Step by step, mile by mile

AM - slept in. Did 5 miles on grass fields before lunch

Legs felt really dead, pace was in the 6's for a majority of the run, which is sick. Can't remember the last time that happened on an easy run! Signed up for Falcon classic!

PM - Ran to the rec, biked for two hours, stretched, ran to the dining hall to meet Grant and Rob for dinner. Ethan was sitting alone and came and ate with us so that was cool.

Slept in this morning, so didn't get my actual workout in until after classes and lunch, at about 2. Way hot out. 5 miles "warming up", 8 200-ish meter hill strides, recovery down. Wouldn't have been too bad of a workout, but the heat made it just brutal. 97 with humidity, and the sun was beating down on me. Cooled down for 9. Avg pace was 7:05. Cooling down I felt like I was just jogging, plus the heat kills my pace. But that was still around 7 flat! So that's good. Developing speed. 

3 miles after dinner. Sped up to 5:10 pace at the last 200.

AM - I ate something last night and my stomach still wasn't settled when I woke up this morning.

Afternoon - 8 miles w/ 5 x 1 minutes hard on the grass fields. Got .20, .21, .22, .21, and .22. avg pace 6:38 for the entirety, and really didn't feel too hard! 

Ran to the rec and did strength before dinner.

Midday - 7 with strides and drills

afternoon - ran to the rec, cross trained, stretched, ran back.

Legs were pretty tired. I was supposed to have my final workout before the Falcon Classic today, but I decided to try a dish called "mixing popcorn with hot sauce". I love hot food, but I probably put half a bottle of Red Hot's on this popcorn. It was quite the spicy dish, and my stomach was still wrecked today from it. So, either doing 4-5 x 800's tomorrow, or some sort of fartlik.

I had a midterm today so I wanted to be well rested, and studied a lot, and was just very busy today overall, so I'll call it a taper. When I did try my workout, the heat was unbearable so I stopped. Ran to and from lunch and my midterm to get a little more mileage. The closest I got to a workout was racing Nathan on his longboard from the far dining hall to the dorm. I went quick.

For anyone wanting a good listen, I strongly recommend the "The Big Bang Theory" podcast by "How Stuff Works". It's really interesting. I also recommend their take on the Chaos Theory.

6 miles in the morning with Ethan w/ 5x20 second strides. Just have chemistry in half an hour, then done with running and classess for the day, so I just get to relax.

My prerace thoughts;

I've tapered a bit for this so with any luck I'll be running on fresh legs tomorrow. I've only gotten a little speed, so I'm not expecting any crazy results. My three goals are to win the race, break 27, and get a T-shirt. The CR is 26:38 and it would be great to break that, but we'll see. The race is two laps. I want to take the first lap out a bit easier, and then take the lead at the beginning of the second lap and then just try to gap the leaders. I just need to run about 10 seconds per mile faster than my pacing for the 5k I ran in August for sub 27, and that was really more of a tempo than competitive race. Wish me luck guys!

Not necessarily a great race, but a good learning experience. Mile shakeout at 4:45, came back to the room, had a bowl of cereal and a banana, grabbed my gear, some liquids, and headed out with Ethan. My legs felt good when we got on the course. I wasn't really nervous, there did seem to be some quick people. Apparently a couple people were FL national finalists which is pretty cool, now I've raced against more than just Garek, Conner, Connor, and Talon. I got on the starting line, and I felt completely ready. I noticed that there were 5 minutes left until start, yet the line was barren. Speakers come on and I'm told the race has been pushed back 30 minutes. That really put a damper on my attitude, but oh well. 30 minutes later and we're off. I was in the outermost right box, which is good because that's the inside for a lot of the turns on the course, and the course had a LOT of turns. So I don't get out too quick, towards the back. I hug the turns, problem is people were basically walking the curve! I got pushed back pretty bad, but I told myself not to make my moves until 3k. 5:24 at mile 1. I started moving around 2600m in, and passed quite a few people. 5:26 mile 2. People just wouldn't let me pass, and I lost focus around here. I kept passing people, but I'm not proud of my 3rd and 4th mile. 4 miles at 22:21 I think. I still wasn't really focused, I had kind of resigned, but then I realized I could break 28, so I buckled down that last 1000m and finished 27:50. Cooled down for 12. Didn't even get close to top ten - I would have had to break 25:20! Winning time was a 24:19. Wowzers.

My two problems I had with this race were my warm up ended up being an hour before I ran, so my legs tightened up, and I honestly added at least 20 seconds to my time by having to basically stop/walk on turns because of people ahead of me. I'm happy with how I finished, but it would have been more beneficial to just have gone out quickly and not been pushed back. On the drive back Ethan told me about a 5k next Sunday. The only problem is its at 2PM. Weather looks cloudy for next Sunday though. I'll see how I feel but maybe I can finally get sub 16.

Easy run before dinner with Ethan and Nathan in the rain. Would have done 5 but it started raining really hard. Did a few very brief strides on the grass. Nothing felt tight or bad.