faster with age

     My hip flexor felt fine during my 22 mile run last Saturday until the last 1/2 mile where it got a little sore. Later that evening it got very sore just to walk. I iced it good and took 800 grams of ibu. Sunday morning it was quite sore but got better as the day went on. By Sunday evening it felt pretty good. Monday it felt good but I left early to take my son hunting. After getting home we headed North for some family activities and got home quite late. My hip felt good enough that I think I could have run a little but never really had time. It was probably just as well to give it another day. 

     I guess I picked up a virus from my son. I woke up several times last night with a very sore throat. I didn't get out to try a run until around 6 pm. I had a lot of congestion and felt very low on energy. My first couple of miles were well over 9 min pace and my HR was around 10 bpm higher than normal for that pace. I did actually feel a little better as I went but only had time for 6 miles before I had to be back. Pace ended up at 8:42. At 9 pm I went back out for 3 more miles at 8:55 AP.

     Still feeling a bit under the weather today. I ran 8 miles total and just kept the pace pretty easy. I went up and down the mile long highway hill a couple of times during the run. Overall pace was 8:35

     My cold has moved to my chest and is causing me to cough more. I ran 10 miles today and felt pretty flat on the first few miles. I'm feeling a lot of congestion which is very annoying but it seemed to get better after a few miles. First 5 miles were about 9 min pace. I started feeling a bit better and picked it up some the second half. Last mile in 7:24. At least my hip seems to be doing pretty good. I could feel it a bit after the run but not much. Not sure how it would react to a big workout though. I may have to skip anything to long or hard this week. Overall pace was 8:34.

     My hip flexor was a little sore last night and this morning. I'm sure it was from running my last mile quicker yesterday. The all slow runs the 2 previous days didn't seem to aggravate it at all. I wasn't sure whether I should run at all today so I started out just to test it and ended up going 8 miles all slow. 4 miles out at my turn around my overall pace was exactly 9:11. I thought that was kind of cool since all I heard about this morning on the radio was talk about 9/11 since the anniversary is this weekend. I ran the second have slightly faster. Overall pace was 8:55.  My hip seemed to be fine. I think I'll have to skip any key workouts for this week. St George is in 3 weeks and my overall mileage and training the past 4 weeks hasn't been very good due to several different minor injuries. 

     My son and I drove up to Jackson Hole yesterday to meet up with my wife who had been there since Thurs morning attending some classes for here work at the hospital laboratory. This has become an annual trip for us. In the morning I headed out for a run on my favorite route up there that takes me through town to a dirt road that goes out around the back side of the elk refuge. Once I started into the refuge there was an unattended aid station then I started running into mile markers that were within .03 of my Garmin mileage. I realized there was going to be a race coming. I passed a 5k turnaround sign and figured it must be a 5k/10k. I was expecting to get caught during my run by the race which probably wouldn't be a good thing because I wanted to keep my run easy because of my hip and I knew if the race caught up to me it was going to be real hard not to join in. I hit the 10k turn around and I was planning for 10 miles so I had 4 more miles to run. As I came back through the course The aid stations where manned but I made it back to town. I ran down the main street to where I figured the race was starting and got there just before it began. It was called old bills run and it was huge. It started and turned up the street I needed to take to get back to the hotel so I jumped in a ways back in the pack where it was around 7:30 pace and ran with them about 1/2 mile until I had to leave the course to get back to the hotel. I ended up with 10.7 miles at 8:24 pace.

     Later in the day the LOTOJA [LOgan TO JAckson ] bike race was finishing in Jackson. It's a 206 mile race that starts in Logan and comes right near my home in Preston then on up to Jackson. It is the longest sanctioned single day race in the country. It has 4 major climbs along the way [around 10,000 ft all together] and finishes 1800 ft higher than it starts. We started down the highway about the time we were expecting them until we saw the lead of the race which was a pack of 8. We leap frogged them and the next few packs of riders back up to the finished and watched them sprint in. The course record is barely over 9 hours. That is just under a 23 MPH average. My best biathlon race at 14 miles was  23.3 MPH. I can't even imagine maintaining anything close to that for even 30 or 40  miles. Add in all the climbing and another 170 miles and that is very impressive.  2 hours later when we headed home there were still 100s of riders on the course that we went past over the next 40 miles. They have about a dozen different start times to spread people out and about 1200 riders total. I definitely  have to do this race some time but it will have to be a year when I don't have a fall marathon.