Training for Top of Utah 2011

Absolutely miserable running conditions this morning. Heavy rain with some wind. Treadmill run. Easy recovery run from the long run on Sat.

Last 5 minutes were without shoes.

Nice day for a run...cloudy and 50 degrees with some wind in places. A few small showers too.

Started out the run and felt like I was running my normal pace...checked the garmin after about a quarter mile and lo and behold I'm cooking along at a mid 8 min. pace. Sweet! After about a mile I was chased by a big orange tabby cat that kind of freaked me out a bit at first. 

Today was a day for a hard workout so all hills that were encountered I tried to push up pretty hard and that got the HR up a little higher than normal. I figured what the heck and pushed it most of the way.

At 2.75 miles stopped at the park for water and stretching, then off to the Parkway hill to push hard there. Smoked the hill and almost got to the puke zone with my HR at 180 at one point. That's pretty close to my max HR I would bet.

Down the hill then to another park for water and stretching again at 6 miles in.

2 more miles reasonably easy and a quick kick in at the very end with about a quarter mile walk to get the HR back to a normal level.

 Overall pace: 8:34  Avg. HR 159(yikes) it was a tough workout!

Missed the last 2 days for various reasons so was going to make up some of the lost miles today....ended up only doing an extra 2.25 due to Heidi needing to leave, so hustled home asap.

Had a 6 am webinar so didn't get my run started until 8:15 ish. 

34 degrees with wet streets but no significant rain until the end of the run. In fact as i left my neighborhood the sun was shining on the Cascade Mts. and there were patches of low fog...Gorgeous! 

Home to Parkway then down to Mill Pond rd. and then to Centennial park. Then back through town and up the Parkway...tough...the regular Ridge hills sure seemed a lot easier after that beast of a run up the parkway. Since I was not able to get all my miles in I decided to do a fast finish and did a 6:45 quarter mile to end the run then walked it out.

Splits - 8:46, 9:06, 8:20, 8:06, 8:39, 8:57, 9:03, 8:57, 9:16, 9:30, 9:02, 7:58, 6:45

Avg. Pace 8:45(darn good for me) and Avg. HR 151(loving that)