faster with age

     I have only trained twice on downhill for this marathon so I went over to Weston Canyon this morning. I'm taking Ibuprofen again and by back is doing much better. I left 2 bikes at the bottom and drove to the top so I could just run the 3 miles down twice. The first run down I averaged 7:19. The next 3 miles I wanted to be between 10k and half marathon effort. I guess my legs were feeling pretty good after 3 days of no running and I ran 5:56, 7:21, and 5:59. A little faster than planned although my heart rate stayed mostly in the planned zone. It drops about 400 feet total with most of it in the first quarter of the first mile and the last half of the 3rd mile. Not a lot of drop on the second mile. I had about a 7 or 8 mph headwind.

     PM   4.4 miles at 8:11 AP

     Went 20 miles on the mountain bike this morning. Had a bolt snap that holds and adjusts my seat on. I was going about 20mph on a fast section of dirt road when without warning it just went and my seat was instantly gone. Luckily I didn't crash but had to ride the last 3 1/2 miles home standing with the seat stuffed in my back pocket.

     Ran 5.35 miles and mixed in some fartlek. After 1 mile of warmup I ran 1/4 mile at 6:16 pace, 1/4 at 6:36, 1/4 at 6:18, 1/2 at 6:36, 1/4 at 6:28, and 1/2 at 6:28 pace with 1/4 recoveries at around 8:00 pace. Felt real good today. My back is doing good and I may actually get to go into a marathon injury free. 3 more days.

     7:25 pace overall

     Just ran an easy 2 miles this morning. With TOU tomorrow, I would like to have another 6 weeks to train but at least I'm not going in injured and not sure I can even finish like I did at SGM the last 2 years. I feel like I should be ready to do pretty good for 18 to 20 miles. It's a matter of how bad it gets after 20.

     This was the first time for me running the Top of Utah Marathon, even though it is the local race here in the valley, so I had been looking forward to it all summer. I had been running my best times this year and things were looking good until July when I came down with a  hamstring/glute injury that kept me from being able to run much through all of July and some of August. I only had time to top out at two 50 mile weeks and two 20 mile runs. I had also been biking and hoped that would make up some.I had hopes of going for sub 3 hours but knew it would be tough under the circumstances. I decided I would start out at a sub 3 pace if it felt good and keep it as long as I could. I started out running mostly in the 6:30s and low 6:40s and it felt pretty good for the first 8 miles. About then my right hamstring [the one I had injured ] started to tighten up a bit. By about 13 miles the quad muscle on the same leg was starting to hurt and I knew that with these problems this early that it was going to get ugly. I was 1:27:52 at the 13 mile check. I finished the canyon and hollow road still maintaining the pace I wanted but my right leg muscles front and back felt like a rock and was getting tighter by the mile. I saw my wife and son cheering me on here and it gave me a lift. I stopped at the 17 mile aid station and stretched a bit. It helped but it didn't take long before I was in a lot of discomfort again. From here on it just got worse with each mile and my pace continued to slow. I stopped and stretched 8 times between there and  about mile 24.5. It was a real battle the last 3 mile just to keep moving and I lost a ton of time. I was slowing down to 8 min pace but it felt like 10 min pace. The last mile and a half I decided I could finish without stretching anymore and it took everything I had to squeeze out a 7:49. I finished in 3:06:06. I was hoping to be faster and it was about 40 seconds short of my PR. This is definitely my best marathon though since my PR was at St George which is a  faster course. I took 2nd in my age group and beat the guy that won the past 2 years but a guy from Colorado came out and took 1st. Forgot to mention I saw a big bull moose at mile 6. Real cool.

splits:

6:29,6:37,6:38,6:35,6:41,6:45,6:42,6:41,6:49,6:57,6:55

,6:48,6:43,6:37,6:48,6:57,6:58,7:17,7:28,7:28,7:16,7:33

,7:50,7:59,8:17,7:49,7:17 pace