Slowly Getting Faster

I wanted to do hill sprints again, the aftermath was so good last night.  I decided I needed to do flag rock though so the plan was flag rock, north to south, and hill repeats at the end of that, then finish out the loop with the last 2 miles of trail.  By the time I got to the hill sprint area it was dark, so I bagged it, finished out the trail and came home.  Hopefully I can pick them up tomorrow. 

I have pictures from this run but I don't know how to upload them to this blog.  If anyone can tell me the secret I'll gladly start posting them.  

Still feeling tired.  I thought that after a few miles I would start to feel good and could get going faster but it never happened.  I'm not sure what is going on but I need to snap out of this funk soon. 

I spent the weekend in Bryce with my family.  I wanted to get a couple of runs in because it is so pretty here.  However, being that I was with the family, it was not very easy to accomplish.  Certain people get upset when I spend my time running instead of spending time with them.  So to compromise, on this day at least, I ran to the camp entrance to get an envelope to pay the fee for the campsite and back a couple of times, carried my 3 year old up the 400' climb out of the canyon, and ran back down to help get everyone else up.  

 The good news is that it felt good to run even at 8,000 feet. 

I got up early this morning, despite being awake for long hours the night before, and got out for a run. I wanted to traverse a good portion of the park, at least the frequently seen and traveled section of the park.  I started at Sunset Point, ran down Navajo trail, up peekaboo trail, and out to Bryce point.  Then I took the rim trail back to camp.  I was pretty tired when I finished but it was a beautiful run.  I had to stop multiple times on the peekaboo/bryce point trails for horses, which was annoying but oh well. 

It didn't feel very fast, which was disheartening.  I think that maybe some of my problem is that I am not meeting my own expectations for myself at this point in terms of my running.  

I ran twice today.  The first was a trail run on the BST from Kaysville going north.  The second was a time trial on the track at bountiful high school.  

I wanted to get 7 miles in this morning and I wanted that to be trail miles, but I wasn't up for steep.  Turns out this section of the BST is perfect for what I wanted.  The trail is a gradual climb of about 400 feet up to the trail, then pretty much levels off, with some minor ups and downs, for the rest of the miles.  It's also nice because there are people on the trail.  While running is a solitary sport, it is nice to see people on occasion. I felt like I was moving pretty good but when I got back my time was slower than I wanted it to be.  This, along with the rest of my concerns, prompted me to squeeze in the second outing today.

For several weeks I have felt stagnate.  Like I am not really getting any faster or any better at climbing hills. I recognize that the problem is that my expectations of myself  are probably too high, I still need to feel like I am moving in a positive direction.  A while ago I voiced my concerns over speed to a fellow FRBer and he told me to run some time trials.  He predicted what my splits would be before I did them and he was right on the money.  I did a 100, 400, 800, and mile.  My splits were: 16.3 seconds, 1:25.6, 3:14, and 6:59. Apparently, if I'm going to get fast I need to be running more consistent miles, working up to 10 a day and 20 on the weekend (at least), and I need to mix in more speed in the middle of those runs. So, I guess that is what I'll be doing.  The plan is, every other day do something more flat, like the BST in kaysville, and mix in some speed.  Then, on the other days, run something steeper to keep my climbing legs working.  We'll see how this works out.  Hopefully it will get me to where I want to be one day. 

I woke up this morning planning on running Flag Rock but I was stiff in places I haven't been in a while.  I'm pretty sure that speed muscles and hill climbing muscles are not entirely the same muscles. The last time I felt this way was after a speed workout, and that time I did go and run up a mountain the next day and ended up pulling my quad and being on the injured reserve for the next 2 weeks.  So with that in mind, I decided to run on relatively flat ground (i.e. the road) around town. I'm trying to stick to ~7 miles a day so that's what I did.  

I ran down state street, up to the canyon, down through the pond, along lagoon trail, over to harmons, down the legacy trail, up Glovers lane, and back to home.  It ended up being 7.75 miles and I did it in just over an hour.  An average of 8:43 per mile.  It was a comfortable pace even with sore legs.  

I was sick all week and I have been overwhelmed with bar study for the past few weeks so my miles haven't really been consistent.  I've sort of fallen off the wagon I suppose.  So today I decided to get back on with some speed work.  This seemed like a good idea given the limited amount of time I had to do anything.  So, I found a nice little track on the west side of farmington and warmed up with a half mile.  Then I did 5x200 with 200 jogging recovery and some stretching in between.  Splits were: 48, 45, 42, 43, 41.  Not as fast as I would like but my legs were oddly sore so I didn't force the issue. I finished with a half mile cool down. 

So much for getting back on track.  I thought I would try to get in 7 miles up by bountiful peak, as it was the coolest place within a reasonable driving distance at 3pm today.  I know there is a trail that cuts down from the road to farmington flats so I thought I would go explore that.  About 3/4 of a mile in I landed funny trying to cross a stream and heard a pop.  The next thing I know my ankle is swelling.  I managed the 3/4 of a mile walk back out without much pain but after I sat down it really set in.  

Turns out it's just swollen and sprained and I will have to stay off it for a couple of weeks.  So much for my good showing at the flag rock run.  Hopefully I'll still be able to run it but it wont be very fast.