my makeup may be flaking

Did two loops of Sugarhouse in the morning. Felt really tight but not too tired. I wanted to run again in the afternoon, but I had to go see a guy about an apartment I want to get. He ended up flaking out so that kind of sucked. It was probably for the best that I didn't run anyway.

So again it wasn't really a race. (I did this last year too.) It's pretty cool to see how far I've come in the last year. I really wasn't feeling that fresh today whereas last year I took 4 easy days leading up to the 20miler. Due to my lack of freshness I didn't really start off all that fast. I actually had a tough time finding my rhythm. This was partially due to an upset stomach and maybe also due to the wind which was a slight factor at the beginning (the stretch from 5k-10k is very exposed). Even at the slowish pace I started to fade past 10miles. At about 11.5 miles I took a GU which seemed to help. I took a second at mile 17 and I ended up finding the strength to close in 5:32 (for real!). I actually felt pretty decent when I was all finished. I learnt today that I need to take a GU a little bit earlier although hopefully on race day I'll feel a little bit fresher. Overall I was 7 seconds a mile faster than last year, which is almost exactly what I need to break 2:30. Last year at Boston, I was on 2:35 pace before I started to fade past mile 20. If I'm 10seconds a mile faster and I can maintain then I at least have a shot at cracking 2:30 although I estimate I'm in 2:32-2:35 shape right now.

Distance	Split	Pace	Cum. Time	Cum Pace
3.1	18:31	5:58	18:31	5:58
6.2	18:35	6:00	37:06	5:59
7.35	6:52	5:58	43:58	5:59
8.65	7:50	6:02	51:48	5:59
9.25	3:33	5:55	55:21	5:59
12.55	20:22	6:10	1:15:43	6:02
14.4	11:00	5:58	1:26:43	6:01
16.05	9:53	5:59	1:36:36	6:01
19	17:30	5:56	1:54:06	6:00
20	5:32	5:32	1:59:38	5:59

 

Ran 7 miles kind of easy. There was a pretty sweet storm that passed over the valley while I was running. I love being from Seattle. I was running through the neighbourhood shirtless verily humming to myself while all the other runners I saw looked miserable huddled in rain jackets.

AM Did two loops of Sugarhouse. Typical of the last couple of days, I felt a little sluggish to start and much better. I've been having some shin/calf tightness that bugs me a little to begin with.

PM Did a 4.5 mile loop on campus probably faster than necessary. I also signed up for St George although I'm not sure I want to do it this year. If I get in that would probably mean either no Boston for next year or I'll have to not take St George as seriously as I've taken other marathons.

Ran through South Salt Lake, Sugarhouse, by the zoo, research park, Liberty Park. Nice scenic run. Ran the last 7 miles or so at about 6:30 mile pace (pretty downhill).

AM Finished my last school assignment today! Sheesh, I'm 23, I shouldn't have "homework" anymore. That's going to be a requirement for next semester, no "homework" just "work". Anyway didn't really get enough sleep but got myself going with 5.5 in the morning with a few hard strides at the end.

PM Didn't drink enough water during the day because I forgot my water bottle. I should have gone home but I wanted to do a trail run from school. It was me vs the mountain bikers and I'm happy to say that I destroyed that them, but its not really a fair fight up a trail that steep. I ran on the shoreline trail going north from the med school, turning around where it meets up with City Creek trail and black mountain trail. Felt pretty fatigued afterwards, muscles are OK, just generally wanted to rest. Just got to try to squeeze out a couple more tough weeks here and avoid falling off the razor edge.

So I just realized I've been skimping. I've been leaving off .1 miles from a bunch of my runs. I could be out 4, 5 maybe even 6 miles for the year! I always knew something was up. I would think "that sure felt like a long 10.5 miles" now I know it was really 10.6! Anyway. I did 10.6 today thinking "marathon pace" to myself. I ran 62:11 which is 5:52 per mile. This includes quite a bit of climbing and grass, so that makes it better obviously. Again, fastest I've ever done this run by about 20seconds and I felt pretty good.

Did three loops of Sugarhouse Park pretty easy. I felt pretty good for the whole run, averaged 7:10 pace.

Well Goodness! I did it again. I set out to try to conquer this run in under 2hours and managed 1:58:54! I ran from my house all the way to the turnaround at the top of the City Creek road. That's an elevation gain of 2000ft! I pretty much hammered my way up there. I had a tough time getting myself to really get going fast on the really steep section. I was maxing out on the hills at 6000ft without really putting out a lot of "effort". Reached the top in 66:49, first time doing it under 74mins. Ran from the trailhead to the top in 42:38.

Coming down, I really had to concentrate to keep the effort high as it was all downhill. I took a gu at the turnaround and again to top up as I was going through memory Grove. I found that on the nicer parts of the downhill I could come close to 5 min mile pace without too much effort (good downhill runner strikes again!) but it took alot of mental energy. I kept it going on the last little bit through downtown averaging a pretty steady 5:27 pace on the way down. I was very pleased that I could maintain 5:35 pace on the flat at the end. In my upcoming marathon I'll have a nice downhill from mile19 to mile 21. I have to be prepared to use it and then hang on the last 6 miles. I'm beginning to think I can break 2:30, which would be nuts!

I did four loops of Liberty Park in the morning. I only planned on doing two but I was going slow and I felt pretty good so I kept going.

Did two loops of Sugarhouse park very relaxed. Pace was 7:30.

PM Feel the burn!!! I did two three loops of Liberty Park, with the last two hard. I think they just added fresh bark so my run could be approximated by a Stokes Flow...by that I mean the bark sucked away all my momentum. I had to drive hard each step and so my quads were burning. You know its tough going when you go out onto the grass to pass someone and you suddenly start going 20seconds a mile faster...in deep grass. I managed to do 8:32, 8:40 for a total of 17:12 (5:44 pace). This is actually pretty close to where I've done this workout in the past, so I'm pleased with it. After I was done I did some hard strides.

Did a 16 mile long run in 2:04 (7:45 pace). Ran up 2700S to 2000E then ran along foothill to 1300S. Ran by the zoo, into the mountains for a bit, coming out by the medical center, down Sunnyside home.

AM 10.6

PM Played frisbee (90 minutes of strides)

Did three loops of Sugarhouse. Tried to keep it fast, feeling wrecked from frisbee yesterday. I need some recovery which is hopefully what I'll get tomorrow.

The day speaks for itself:

7:30get up

8:00-8:50 go running

8:50-9:20 breakfast, shower, got dressed

9:20 walk to ballpark Trax

9:47 get on Trax, meet Chris and Masaki

10:00 Arrive at U haul dealer

10:30-12:30 Shopping at Walmart

12:45 Get home discover I've somehow lost my house key.

12:45-1:15 Drop off Chris and Masaki at our new house, unload stuff from Walmart, call Uhaul place to see if my key is there. Leave them there to take pictures and measure house. Drive back to Walmart, look for my key, fail to find it, drive back to new house. Pick up phone book off of front porch and call locksmith.

1:26 Locksmith call me to say he'll be 15 minutes.

1:38 Drive back to my house with Chris

1:44 Locksmith arrives starts working on the lock. Estimates it will be 10 minutes.

1:54 No the door is still not open

2:00 Call Rocky mountain power set up account

2:30 Door still not open, send Chris to go move his and Masaki's stuff from their apartments.

2:45 Call Questar Gas to setup account

3:00-3:45 Walk around my house looking for a way to get in, try to say encouraging things to the locksmith who is getting very embarrassed.

3:45 Door is open!

4:00 Masaki calls me and tells me they'll be there in 30 mins

4:45 Masaki asks me to come meet them at the new house so I run from my house to my new house.

5:00 Masaki and Chris arrive, they are late because they stopped by to pick up some stuff from a friend and he basically made them move all of his stuff out of his basement (none of it we could actually use)

5:05-5:45 We unpack their stuff

5:45-6:15 Drive South to Ikea

6:15-9:30 Buy dining set, coffee table, two beds, a desk, three dressers, two bookshelves...alot of stuff basically

9:30-10:00 Drive back

10:00-10:20 Unload all of the Ikea stuff

10:30-10:40 Drive to my house and pack up my things

10:40-10:55 Unload my stuff at new house

11:15 drop of Chris and Masaki at Walmart

11:15-11:45 Drive to the Uhaul place, realize you can't legally turn into it from the mainroad. Attempt to drive around the block, find myself in the middle of a bunch of warehouses on unlit streets. Finally manage to get to the Uhaul place by driving through  business park and through a construction site (this is not smart planning). Realized I needed to go fill up with gas so went and did everything again.

11:45 walked to Carls Junior and got a burger

12:15 Catch last train to the Ball park

12:35 Got home, fell asleep on couch

Spent a pleasant day building Ikea furniture. Didn't get home until 7pm, however. Time to run 20miles! I had left all my GU at my new house, so I just made do with some nuts. I started out at about 6:40 pace which felt fine, but I felt myself running out of fuel almost immediately. I found that I was able to maintain my pace however. As the run went on I began to feel more and more comfortable at the pace and even began to speed up a little. With about 7miles left I really started to pick up my pace, I felt unstoppable...except when I had to stop at red lights. Then my legs let me know how fatigued they were (really bad at the long light at 2700S). I thought about jogging in the last two miles, but when I got going again I felt good. I knew I wasn't going particularly fast so I really tried to pick it up the last mile and go just under 6. I think I might have been burning fat for most of this run. I was able to run about 6:30 pace which is about what I was able to do at the end of Boston, but it felt much easier so I'm probably getting more efficient at burning fat. Total time was 2:08:40 with a slight negative split despite the second half being hillier.

Three loops of Sugarhouse on the grass. I was going to make today an easy/off day, but I realized that the rest of my week might be tough, so I thought I shouldn't waste an opportunity to get a good run in. It was kind of a waste anyway though as I really needed an off day.

Ugh, another tough day

10.6 in the morning

5.5 in the evening (late in the evening). Plus strides

10.6 in the morning

4 in the evening

I'm just really exhausted all the time now because of moving. And now I have a conference the second half of this week!

AM long run 7:40 pace

Hard 10-miler from school. Wasn't feeling great still so I just aimed for under 1 hour (for 9.7 miles). Splits were 17:36 for downhill 3 miles (5:52 pace) 11:43 for uphill (6:27 pace) 18:36 for the death segment (6:24 pace) and 11:51 for the last 1.95 through campus (6:04 pace). Apparently I died a little at the end because the last segment should be the same pace as the first.

Shoreline trail

Locked myself out again! Not a fun week.

I did the THINK ABOUT IT run down California Avenue for the first time in a while. I didn't feel brilliant exactly but I managed. I had a headwind on the way out that almost made me give up but it was a tailwind on th way back. Out in 1:09:28 (6:10 pace) and then back in 1:08:23 (6:04 pace). I think I dropped a Gu in the portapotty at the dump. So if you're there and see a Lemon sublime and you're reeeaaaally hungry know that its been there since Sunday the 24th of May.

A couple hours later I walked to the store. Some guy tried to steal some beer right as I was walking in. I chased the sucker down no problem!

Ran to Liberty park and did two loops very slowly.

Four loops of Sugarhouse park on the grass.

9.5 in the morning.

Flew to Seattle

5.3 Around the South tip of Mercer Island. I'm now back in Seattle for a few weeks which means great running for one thing. I did this run in 31:15 (5:53) which is pretty good as it contains a nasty hill.

Pretty unimpressive runs today, I'm not really feeling all that great. I did 12.3 in the morning at 7:03 pace and seven in the evening at 7:20 pace. The last two weeks have kind of thrown me through a loop.

9 days to go until starting to taper

15 days until Fremont 5k

30 days until marathon.

Miles	Split	Pace	Cum Split	Cum Pace
2.4	14:31	6:02	14:31	6:02
4.1	10:13	6:01	24:44	6:02
6.5	14:58	6:14	39:42	6:06
8.2	11:08	6:33	50:50	6:12
10.6	15:11	6:20	1:06:02	6:14

Not really what I was hoping for on this run. I was looking to run a couple of minutes faster, but I just didn't have it today, not really that surprising. I was pushing too hard at the beginning trying to run an impossible pace so I ended up dying a little at the end. Considering that I normally finish training runs faster than I start them, this was not good. It has been a tough month though, I only hope that I haven't bitten off more than I can chew.

I just ran really slow today. I wasn't plodding but it wasn't that fast, I didn't time it for some reason. I ran around the Island then crossed the bridge and ran around the Slough (the short way). It was at least wonderful weather. I tried out the GU chomps, quite tasty although the whole pack is apparently only 180 calories, that doesn't seem very useful.

I really listened to my body and I felt alot of aches and pain, which is OK. My muscles were basically feeling pretty good though. Tomorrow I'm going to not run, but maybe walk to the waterfront and go for a swim. Ahh that sounds good...even with a goose egg tomorrow this will be my highest mileage month ever.