Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

Elliott had a rough night, and after putting her back to bed for the second time at about 3:00am, I couldn't get back to sleep. After trying for a while, I decided to give up and go for an early, early run at the gym. I expect I'll be pretty tired today, but at least tomorrow is the weekend. 

The thing about long, steady runs, even short long runs, is that they're really hard to do on a track or a treadmill. I start to lose my place when I have to run in place for too long, and last week I learned that running in little circles isn't much better. So, today I decided to take advantage of the clear weather and the (finally) clean air and run outside. 

The strange thing is that I think this is the first time I've run outside since we were in LA, which makes this my first outdoors run of 2013.

Anyway, I parked at the BYU OIT on University and ran up the River Trail into the canyon until I hot 5.5 miles, than I turned around and ran back. There were some ice patches on the way up, but not enough to cause a problem, and they were all melted by the time I came back. I don't know how often I can run outside during the week, but I'll have to at least do it more often on the weekends.

Today is my 31st birthday, so of course I celebrated by running 31 13/62s of a mile. 

I started with three 3/4-miles repeats at 5:45 with 1/4-mile recoveries. Then I ran a 3-mile block at 6:40. The first part of the workout felt harder than it should have, but it made the second part feel easier. 

Elliott had another one of those nights last night. It's starting to become a pretty regular occurrence around here. Usually I feel okay afterward, but this morning I was super tired. I kept wanting to close my eyes and go to sleep as I was running.

And the running--more steady miles on the indoor track. The ROTC was doing some kind of rn test today, so the track was even more crowded than usual. 

Average pace was just under 7:00.

I ran the hill-repeat workout (on the treadmill) that I did a couple of weeks ago. It still sucks.

I had a late night last night and an early morning today, so I couldn't run in the morning. And then we took Elliott to the aquarium in the afternoon, so I didn't get out to run until tonight. I knew that I was never going to finish seven miles on a treadmill by that point, so I ran outside. It was alright.

Easy miles to finish off the work week. The run was harder than I thought it would be, but only because it was less than 8 hours after yesterday's run. Now all that's between me and another good week is tomorrow's tempo run. Should be a piece of cake if I can run outside. But if a storm hits . . .

I wanted to run outside today, but even though the storm seems to have passed us over I decided that today was day for the gym. Everything outside just looked glazed, and since I was doing a tempo run today I didn't want to have to worry about my footing on the river trail.

Because I was running inside, I cut my warmup and my cool down to the minimum--no reason to be on a treadmill longer than necessary. The core of the workout was eight miles at 6:40. It kind of sucked at first, but I settled into it quickly and by the end I would have been fine for many more miles if that's what the workout had called for. 

*Edit: I just realized that my schedule called for a six-mile tempo run, not eight miles. Bonus for me, I guess.

Decent run today: seven 1-mile repeats at 6:00, with quarter-mile recoveries. That probably would have been out of the question a month ago, so I guess that means that I'm making progress. The problem I'm running into now is that my daily runs keep getting longer but I don't have any extra time for them. At some point I'm going to have to say that there's no time to do the full workouts, or that I need to start doing doubles, or that I just need to wake up earlier than I have been. And that will mean that I have to go to bed earlier or sleep less or both. Probably both. 

More steady miles this morning, so I headed to the indoor track at BYU to avoid the monotony of the treadmill. I got there before the doors open at 5:30, so I was able to get a great parking spot and rn my first couple of miles before the crowds started to build. My legs were really stiff this morning, probably from yesterday's mile repeats, and it took me a few miles to settle into a groove. But once I did the run went well enough. 

I think this one was destined to hurt a little regardless, but my sore legs made things a bit worse. I had to double check the instructions a few times before I started, but the basic intervals today went like this: half a mile at 5:40, right into a quarter mile at 5:30, then slowing it down to 6:00 for another mile. I did three sets of these with four minutes of recovery between them. 

Yesterday I was at Costco with Elliott and I let her play in the little cedar playhouse they have on display. Naturally, she had no interest in leaving when it was time to go, so I had to squat down to reach in and get her. When I did my right knee blew up. It's been sore since then, and needless to say I've been worried about it. But because it happened when I wasn't running, I thought it might now cause running problems, so I went ahead and went to the track. 

All was well. So for now I'm just going to take yesterday's incident as a sign that 1) I'm getting old, and 2) that my knees are rotten in general, not just rotten for running. And I'm going to hope that this doesn't turn into something that wrecks my marathon.

Tomorrow is a scheduled rest day, so that should give my knee an extra chance to heal.

Rest day.

Out and back from Provo into Provo Canyon. My legs felt better after a rest day, but it didn't last. By the time I got back the car they were sore and heavy. But other than the fact that it was freezing in the canyon, it was a good run. 

Like I've been saying, I'm afraid that I'm about to start running out of time for the scheduled workouts, even if it is nice to be logging more miles. In a week or two I'll reassess my situation and see if I need to modify the second half of my training plan to fit my time constraints. 

Today's workout was longer than I'm used to on Mondays. After a quick warmup, I ran two miles at 6:00, then slowed down to 6:40 for another six miles, then finished with a half mile at 5:40.

Other than the 15 minutes when there was a smelly guy on the treadmill next to me, it was a good workout.  

I decided to take advantage of the weather and run outside this morning. It was cold, but I was dressed for it better than I was on Saturday. Unfortunately, my legs were super tired and heavy. I was fine, but it wasn't the best run ever.  

Short workout today, but I needed that. I feel like my legs have been falling behind every day, so I hope today's run serves as a shake out so I can have a little spring in my step tomorrow. 

The workout was pretty simple--1.5 miles at 6:00, 0.5 miles at 5:40, 0.25 miles at 5:00. There weren't supposed to be any interruptions, but the treadmill I was on shut down about a mile into it. It's a shame that Gold's Gym doesn't maintain its equipment. When the treadmills were new, they were the best I'd ever used. But already they're starting to lurch and break.  

Eight steady miles on the treadmill. So, so boring. 

This was just a short, easy run at the end of the week before a longer weekend finale. My legs felt fine this morning. No soreness, no stiffness, nothing to complain about. That's fine with me. 

Tomorrow is supposed to be a short(ish) tempo run of only 7 miles. I'm going to have to try to fit that in in the morning because my brother and I are taking an avalanche class at Brighton in the afternoon. We're going to be out all day hiking around and digging snow pits and whatever else avalanche people do. The best part is that there's going to be a blizzard going on, and I'm super excited about that. Seriously. Because there's nothing I love more than being outside for six hours in a row in heavy wind and snow.

I was supposed to run 7 miles of temp today. But I cut it a bit short because I was short on time because I was going to Brighton for an avalanche training course with my brother. I figure the climb up to Twin Lakes Pass makes up for the missing miles. 

I was actually able to catch up a bit on my sleep on Saturday night, so I felt okay this morning even though Elliott had a rough night and woke us up at about 2:30.

The workout was simple. Three 1.5-mile repeats at 6:00, with 0.25 mile recoveries, and a final mile at 5:40 to finish things off. It felt like work, but not too much so. I'm sure I could have kept going for several repeats more if I had had to. 

Steady miles on the indoor track at BYU. For the most part it was as boring as you'd expect. There was some additional excitement when I realized I had forgotten my watch and had to count every lap and every mile. It's harder than it sounds to keep track of eight five-lap miles when you're running in circles with a crowd. 

Twenty minutes of 30 seconds at 5:30, 30 seconds at 8:30. On a treadmill, that means a lot of time with a hand on the controls changing the pace. The workout itself was easier than I expected. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be or not. 

More steady miles, which means I was back at the indoor track. It was less crowded than I'm used to, but that's probably because I'm usually there earlier.