Slowly Getting Faster

Took the leg out for a test drive this morning.  Everything went okay. I'm going to do 5 more tonight I think, and if everything checks out then I'm going up to Flag Rock tomorrow. 

I didn't get the 5 mile test run in last night so I went early this morning. Everything went okay so I'm back to trails tomorrow.  Hoping to try the marathon distance to Francis peak and back in a couple weeks. 

Flag Rock Loop north to south.  A celebration run because today I finished law school. I was as fast as I was last time I did this route, which says something I think, but it didn't feel as good as it used to, which definitely says something.  2 weeks off is a killer.  Now it's time to get the serious training going in preparation for all the fun of summer. 

AP: 11:38, 2,146' vert 

I went up flag rock again from the north.  When I hit the rock I decided I would see where the trail going up goes.  There is a trail sign that says that the trail connects with Steed Creek but it is a lie.  I took the trail for a while, not sure exactly how far but it was at least a mile.  The route is clear for about 1/4 mile then it is marked with orange flags.  The orange flags cut up the mountain into some areas that have clearly been changed since the flags were hung.  There is a lot of fallen trees and the trail itself is mostly disguised by the fallen logs and overgrowth.  I lost any sign of the trail at the point I turned around.  There is another trail up there that says it goes over to hornet creek.  I doubt that it is clear either, but it looks like it cuts across the side of the mountain instead of trying to climb over the top so maybe I'll take that next time.  It would be awesome if there was a way to get from flag rock to steed creek at 6,000 feet.  

 I ran into one of the trail maintenance guys on my way down from flag rock and I asked him about the trail.  He said it was a proposed trail but it hadn't been finished yet.  They are apparently having a hard time keeping up with the overgrowth on flag rock trail at this point and haven't had time to expand their operation up the mountain.  Anyone running wasatch that needs to spend some time doing trail work, Farmington has plenty of it for you. 

 3000' vert., very slow.  

Early morning flag rock run with MattVH. I was slow, he was fast. My average pace for this route today was a full 2 minutes per mile slower than it was 2 days ago. Overall, this took 13 minutes longer than my average time.  I would feel bad about that but this is the third time in three days that I've done this route, and yesterday I tacked on an extra 1,000 feet of elevation gain. I've got to get my legs back up to speed so I'll try again either tonight or tomorrow, or both. 

AP: 13:45, 1,854' vert 

If the course doesn't change from last year, this is the course for the flag rock run.  I ran it today to set a bench mark for the training I will be doing over the next couple of months.  My starting point is 1:27:31.  I would like to get that down to 1:17 or faster before July 14th. I don't know if that is reasonable or not, but I would be willing to bet that last years winner was faster than 12:10 per mile. 

It was hot today, I shouldn't have run it during the middle of the day but that was the time I had available.  I'm planning on making the loop gain tomorrow morning before it gets hot, though probably not the exact course as I did today. I'm also pretty sure it's steeper going from south to north.  The lack of any switchbacks until the last half mile means you're pretty much running up for the first 3 miles.  I might be wrong.  One of these days I'm going to run to the rock and rest my watch so I can see which way has more gain. At any rate, the north to south approach is much nicer than the other way around, but since south to north is the race I guess that's what I should focus on. 

Mount Griffith with my brother as my graduation present.  It was pretty steep and at a pretty high elevation but I felt good most of the way up.  I didn't feel the effects of the elevation until after 10,500 feet. One day I will come back and run the whole trail all the way to Mount Charleston.

3:04:46; 4,017 vertical feet.  

I went out today around 3pm.  I don't know why I thought this was a good idea but it clearly wasn't. when I left the house it was 86 degrees.  That is the hottest temperature I've run through in quite some time, so that was bad enough.  But it got worse because the temperature hadn't finished climbing.  It was 88 by the time I got back. The heat coupled with the sun beating down on me and the trail, and trail reflecting that heat back up into my face, made it almost unbearable.  I know 88 isn't that hot in the grande scheme of things, but I wasn't ready for it today.  

My initial plan was to run the loop but after talking myself into pushing to the top I decided that the best course of action would be to just go back the shortest route.  I was already out of water and it was hot. So I dropped back down the south side and took the short cut down to 200 south and back to the school where I had parked my car.

The days of running this route in the middle of the day are gone.  Time to start getting out early before it gets hot.  

Flag Rock run with MattVH.  This is my fastest time so far-which is the good news-but it still isn't fast enough-which is the bad news. I made it to the rock in 46 minutes, which is as fast as I've ever done it I think.  There were a couple of trail crew guys on the rock when I got up there so I stopped to ask them a few questions about the run last year.  Turns out that the fastest time last year was 1:05.  That is ridiculous! I ran it in 1:20:57 today.  After reviewing my Garmin data I can see a couple places that I slowed down today that I wouldn't have slowed down on race day, so I think I could take a few minutes off that time right now if I pushed. That said, it is going to require a lot of work between now and July 14 to get the time down around 1:05 but I think it's possible. 

This run started out slow but ended up fast.  Some of the slow was because I was still a bit tired and some of it was because MattVH wasn't feeling it today.  I was almost 40 seconds slower on the first mile, 1 minute 8 seconds slower on the second mile, 6 seconds slower on the third mile, and 1 minute 16 seconds slower on the fourth mile.  The fourth mile was all on me.  I just wasn't as fast up those switchbacks today, which was alright because this wasn't intended to be a fast run.  My plan when I woke up this morning was just try and get the hills in and don't slow down too much.  So I guess this was on track. 

I reached the peak in 48 minutes and 38 seconds, which is 2 minutes and 20 seconds slower than yesterday.  But when I got up there and realized I was only 2 minutes off my time yesterday I wondered if I could push the rest of the way and get back around the same time.  Turns out I could.  Mile 5 today was 26 seconds faster than yesterday, mile 6 was 1 minute 17 seconds faster than yesterday, and mile 7 was 33 seconds faster than yesterday.  I got back to the start in 1:21:34, which was only 36 seconds slower than yesterdays time after starting out with more than a 2 minute deficit.  Not too shabby.  

I realized yesterday that there were a few places on the second half that I was slower than I needed to be and I think that is where I made up the difference.  Instead of slowing down at the bottom of the trail I pushed up to the BST connector.  Instead of slowing down once I hit the grass at the pond I pushed the pace.  I think there were a few places that with a little more mental discipline I could push harder and get another 30 seconds or a minute at my current fitness level.  If I had been as fast going up today as I was yesterday I would have taken almost 2 minutes off my PR.  I'm a bit more optimistic about my ability to get my time down to 1:05 after today.  

I was tired this morning.  The alarm went off and I rolled over and slept for another 10 minutes.  It's harder to get up when I know I am running alone.  If it wasn't for the heat I would have just gone back to bed and done this later in the day.  But it is too hot for that at this point. 

My delay in waking up meant I didn't have enough time to get all the way to flag rock.  I got to the start line of the race course and realized that I was going to have to run it at least as fast as I did yesterday in order to be home on time.   But like I said at the outset, I was very tired and, consequently, that wasn't going to happen.  I opted instead for a shorter easier route.  Wanting to get some of the hills in still I decided I would head up cemetery hill and cut across the fire break to farmington canyon, come down the canyon, go through the pond, cut across the lagoon trail and back to my car.  Turns out that is a little over 6 miles, according to Gmap-pedometer. I forgot my watch.  I'm too type A about my running to be forgetting my watch. 

I tried to just keep the pace.  I figured that today should be a recovery run because the last two days have been decent efforts. I managed to do the course in just over 10 minute miles, which I think is a good recovery run pace. I think tomorrow I might try a double loop on the race course up to Flag Rock.  hopefully I wont be as tired then.  

Yesterday I thought I would do a double loop on the Flag Rock Race course.  Last night I found out that we were tending a bunch of little girls over night and my wife needed me to watch them so she could go get a hair cut.  Consequently, my plans were not to be. Instead I just did a single loop, which in the end was probably the best because I was done by the end.  My exhaustion had me a little frustrated, because I couldn't figure out why I was so tired.  I slept well last night, I ate before I ran today.  I didn't get up as early (thanks to the little girls), so what gives?  As it turns out, the reason for my exhaustion was my speed up to the top.  While my overall time was 2 minutes slower than my fastest time on this route, I beat my time to the top by about 10 seconds. Most of that speed came in the third mile, a mile that is usually an 18 minute mile because there is just under 800' of elevation gain in that mile.  Today I managed to get that mile done in 16:57, 1 minute and 9 seconds faster than my fastest time.  I lost most of that back on the final switchbacks up to the top, but I am pretty happy with that speed. My first and second miles were faster too, but the speed difference isn't quite as dramatic. In the end, today was a good sign for my goal of 1:05 by july 14. 

I got the call the night before from Matt VH for a trip up Farmington canyon.  We have talked about this run for a while but I hurt my leg so it was put on hold. We started at Farmington Pond at the bottom of the canyon just after 6am.  It was touch chilly outside at that hour but not too bad.  I opted to leave my long sleeve shirt in the car rather than have to carry it with me.  The road feels steep for the first mile or so- the paved part- but as soon as it transitions to dirt it mellows out a lot. We climbed 3,500 feet over the first 7 miles but it didn't feel like it at all. However, the higher we climbed the colder it got.  The sun hadn't made it's way into the canyon yet so we were jogging in shadows.  The river cutting its way down the middle of the canyon must have made the wind much colder than it otherwise would have been.  By the time we got to the junction that splits up the Francis peak or over to Bountiful I was frozen.  Bad choice on the shirt I guess. So we sat in the sunlight on a rock for a minute while I took the rocks out of my shoe and eye-balled the peak that was still another 4 miles and 2,000 vertical feet away.  

About 1/4 mile past that junction the road climbs higher than the river and it was immediately warmer, if not down right pleasant.   The road is also smoother at that point for reasons I'm uncertain about. So we ran together for a while, up past the pine trees until we reached the tree line. The road on this last section is also quite a bit steeper than the road on the first 7 miles and it didn't take long for VH to put a gap on me.  I wouldn't see him again until the top. He beat me there by a good 5-10 minutes and even ran down the back side a bit to make sure he got 13 miles for the run up.  By the time I got there I didn't have that kind of energy in me so I just stopped and stretched and drank some water. 

The downhill trek was much faster than the uphill.  We made it to the top in 2:53:00 and we made it back down in just under 2 hours. Obviously, a lot of that was due to gravity. We just took the breaks off and let it do it's thing.  At first it felt good and before we knew it, we were running a 7 minute mile down that road.  After a couple of quad pounding miles though it didn't feel quite as good. By the junction I was tired and had more rocks in my shoe so I stopped to remove them while VH continued moving. After I got the rocks out and caught up to him we made our way to Sunset camp ground hoping for water so I could refill my bottles.  Turns out the campground has been shut down and the water was turned off.  Oh crap.  Another 5 miles to go and no water.

The road at that point is substantially more rocky as well, so the breaks off and just cruise approach was not working quite as well. By the time we hit black top I was spent.  The furthest I have run since my last marathon in 2006 is 13.1 miles.  I'm not used to this distance and my body was letting me know it.  Once on the black top I took the breaks off again and let gravity drag me to my car. I thought it would be less painful if it was over with sooner.  I reached the cars a minute or 2 before matt but I was in much worse shape than him.  When I got there I collapsed on into my car; when he got there he took off his pack and proceeded to jog around on the grass until he hit 26 miles.  Clearly I haven't been running this type of distance enough to be in as good of shape as he is. So now that is the goal.  Make this a regular run on the weekend until going 26 miles is not a big deal. 

A day later I am surprised at how good I feel.  Absolutely no joint pain just some minor muscle soreness.  I slept like a baby last night but got right out of bed this morning and was able to mover around like I hadn't done anything yesterday.  I've run 3 marathons prior to this and I never felt that way after any of those. More consistent training is part of it I'm sure, but I think that the big difference comes from running with proper form.  I can't wait to test my legs out next week.  

Last night I thought this would be a flag rock run.  30 seconds into this run I realized that I wasn't going to make it.  My legs were tired and very stiff.  Usually after a harder run my legs will be stiff for about half a mile but today they were stiff and very slow for the first 2 miles.  It usually takes me about 22 minutes to do the first two miles of the flag rock course, today it took 24+ minutes. Consequently I decided to just run the firebreak road loop, a much flatter route. It was still pretty slow but I figured this is a recovery run.  If Geoffrey Mutai runs a 4:50 race pace and an 8:00 recovery run pace it must be ok for me to want to run a 7:00 race pace and a 10:31 recovery pace, right? 

I'll try flag rock again tomorrow.  

Very slow flag rock run.  Legs still on the mend from the 25 on Sunday. Got faster and feeling better toward the end.  can't say the same for my running mate. 

I felt like crap on this run. I planned on going up to flag rock but 2 minutes into this run I realized that wasn't going to happen. I couldn't figure out why I was so tired.  It was more than just physical tired, it was all-the-way-to-the-bone tired.  I could barely talk myself into turning up the cemetery road to climb up to the firebreak.  by the time I made it there I realized something was wrong and took the short cut back down.  

After I got home and sat on my but for a bit I decided to shower and get ready for the day.  In the process of that I weighed myself and discovered that I had lost a bunch of weight over the week.  That put to rest my concerns that I was maybe getting sick.  I think the problem is that I ran more distance this week than I have in years, and I didn't eat accordingly.  While my overall milage is just over 40 this week, one of those runs was 25 miles and most of the rest of them were 7+.  I decided I should take the rest of the weekend to eat and recover before venturing out again.  No reason to push it and end up hurt, or worse than that hating running.

I wanted to get a good run in today but I didn't want to kill myself.  I would like to be running Farmington canyon up to Francis peak weekly by July so I figure I need to start making my every day runs closer to 10 miles, rather than 7. If I can average 10-15 miles during the week then I can surely pull out a 25 on the weekend - provided I'm eating enough.  With that in mind I thought I would head up the canyon to the campground via the road, come back down the trail that cuts down the middle of the canyon, cut across the firebreak to the flag rock trail and then go up and over that from north to south. 

I wasn't feeling that great when I woke up this morning but 2 miles into this run I was glad I had pushed myself out the door. The canyon is beautiful in the morning, with the sun streaking down the valley and a slight chill in the air. The road was abnormally busy today.  I saw some campers making their way down the paved part of the road, a guy with ropes (rock climber I'm assuming) going up, and I even passed a couple of guys trying to run the canyon. They said they were new to running uphill and it showed.  I tried to pass on some encouragement and kept moving.  

I made it to the campground in just over an hour and then set out to find the trail back down.  I was concerned that it would not be visible since the campground has been closed for a year and has clearly not been maintained at all.  I found a sign by an overgrown trail and started down.  I remember hiking up this trail several years ago and it was pretty decent then.  It has been neglected for some time now and I had to do a bit of bushwhacking to get started. Once I got passed the waterfall the trail cleared up a bit and I was able to move a little faster.  I was surprised at how fast I made it back down the canyon from the camp ground.  From the spot where the trail goes up the canyon and road turns from pavement to gravel it is about 4 miles.  The trail coming back down was 2.

Once I hit the firebreak I walked for a minute to get some nutrition in my stomach.  If I was still going to climb up to flag rock I was going to need some more energy.  By the time I hit the trail to turn up I was beat.  I thought about calling it off and just heading back down the firebreak home but decided that I had set out to go over flag rock so that is what I was going to do.  It was slow going, maybe the slowest it's ever been. It took me over 30 minutes just to climb the less than 2 mile section of trail to the rock.  

When I got to the top I ran into a guy I haven't seen in years (Rick Wesche). I had heard he was thinking about running the race in July but until today I hadn't seen him on the trail.  He had just made it up a few seconds before I got there so we stopped to chat for a minute.  I then set out and he followed me back down the trail. once we got back to the firebreak we jogged for a bit together chatting about life until I turned to head home.  It was good to catch up with him.

All in all this run was pretty awesome, even if it was tiring.  It took me 2:42:36 to make the whole trek, a time I'm sure I can cut down with some practice. If nothing else, this is a great training run for the trail half in Moab in November.  

Flag rock with VH.  I was slow going out today because I was stiff from yesterdays run but I made it around the loop in 1:25, which is a pretty good time for being slow. It helped that my wife was going to kill me if I didn't make it back pretty close to 7:30.  Nothing like a little motivation to get the legs moving. 

I didn't go this morning and I didn't go yesterday.  I've been beat lately.  Not sure what is going on.  Maybe calorie deficient, maybe something else, I don't know.  If it is calories, I need to figure out how to eat enough healthy food to keep my energy levels up.  I don't want to just make up the difference with crap.  You can't fuel the machine with garbage, right? 

At any rate, I was getting grouchy - or so my wife told me - so I went for a run.  I've noticed the last few times I've been out that I am slow.  I'm not turtle slow, but I'm not fast either.  I know, because I have read and been told over and over again, that to get fast you have to use your fast twitch muscles.  Typically, this is done on a track with some 200's or something.  I don't have a track and I'm not that keen on running on flat surfaces.  I decided that I should do something that I've seen Kilian Jornet do in this video. As I understand it, the purpose of this type of a run is to make you faster up hill by firing all the fast twitch muscles.  The advantage of this, as opposed to running on a track, is that it simulates the type of running that I plan to be doing on the same surface.  

So, I found a hill pretty close to my house that is pretty steep and sandy.  It's 80 feet of gain in .05 of a mile. My plan was to do 5 sprints up the hill and see how I felt at that point.  I didn't make it. The first attempt I went out as fast as I could, legs straining, lungs burning, heart beating out of my chest.  For all my efforts I made it about half way up, 47 feet, in 36 seconds which is an 18 minute mile.  That was my fastest attempt. I stopped at 47 feet because my legs literally couldn't go any farther.  I also timed my downhill time, as that is just as important in trail running as the uphill portion and equally as hard on the legs. I'm better at the down than the up but I'm not as fast as some people I know.  My downhill was pretty consistent at about 15.5 minutes per mile. The rest of my uphill runs were as follows: 39', 29 seconds; 40', 29 seconds.  Instead of 5 I got 3, and that was all my legs had in them.

I climbed back to the top of the hill, which is actually the firebreak road, and sat down to take the rocks out of my shoes. That's the downside of running in sand I guess.  Then I figured that I should put in some more relaxed miles to cool down.  Even though the course is pretty even across the top, I was faster after the sprints than before them, even with the tired legs.  I felt a bit like I was floating.  My splits on the way back, which again is up and down hill but almost exactly the same as it was on the first part of the run, was minutes faster on ever mile. I'm taking that as a good sign. 

So I've decided I'm going to add this in to my runs on a regular basis.  I'll see if I can get a mile or more in sprinting up that hill in a single session.  That will be the goal.

According to Brad Hudson, hill sprints should be added into your runs regularly so I'm assuming it will be alright as long as I get 2+ miles in before the hill sprints and some sort of cool down after.