Per Aspera Ad Astra

Very easy casual run with Joe Dean.  My apt to memory grove to city creek to the very top of the road (last quarter mile sucked with a lot of snow) and back.  Easy pace, nice to just put another relatively long run in the legs.

1.5 miles up city creek: 

 5.6 miles up city creek:

Afterwards, took Holly to Memory Grove/City Creek for 2 hours of swimming / playing. 

Oh, and I signed up for Utah Valley Marathon today, so that's officially on the schedule in a little over 2 months. 

With Holly, 4th/D to B, up to 11th, down to city creek, up a few miles (on the trail), down Memory Grove, back up 4th.  Easy on the way up, MP for 3 of the 4 miles on the way back (Holly was sick of running fast after that and started dragging).  Started sprinkling with 1.5 to go and raining hard with .5 to go.  Definitely felt a little painful on my bare chest. Hah.

9 miles with Holly.  First mile easy (including the climb up Rattlesnake Gulch to Pipeline, at a 20% grade), then 3.5 out at marathon effort and 3.5 back at marathon effort, followed by 1 more easy mile (mostly just back down Rattlesnake Gulch).  Note that I say "marathon effort" as I was actually not going marathon pace.  All of the "MP" miles were at a hair over 6000' on a rocky trail that, while generally flat, had a lot of bumps, mini-hills, and tight turns, leading marathon effort to net me only 7:02 pace, compared to 6:20 or so that I'm shooting to hit at Utah Valley.  It may not quite have been quite MP effort, but it was close enough, so w/e.

Got home, jogged a mile to and from the grocery store. 

First, a commute run: 3 miles up to campus (longer way than normal, because I hate partial miles).  Because I'm crazy and have a super thick/stiff new pair of raw jeans to soften up, I wore them while running.  Also, wearing a backpack with wallet/phone/keys/running shorts/watch for my run later.  No watch, wanted it to be easy, which is hard to do on a several mile uphill when you pay attention to pace.

Next: 9 miles home via shoreline.  My building up to JCC, up dry creek, to the 5 way, down to city creek meadow the non-shortcut way, down to city creek, through memory grove, back up 4th.  Ran easy to JCC (.7), then tempoed moderately hard to the 5-way (a little under 4 miles with a lot of uphill) in 28:13.  The fastest time I had ever heard of was Adrian Shipley's 28:40 last year and I ran this wearing a backpack full of a several pound pear of super heavyweight jeans, wallet, keys, phone, etc (at least 5 pounds).  Adrian wasn't training for 10k stuff when he ran that 28:40, but it was right around the time he ran sub-4 hours for the very slow Bonneville Shoreline Marathon, putting him in very elite local Utah trail territory (the Speedgoat 50k record holder before Kilian showed up just barely broke 4 hours at Shoreline in a few tries, same with Karl Meltzer).  In any case, I'm really happy about how fluid that 28:13 felt and I think I can run sub-27 if I'm not wearing a backpack and I'm pushing all out.  After that, I picked up the effort and got down to city creek in 45:33 total (I think Adrian hit 48:xx last year).  Along the way, I hit a fastest split of 5:33 (downhill, but on quite rocky trail), so I was going hard.  Shortly before the end of the trail, it's too steep downhill to tempo, so I started into marathon effort.  This netted me 6:02 pace through Memory Grove and honestly didnt' even quite feel as hard as it should have.  It's not common that 6 flat feels easy for me, so I'm not sure what happened there.  Anyway, I hit 4th and jogged in easy from there to my apartment.

Afterwards, I went back to Memory Grove with Holly so she could play with other dogs and swim in the creek and jogged about a mile with her.

Today was definitely super encouraging and I swear I will have no miles at even marathon effort tomorrow... all easy...

Holly was at doggy daycare and I have a lot to do tonight, so I figured I would just drive home, get in some miles and pick her up near the end of the run (her daycare is 3 miles from my apartment).  I started at my place, ran down to the bottom of the Aves, hopped on 4th, took that to 80, moved over to 3rd, went under the highway, and took that to Baird (3600-ish), hitting an average of just under 7:00 against a slight headwind until then (felt easy, although my legs weren't super happy after yesterday's hard effort).  I took Baird to State, and when I turned on State, I suddenly had a slight tailwind, so I ran 6:35 average until I picked up Holly.   I took State to 2100 (where a very obese woman screamed out her car window at me for being in the crosswalk while she was trying to turn across me, despite me having the walk sign), up to Main, down to Holly's daycare at 1500-ish, where I picked her up (first 9.25 in about 63-flat).  It was relatively hot and humid, so Holly didn't really want to run fast and we averaged about 7:40 for the little bit more than 3 miles to get home.  The pace was aerobically pretty easy the whole way, although I suppose I probably didn't need to do 12.5 miles on sore legs.  I'll probably run a little less tomorrow.

Easy 71 minutes, southwest of downtown through the industrial areas, over to liberty wells, lapped liberty park, back west a bit, and then back up to the aves.

Mostly on Bonneville Shoreline, starting at Red Butte area.  Was a couple minutes late to meet up with Mark, so I figured he had left and I should just catch up, so I ran to dry creek without seeing him.  I realized that he was probably just late himself, so I doubled back until I found him.  We ran up to the 5-way together, I ran continued on down to city creek, went up the canyon a little way for a restroom, and then doubled back the same way, except that I took the steep shortcut out of the meadow above the canyon to run the same course as the Shoreline Marathon, which is apparently next weekend (and which I'm thinking about doing, more just casually than anything).  Anyway, I stuck to the road once I popped out at JCC and hit 6:20 pace for a mile near the end.  Otherwise, pace was pretty easy.

Skied for 2 hours later in the evening.  Last day of night skiing at Brighton, got up from 7 to 9 PM.  Skied pretty hard and had a blast, but was completely exhausted by the time I got home.  Not a bad Saturday. :)