Running

12.42 in 1:33:42. Ave pace of 7:33.  Ran up just a little past Vivian Park and back to the mouth of the canyon.  Wasn't planning on running hard, but I felt good and this ended up being a pretty fast run for me.  Splits:

1-8:47 2-7:51 3-7:43 4-8:59 5-7:08 6-7:12 7-7:53 8-7:05 9-6:30 10-7:59 11-6:41 12-7:06 0.42-2:41

5.12 in 41:08.  Nice and easy this morning.

AM 5.14 in 38:02. 7:25 overall pace. A nice little faster paced run for me.

PM 5.65 at around 9:30 pace. Very slow, but I was fine with that as I was running with some friends.

5.43 at around 8:00 pace.

2.54 nice and easy around the neighborhood.  Mid-Mountain Marathon tomorrow.  I'm very excited.  This is the hardest and funnest of all the marathons I've done.  Goals for the race:

-Don't get hurt (lots of opportunities to trip in this race)

-Ultimate goal is to finish in 3:30 (winner finished in just over 3 last year), but would like to at least beat my time from last year of 3:48.

-Finish strong, both mentally and physically.

I've had doubts whether or not to run this race hard because I don't want to screw anything up for STG, but I've decided I'm running tomorrow's race hard and we'll see what happens in the next few weeks.

Ugh.  I forget how hard this race is.  It does a number on my body.  Feet are sore today (I’m writing this on Sunday), along with my legs and back.  Now for the excuse……this is the only time all year that I run on a trail and my body can certainly notice a difference between the trails and the road.  Most of the trail on this race is extremely rocky as well.  Overall, this is a very fun race and is very well organized.  I would recommend it to anybody looking for a good trail run.  Here are my times at each of the mile markers they had posted:

Mile 5 – 39:55  Started a bit fast so that I wouldn’t get stuck behind somebody slow on the single track trail.  After about 2.5 miles I was running by myself, which I actually liked better than running in a group of people.  Seems like we climb for the first part of the race.  I couldn’t catch my breath and my legs already don’t feel that great.  But I was happy to see I was on 8 minute/mile pace.

Mile 10 – 1:20:03  Occasional runners pass me, but I’m certainly not passing anybody.  Feel great on the downhill portions, but any uphill section is just kicking my butt.  Still about 5 minutes ahead of where I was last year though. 

Mile 14.8 – 2:01:28  I notice that my lower stomach muscles are giving me a lot of pain and any time I have to climb my groins are giving me trouble. 

Mile 20 – 2:48:01  Miles 15-20 are the worst part.  It is a pretty good climb and my legs are done.  Still not many people around, but I do start to come up on blue-shirt guy.  He doesn’t stop at the aid station, but I do stop.  I didn’t see him again until about mile 25.

Mile 26.2 – 3:36:45  Blue shirt finally comes back into view and he is strugglin.  He pulls to the side of the trail with about a mile left and lets me pass.  I was so glad to be done.  This race is hard, but is actually pretty fun.

I will take it easy for the next few days, and will actually probably start to taper for St. George.  I was amazed at how my legs just had nothing in them for this race.  I don’t want that problem for St. George.