A Lean and Hungry Look

After a crazy weekend, I woke up feeling like I had a non-alcoholic hangover and missed my run.  I was grumpy all day as a result.

Nice and easy jaunt around Highland Park loop (8 miles), then dropped Maja off at home and did my 4-mile loop across the U campus to finish up.  I slept on the couch last night after falling asleep during a movie, and my back is killing me.  It's the same spot (where my back and pelvis meet on the lower left side) that has bothered me over the past month or so.  I need to spend more quality time with the Miracle Ball and stretch my hamstrings throughout the day.

Variation of my U campus loop today--I went down past the East track, then north along 13th East to 300 South, then up to University Street, then through President's Circle and over to North Campus Drive, then up to Wasatch, through the med school campus and Research Park.  The distance was coming up a little short, so I turned right instead of left on Chipeta and took Foothill down to the 21st East light, where I re-entered the neighborhood and headed home.

Maja was dragging from Mile 1 today--I don't know what was going on.  It kept the pace very slow, though (7:46 avg).  Fortunately, my lower back pain was much less than yesterday.

As my alarm went off this morning, I realized that I haven't done any marathon pace work yet in this training cycle.  With that in mind, I decided to scrap my plan to do mile repeats this morning and just go out for an easy 10 so that I'll be fresh for some MP work in the second half of Saturday's 22-miler.

I left the dog home today because she felt like a millstone around my waist yesterday after about mile 1.  I'll have Jacob (my 12 YO) take her out for a short run today so she doesn't get too depressed.

Easy effort around Sugarhouse Park loop.  Avg pace was 7:28 (my first mile seems to be very slow lately--I must be getting old).

Plan was to run up Emigration and over the top of Little Mountain until I hit 11 miles, then to work in 8 miles of MP once I got back to the top of Little Mountain and started descending the canyon.  The effort was pretty relaxed on the way up.  As planned, I started my MP effort at mile 13.  I felt fine for the first two miles, but the pace felt much slower than the effort, which is never a good sign.  Split looked like this:

Mile 14:  5:43 AHR 164 MHR 169

Mile 15: 5:48 (168/172)

Mile 16: 5:58 (167/174)

Mile 17: 6:01 (168/172)

Miile 18: 6:32 (166/172)

Mile 19: 6:48 (156/162) (I had popped by this point and was just trying to get home)

Mile 20: 6:14 (162/167)

Mile 21: 6:38 (159/168)

I'm not sure what the problem was, but I have a few ideas:

1. I ate a lot of junk during the week, including Little Caesar's pizza and cake and ice cream last night (for Eli's 3rd birthday).

2. I didn't drink enough water (I only had two Amphipod flasks).

3. I didn't start fueling early enough (I brought one EFS flask--400 calories--but didn't take anything until mile 13, then again at about mile 16, and it didn't sit well).

4. I haven't done enough MP work.

5. I haven't done enough MP work during long runs.

6. I haven't done enough downhill work (I've consciously tried to do more of my speedwork on flat and rolling surfaces to avoid the cheating effect of having fast but aided interval times).

In any event, I know I have a long way to go before I'm ready for St. George, and I know a lot of things I need to work on and do differently in the weeks to come.