my makeup may be flaking

Ran from my house to the top of little mountain and back. A really fun run, I started pushing the climb after I passed the fire station (about 5 miles from the top). Reached the top in 1:33 and then cruised back down in 1:14 (6:30 ish pace). I was running consistent 6:20s for a while in there but I certainly slowed down a lot the last miles. I had intended to take some Gu with me but I left it on my kitchen table. I didn't realize this until I reached the top and looked in my pocket for a Gu. I was pleased that I didn't crash despite not having eaten.

Maybe I should do another marathon soon? 

Pretty sore today from two runs down Emigration in two days. Put on my compression gear and did some loops of liberty park. Then Allie and I hiked up Mt Wire. (We were going to be more ambitious but we were scared off by thunderstorms)

Also, I signed up for the TOU marathon...

I'm definitely not in killer shape at the moment, but my last two 20 milers have shown me that I can comfortably make it through the distance without falling apart.

Main reasons for doing TOU are

-1. To get some more experience with the marathon. I like to learn a little bit from all of my races, and I really wasn't sure what to make of Des News.

-2. To maybe win some money. Don't know who will be there (Paul, Sasha, Kenyans and ???) but money may be nice.

-3. To get another Utah marathon under my belt. I don't know how much longer I'm going to live here and I wanted to do Des News, TOU and Ogden before leaving.

Supplemental reason-

Maybe I can PR. I will probably run pretty conservatively, but I will try to put myself in position to PR and go sub 2:30. I honestly don't know how my body will react though.

AM 11.5 Decided to start timing runs again. Maybe this will be interesting. 1:27 (7:34 pace)

PM 4.8 Didn't time it.

AM 9.5 in 1:11 (7:28 per mile)

PM 4 miles in 26:30 (6:38 per mile)

Right before my PM run, my mum called to tell me they had put our cat charlie down. Apparently his kidneys had stopped working and he could no longer eat anything. I knew that he had to die sooner or later but he didn't seem to have aged at all in the last ten years. Charlie was born in a cupboard on December 20th 1994. He was one of 3 kittens that our cat Brindle had that day and the only one we kept. A few months later, Brindle had six more kittens and so for a time we had 8 cats. One of my favourite books when I was little was the 101 dalmations and this was kind of like that.

When we moved to America in August 1997, we naturally brought Brindle and Charlie with us. I guess I should add that we adopted Brindle in September 1993 when she had just been weaned. For two years we rented a house with no cat flap and so we had to leave the cats out at night (because they were outdoor cats). We lived in perpetual fear that they would get eaten by raccoons, which we discovered were not as lovable as cartoons had led me to believe.

My cats were both incredibly friendly. They would leap into the laps of complete strangers. I thought this was normal behavior for cats for a very long time until people became to comment about how nice my cats were.

Brindle and Charlie were very different from each other. When Brindle was hungry she would go hunt and I would often see her at the park while out running. She would bring dead birds to my sister. When Charlie was hungry he would kind of wander around the and meow pitifully, then roll onto his back to make sure we could see how helpless he was. It was unclear why he did this as we always fed him at the same time everyday. Brindle was an efficient, gracile, killing machine. Charlie was kind of a wuss, but what can you expect from a neutered tom cat?

In 2003, Brindle was mauled by a giant stray tom cat and had to undergo surgery. She had to wear the "cone" of shame for a few weeks and I had to give her medicine. Trying to get cats to do things that they don't want to do is incredibly difficult. Brindle hated taking her medicine, but she would always let me catch her and do her best to swallow it. She recovered briefly but when I returned from my freshman year of college she was clearly dying. She had lost a lot of weight and had very little energy. She couldn't keep any of her food down and a couple of times she was found collapsed in the park before some kind soul took her to the vet.

During this whole time, I kept insisting that my parents put her down. The other option was a $50000 operation that may not have worked. In any case, I didn't like seeing how much she was suffering.

One day, I came home from running and found that Brindle had collapsed while while trying to go through her flap. I carried her upstairs and gave her some water. She died a few hours later.

Charlie, on the other hand, soldiered on for another 7 years and was closing in on his 17th birthday when he started to go downhill. I told my parents in no uncertain terms that this time they were to put him down.

Anyway RIP charlie, I'll miss the watching you hunt dragonflies.

AM 10.1 mile tempo run. (30:58,29:06 (19:49,9:17))=60:04

Wanted to push this run hard and see what kind of shape that I'm in.  I last did this run all out during my taper for Des News and only managed a 60:30 (31:40,28:50). Mileage the day before was 13.5 this time vs just 2.5 in July. In addition there was some crazy wind this time which could have reasonable cost me about 1 minute (maybe more).

In the past I've done this run later in the day after giving my body longer to warm up. Earlier in the summer I ran 59 flat, in Jan 2010 I ran 59:59. In Oct 2010 I ran 57:50. In short, I think I am close to the shape that I was in when I ran 1:11 and 2:32.

PM 4 (28:11=7:03/mile)

Dragged myself out of bed a bit earlier this morning to run with Allie. (6.2 miles in 51:36=8:19 pace). The nice thing about only deciding to do a race two weeks out is that you don't drive yourself nuts thinking about it. I suppose I need to start tapering at some point soon.

Layton Classic 5k. I got second last year behind Jamal and I really wanted to come away with the win this time around. Of course Trace Fifeld had to show up!

I took off much faster than last year and I already lost Trace before the mile. (Which we hit in 5:08 vs 5:13 last year). There's a long climb in the second and third miles and I was trying to keep the race close, hitting 5:18 for mile 2 (10:26). I was now 24 seconds ahead of my pace from last year and feeling pretty good. At the same time I was concerned that the mile markers were in the wrong place.

At 3 miles trace had about a 20 second lead on me and it looked like I might catch him. I hit the third mile in 16:31, still ahead of pace from last year but falling back.

The fourth mile is downhill again and now I was really closing in. I ran 5:17 for this mile (which was again slower than last year). I pushed really hard in the crucial 5th mile but I couldn't make any headway. Trace seemed to be pulling away again. This mile was only 5:46 which kind of stinks. I figured that mile was probably off as I didn't feel like I had really slowed down any from the previous miles.

I was now trying hard to break 34 mins but it's hard to keep your momentum up at the end of this race. You have to go around a lot of 5kers and there are some twists and turns. Somehow I still managed a 6:28 for the last 1.22 (5:18 pace). This may have been short.

It doesn't matter. I gave it my best shot and still came up short of Trace by about 15 seconds. It was hard to be frustrated because even though my time from last year would have won, I had considered that to be a very good race. Also, at the time, I was focusing on 10k specific workouts in my training. This course is somewhere in the region of 2 minutes slower than Des News, so I was right where I should be.