felt fast, until the hair pin turns, at which point I lost a little distance when they kept the same pace and I started running 7:45s.  I'm not strong on climbs right now (fortunately this doesn't matter in Phoenix), so the way up felt harder than marathon effort.  Ran down with them running mostly about 6:20s, which is in the ballpark of what I'll be running at Phoenix.  Actually, with a little over a mile to go, I felt Kevin and Fritz pushing the pace, so I told them to take off (apparently they dropped to sub-6), whereas I finished up in 6:18s.  Getting dropped twice isn't fun, but I just have to remind myself that these guys are faster than me, so it's OK.  Emigration is a steeper downhill than Phoenix's course, but it's at much higher altitude, so overall, I would say that today's run was basically 8 at harder than marathon effort and then 8 at marathon effort.  I originally planned for more, but just didn't want to kill myself.  I think I'm going to do a really easy 18 on Monday by myself.  Several people have said this probably isn't the best idea, but I do recover fast and it's 12 days out from the race, so I'm not really worried about it hurting my race physically, whereas mentally it should be helpful.

 

This week was, once again, really low mileage-wise, but today's run is good in terms of getting in a good effort for a pretty long period of time and Monday's workout was exactly what I needed, so the quality is still there.  I'll get in one more longer day and then just do some shorter marathon pace stuff and easy runs.  I'm definitely not as fit as I could be, but I'm also definitely more marathon ready than I had been in the past, thanks to actually doing good workouts.  I'm still debating what the best pacing plan is, but I will definitely not go out any faster than 1:23 in Phoenix and I'm thinking that maybe 1:24 would be better (a negative split would be great, if possible).  I haven't run a marathon in a few years, so I might as well have the first one back not be a horrific trainwreck. :)

Got in a couple hours of hiking afterwards with Holly, her twin sister Nala, and Nala's owners: 

 

 

 

 

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
10.300.000.000.0010.30

A little over 10 miles with Kevin.  Started at his house, ran up to Virginia, up to 11th, along the aves to drop into City Creek, up to the 2 mile mark, back down, around by capital hill, and then back up 2nd.  Legs felt a little hammered today (thanks to a hard 16 yesterday, followed by a few hours of hiking, and then some skiing earlier today), but they still were OK to run.  I won't have a car this week, for a good chunk of the week, thanks to having to have my head gasket and timing belt replaced (head gasket is starting to go bad and leaking oil into my coolant, timing belt is getting done while the engine is open), so I'll probably actually get reasonable mileage just out of the sheer necessity of having to run to get places.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
9.000.000.000.009.00

My building on campus to my home (car in the shop all week), 8.5 in 61, also had to do about .5 miles worth of running to catch a couples buses/trax.  It is lame not having a car for a few days.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
2.000.002.000.004.00

Got in a few miles of running by having catch buses/trax on time (across campus twice, from my apartment to a stop, and then from a stop back to my apartment).  I actually had to run 2 of the miles at tempo effort, which was a real blast wearing normal clothing. Haha.  Got home at 7:30 and since this week is supposed to be helping me recover for next weekend's marathon (especially after my legs got hammered with a hard 16, a moderate 10, skiing, and hiking all within 36 hours over the weekend), I decided not to run more.  I had been debating another long run early this week, but I have apparently had 12 runs of 15 or more (11 or 16 or more, and 10 of 17 or more) in this specific build (last 12 or 13 weeks), so I'm just going to trust in that rather than beating myself up.  Even if my mileage hasn't been great, my long runs have been pretty consistent.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
9.000.001.400.0010.40

9 miles, home to work, not quite the most direct route.  Hobie Call style, as I was wearing the equivalent of a weight vest (backpack with jeans, shirt, shoes, winter jacket, wallet, keys, cell phone, etc).

 

Later, another hard 1.4 miles of uphill tempo to catch the bus. Hah. 

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
7.500.000.000.007.50

1 mile to and from bus stops in the AM (real run coming later).

Next, 1 mile jog to the gym and then 5 miles on the indoor field house track with Kevin in 34:xx.

Finally, half mile back home from a bus stop.   None of those extra bits of jogging probably do much for me, but they do all add up.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
1.000.000.000.001.00

1 mile to/from bus stops.  Get my car back in a few hours, which will be nice.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
10.000.000.000.0010.00

winter series 15k plus a slight bit extra.  didn't race, just ran casually at a little over 7:00 pace.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
9.500.000.000.009.50

9.5 @ ~7:20 average.  Legs were a little beat after skiing hard and then standing on a bus in ski gear for 2.5+ hours yesterday.  Time to rest up!

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.000.000.000.000.00

Taking today off, intentionally!  Marathon on Saturday.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
4.000.000.000.004.00

4 easy AM miles with Holly, just to keep some running in my legs and be continue to be used to running in the morning (8AM for this run, will go around 7 tomorrow).

Also, I just saw this, which is absolutely hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MVIyq-kGL5Y 

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.000.000.000.000.00

Woke up feeling super sick.  Awesome...

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
4.500.000.000.004.50

In Phoenix.  Throat still super sore.  First 2 miles against the wind in 7:00 and 6:30, then a 6:10 with the wind, and then backed off (6:50, then 6:58 pace for the last half).  Didn't feel so great, but also didn't feel as bad as expected.

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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
116.6039.5028.100.00184.20
Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00Weight: 0.00
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