faster with age

     Ran 16.25 miles this morning. Temps were nice in the 40s to start and 60s to finish. I ran up past the reservoir and out the canal. I put my water stashes back out for the summer and drank a little at 6 and 12 miles. I kept the pace comfortable throughout. With 2 miles to go I noticed my overall pace was at 8:02/mile. I had to resist the urge to pick up the pace to catch and pass the 8 minute guy. It wouldn't have used that much more energy to pick the pace up by 15 seconds/mile, It was more of a moral victory to see if I could do it. I managed to resist and keep the effort even and finished the run at 8:01 ave. pace.

     8.5 miles in the morning at 8:37/mile in the morning before heading out for Yellowstone Park.

     We camped in Yellowstone Park last night and I got up early for a run. The temp was in the lower 30s to start and calm. The sun came up and warmed things into the upper 40s by the time I finished the run. Very nice. I ran to fishing bridge and back which ended up being 10 miles. The elevation is close to 8,000 ft but I didn't notice it much. Maybe a little on the uphills. Average pace was 8:18. During the day we did quite a bit of hiking. Some of them had quite a bit of elevation change. One of them started at the rim of the Yellowstone Grand Canyon and descended 75% of the way to the bottom of the canyon to a viewpoint  below the crest of Lower Yellowstone Falls. Gorgeous view. The last half descends down steep enough cliffs that they have an iron stairway. My son and I ran down the very steep steps. On our way back up we started to take the steps quickly taking 2 at a time. This was fine for a while but my quads and butt started to burn like crazy and I was soon reduced to a quick walk taking every step. It was quite a workout. 

     We stopped for lunch at a picnic area that we had all to ourselves. After we finished lunch and started back down the short road to the highway there was a Grizzly feeding  along the edge of the road. We turned the car around and filmed him out the car window at anywhere from 15 to 35 yards as he made his way along the side of the road and right back past where we had just finished eating. Really cool! We saw 2 more Black Bears later that day. One of them had 2 cubs.

     Another night camping in Yellowstone. I was planning to run again early but when I woke up at 5am I could hear the rain coming down on the tent. I hadn't been getting near enough sleep the past few nights and I lost my motivation to get out of my warm bag and I slept in. The rain cleared out early and it was a beautiful day just like yesterday at around 70 deg. We drove away from camp in the morning to try and spot some wildlife. We saw lots of buffalo and elk and other animals but no bears or wolves like we were hoping. As we were coming back to camp here is a huge male grizzly bear about 100 yards from our tent moving in a direction that appeared he had just gone right past our camp. We saw another female grizzly with 3 cubs that evening.

     We got back home after midnight last night I was up at 4:30am but was too busy all day to find time to run. I hated skipping 2 days straight and I decided I was going to run right after I picked up my son from playing basketball at the church at 10 pm. When I got to the church they talked me into one quick game that turned into another then another until it was 11:30 when we finally left. So 2 days without running.

     It was nice and cool this morning at 4:30 am at 43 deg. Unfortunately I didn't have time to run when it was nice. I finally got out at 6:30 pm when it was 84 deg. I figured I could have gone later after it cooled but I wouldn't be able to go until after 9:30 and I wanted to get to bed earlier. I felt really beat before I left but after I started running I felt better. There was a bit of a breeze that kept the heat from being too unbearable. I ran up past the reservoir and after 4 miles I felt good so I decided to do a workout. for the next 6 miles I did a fartlek run going 4 minutes hard 2 minutes easy.  I ended up with 7 faster segments that totaled 4.33 miles at 6:17 ave pace. They varied from 6:10 to 6:25 pace each depending on hills and wind direction and the two min easy parts were around 8:30 pace. Overall pace for the 6 mile workout was 6:52. overall for all 10 was 7:21 AP. I dunked my shirt in the reservoir at the turn around and that really helped with the heat.