my makeup may be flaking

In honor of the heat wave, I decided to run 20 miles for the first time since Des News. I felt fine, probably because of sea level air.

5x1600 (5:41,5:38,5:38,5:37,5:41) with about 3 mins rest between each one.

AM HR 62 10.6 Mill

AM HR 59

AM HR 64

AM 2.5

PM 8 Track workout

4*800 w/90 seconds rest (2:51,2:48,2:47,2:47)

lap jog (4 mins total rest)

4*400 w/60 seconds rest (77.4,74.7,76.0,78.0)

6*100 strides

Those 400s did not feel good, full of lactic acid by the end of the last two. The 800s felt pretty smooth, but my heart was misbehaving.

AM HR 67

AM HR 65

Easy day. Tour de Run tomorrow. My goal is sub 1:22 which is just under 6:00 pace.

AM HR 60

AM 4.1

PM 3 up, 3 race, 2 down

Tour De Run! Pretty sweet race/course. Plenty of competition but I felt pretty bad.

5:32 for the first mile which is way too fast. It felt pretty easy but I could feel bits of my legs falling off as I ran. Second mile has a decent downhill, but I slowed to about 5:50 and I think my right foot fell off.

Third mile was 6:30 and it was a complete meltdown. I really felt awful.

Stage 2 was a 40:24 10k. I never really felt good in this one, which included a 7:22 mile 3 up a steep hill. I started off pretty conservatively but my heart was skipping almost immediately. It was cool to run with allie for the first little bit and then gradually watch her disappear off into the distance the last 3 miles. I held it together ok, as my last 3 miles were the fastest.

Stage 3 was a 4.4 mile run which was just terrible and pretty much epitomizes all of my races for the last year. I tried to go out pretty conservatively and ran a sub 6 first mile feeling like it was pretty easy. The second mile was downhill and I slowed down to about a 6:10 second mile. I completely died after that though, running just under 7 minute pace the rest of the way to finish in 28:06.

Tour de Run itself is a great event and really well organized, I think everyone agreed that they did a fantastic race. However my races were all terrible and it didn't really come as much of a surprise. I think I have a lot of work to do.

AM HR 72

AM HR 65

AM HR 64

AM HR 59

PM Track workout. 3x1600 with 90seconds rest. 5:50,5:51,5:48

Then 6x100m strides

Ran a slight negative split for all of these miles and felt pretty good doing it. Also, I felt a lot better after the workout than before. It probably helped that I forced myself to run the first 400m in about 89seconds before speeding up. I ran the first quarter of tour de run in about 77 and I never really felt good again. At Des News 10k, I'm going to have to be sure to start off slowly, so I'll probably do one more workout to see what that feels like.

AM HR 61

AM HR 58

Today I wanted to see what race pace would feel like on the Des News Course. I ran a 3 mile warmup from my house to the start line and then did 3*1mileish with about 2 mins rest in between.

First repeat was along Arapeen, Wakara and Foothill Drive to Mario Capecchi. It was .84 miles in 4:27. 5:18 pace/5:37 pace adjusted.

The second segment was simple, straight down 5th south to 13th E. .93 miles in 5:02. 5:24/5:47. I definitely tried to relax this repeat as the first one was fast and I felt like I was holding something in reserve. 

Final segment I deviated from the course and just went from 13thE&5thS to 9thE&8thS. This last segment had a lot of steep grades and tight turns. It was 1 mile exactly in 5:09, (5:36 adjusted pace).

All of these miles felt like there were pretty easy and sustainable. If I didn't know matter, I'd be thinking about a sub 34 on Wednesday. Unfortunately, I'm still concerned about what happens if I try to run hard for more than 1 mile continuously.

Splits: 5:17,5:26,5:56,6:02,13:39 (6:09 pace). 5ks: 17:25,18:54

An almost exact replica of my 2010 race but about 10% slower, which has been a pretty consistent pattern this year across all races and workouts. Going by comparison to 2010, the weakest mile was the 4th and then I rallied slightly at the end. As usual, the opening mile felt pretty easy, but I was already sick of the downhill by about mile 1.5 and my legs were dead on South Temple.

Approx adjusted time is 37:50, exactly the same as Cookie Chaser.

AM HR 61

2*2miles at Liberty Park

11:47 (2:55,3:00,2:57,2:55)

Then 7.5 minutes rest

11:42 (2:52, 2:58,2:57,2:55)

This is the first time that I've run back to back sub 6 miles this year. And I did it twice. Did two 12:10s the last time I did this workout.

AM(barely) HR 61

15 miles: Tanner Park + Zoo. Pretty hot and I had some dizziness during this run, but I was fine while I was running (as opposed to stopped at stoplights). Helped a lot to have Allie cycling next to me.

Average pace of 7:55

AM HR 62

AM HR 64

PM Track workout

3*1000 w/90 seconds rest 

3:30.6,3:27.6,3:28.3

5.5mins rest then repeat 

3:25.5,3:27.9,3:27.4 

I've been using the following: Take my 2007-2011 race/workout time and add about 10%. This gives me a benchmark to compare to, rather than always feeling like a failure. "Old James" would have been able to average 3:10 for this workout, but it would have been hard. Adding 10% gives a 3:29 average, which I easily beat today.