Slowly Getting Faster

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.