Slowly Getting Faster

10 on the BST from kaysville up to the start of the climb up to chinscraper and back. It started slow and I felt sluggish but by the end I was moving pretty well. I got my pace down to 10:56 per mile from almost 13.  The trail is pretty smooth and the rolling hills keep it interesting.  I might have to make this my morning route for a while. 

I almost came face to face with a dear.  Just south of Adams canyon I heard some noise in the brush that sounded like a log or rock rolling down the hill.  I didn't stop to wait for it to fall on me, which turned out to be a good choice. A few seconds later, a mother and baby dear bounded out of the scrub oak and right across the trail where I was when I first heard the noise. They were moving so fast I doubt they would have been able to change course had I stopped. It was pretty cools to see though.  

Started late tonight.  Despite my best intentions, I've had a hard time getting out the door in the early AM since the marathon. Trail running in the dark just isn't as much fun or as fast as I want it to be. I'm guessing my elevation and my average pace because I forgot to charge my watch battery before I left for work. My run was only 6, instead of 10, because it was getting dark by the time I started and I didn't really want to run the whole thing in the dark. 

 ~11:50  avg pace. The darkness really slows a person down. 

Ever since the marathon I've found it hard to get my run in. I've determined that part of this problem is that I want to run trails but I don't really want to run them in the dark.  This means that I have to wait until daylight, which is when I have to work.  In order to get my mileage in consistently I'm going to have to revert to what I was doing for marathon training and just supplement that with trail runs on the weekend or days that I don't have to work. 

With that in mind, and new shoes on my feet, I set out this morning at 5:40 with the goal of getting 10 miles.  On the road 10 miles is pretty easy and almost nothing should deter me from that goal.  added to the small list of things that will make me cut the run short is large amounts of snowfall. It snowed quite a bit in Farmington this morning.  The good news is that it wasn't snowing very hard when I started my run, and it wasn't snowing at all in centerville. It was dumping buckets of big white flakes by the time I got back to Chase Lane though, so I cut the last 1 1/2 miles off the run so I could get out of the weather.  The cold must have made me move pretty fast too because the I did the whole 8.8 in a 8:21 pace, which is much quicker than I wanted to do it. Hopefully it wont be snowing tomorrow. 

Blah.  missed the morning alarm somehow and had to get the run in during the afternoon.  stomach wasn't really up to it and neither was my energy level.  I didn't get far before I ran out of time and had to head back.  

I have to start getting up in the morning if I'm going to keep my training consistent.  

It was tough, especially on a Saturday, but I dragged myself out of bed this morning so I could get some miles in before my daughters birthday party this afternoon. It's getting cold outside but I think that is making me run faster.  I did this same course multiple times leading up to St. George but I couldn't seem to get my pace much faster than a 9 minute mile.  In the last 3 days I've run this course 2 times and both times my pace was 8:21. And that felt slow. Maybe the key to really getting my pace down is to train through the winter so I run faster? 

 I ran to centerville and back with a quick pit stop at McDonalds to use their bathroom.  It's nice of them to have a heated restroom at the halfway point of this route.