Ethan Cannon

Felt really good today actually. I wasn’t going very fast, but when you feel like junk, it doesn’t matter how fast you are going. I’ll shoot for eight hours of sleep again tonight, that might be part of it. 

AM: 10.5 miles.

PM: 4.5 hot miles. Felt good today though. 

Easy Run with five strides. 

Where to begin. My fiancee thought it was a little weird that I knew almost exactly what time I would run and I knew that I was going to get second place. Yesterday at packet pickup I asked a guy to organize the list of entrants by seed pace. There was one guy from Palermo who wrote 4:30, but he was in his 40s so I'm guessing he thought it was for kilometers, not miles. The other guy I noticed was this Jaydn Asay fellow who had run 15:20 in the 5K at UVU several years ago. No problem thought I. I did a little more research and realized this dude had run a 2:22 last year at St. George (I have since seen that he ran 1:07 at the Provo city half marathon to win that). That was when I knew I wasn’t going to get first. It was a bit of a gamble, but I decided not to wear the $80 singlet I had bought, since you can’t return it after wearing it. I did wear the expensive shoes and shorts I had gotten, hoping for second place.

Last night I had a really bad sleep. I wrote a note on the thermostat for my roommmates to not turn off the AC so I could sleep well, which is ironic because after doing that, idk if any of my roommates were even here last night and I woke up starving twice anyway. When I got up at 6, I was starving and stuffed myself more than I should have. That made me nervous as I warmed up, which only serves to slow down your digestion even further. I really believe one reason I did so well last year is because I was SO relaxed. Thankfully, when the race started, I felt fine.

Asay and his teammate got out in front. There was some high school kid that went with them. I was waiting for him to realize how foolish he had been, but by the time we were at 2.5 miles, they had about 25 meters on me and I was already going faster than I wanted to. I first checked my pace at 3 miles, which was a net downhill but still cooking for my current fitness level at 15:02. At this point though, high schooler has fallen off the Runner’s Corner bros and I pass him up. Within another mile, I had passed the other guy, too. After that it was a slog to the finish line. I was able to keep just enough in range of Asay that I got to follow in his wake and not get caught by a million 5K runners running 11 minute mile pace. Actually, said 5Kers were the real MVPs. A lot of them really cheered us on, and several inspired me a lot by yelling at me that I could catch Asay. I think we entertained them which is nice. But I had kind of given up on beating him so I’m glad they encouraged me to keep pushing and at least try to get him.

Long cool down.  

AM: 11 miles with josh. Felt pretty beat up and sore for some reason. 

PM: had to run to work so I only got in 4.5. 

Long run up the canyon. We were both cool with running chill after our tough weeks, so we ended up running 6:41 pace after starting 7:10ish for the first five or six.