faster with age

      Bow hunting in southern Utah this morning I did about 2 1/2 hours of hiking. I went for a 12 mile run in the heat of the day starting from camp at 8550 feet elevation and running 6 miles down the dirt road to around 7500 feet then back up. 7:33 easy pace going down and 8:37 pace for the 6 miles back up which was a harder effort. 8:07 overall ave pace for 12.

     More hiking that evening.

      Another 2 1/2 to 3 hours of hiking this morning covering a lot of ground. I went for the same run in the afternoon but turned around at 4 miles this time for 8 miles total. The first 4 miles dropped about 700 feet and I ran a 7:31 pace. The next 4 back up I ran at 8:43 pace.

      Not much hiking this evening mostly sitting.

     I went out this morning and did my West Canyon run. My wife dropped me off up the canyon and then parked the car at the bottom while she walked up. I ran a 1 mile hilly warm up in 8:02 and then started a 3 mile tempo down the canyon averaging 6:19 pace. After a 5 min. break I ran back up the 3 miles at a similar effort at 7:24 pace. After another 5 minute break I headed back down. It had been perfectly calm all morning but now I had a strong headwind which slowed me quite a bit. After about a mile I really started to bonk and it was tough to maintain a decent pace at all. I finished that 3 miles at 6:43 pace. I'm not quite sure why I ran out of steam. I did feel good on the first 2 intervals. This might be a bad sign for the half next week. Hopefully it just had something to do with all the extra hiking I did this week or the biathlon 5 days earlier.

     6 recovery miles at 8:38 pace.

     I ran a 20 miler this morning. The legs felt a bit heavy in the beginning and I wasn't sure how it would go so I just tried to run a pace that felt good. Started out around 8:30 pace and after 7 miles my overall pace was 8:17. I actually started feeling a bit better at this point and my pace picked up without thinking about it. I averaged 7:42 pace for the last 13 miles. Overall pace for 20 was 7:54.