dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

66.3 miles this week.  15.5 mile long run on Saturday, with 10 miles during the rest of the week.  Construction is now being done on a section of the trail that is about a mile into our 5 mile tempo, so it messes up our tempo runs a little bit so that we now have to run back and forth on a section of trail that is only 1.5 miles long, which isn't too fun.

I turned in the last part of my application to grad school on Monday of this week.  I had printed out the wrong ecclesiastical endorsement form, so I ended up needing to print out the correct form and I turned it in on Monday.

Pretty much the same schedule as the last couple of weeks, except that the long run was just a shade longer this week.  We have been adding in some speed work here and there, but it has been fairly minimal.  We have run a few 400's here and there, and on occasion 1.5 mile repeats.  We also paced Michelle through a 5 mile tempo at about 6:11 pace and then picked up the pace for the last mile (although I can't remember if that was this week or not).  I have mostly run with Sasha in the mornings but I sleep in on occasion and end up running in the afternoon.  

I have also been doing my own little experiments.  I have been walking around while at work on the balls of my feet, or the mid-foot, in hopes to condition my calf muscles to be able to withstand more stress.  If this works I will hopefully be able to increase mileage more consistently into the 90-100 mile range.  I have felt for a while that my biggest limiting factor when it comes to the mileage I run has been my calves.  They tighten up when a lot of stress is placed upon them, and injuries follow.  I am hoping that they won't tighten up as often or as much if what I am doing works.  I am also playing around switching from a heel strike to a forefoot strike when I run so I can see what kind of differences are evident from a running economy standpoint.  So far the differences seem too minimal to come to any certain conclusion.

I don't remember if I ran 70.0 miles this week, or something a little higher, (but less than 71) so I will err on the side of marking my mileage a little low for the week.  I ran my first 20 mile run since December this Saturday, which was exciting for me as I am finally feeling a little better about my foot and knee health.  I have actually felt pretty good for a while now as far as speed is concerned.  I feel fast, and I feel like I could run fast race times.  However, my mileage has been low, and I would probably crash if I were to run a marathon.  I need to up my mileage significantly if I want to run a good marathon in the fall (only one marathon this year, but probably a bunch of halfs).  After the 20 mile run my legs felt pretty drained.  I could tell that it was a distance that I had not run in a while.  

We did run 7.5 miles of the run fast, running a 6 mile tempo in the middle of the run (1.5 miles on the river trail repeated 4 times back and forth), and then running 1.5 miles fast at the end.  During the 6 mile tempo we started out slow hitting the first 1.5 in about 8:48 if my memory serves me right, and then picking up the pace and running 8:35, 8:30.  I can't remember the exact time for the last 1.5, but I remember running the last .5 at about 5:00 pace.  We ran the 1.5 miles at the end of the run in about 8:20.

More or less the same schedule as before, except I ran 12 miles on Monday, and 11 miles on Thursday with a 21 mile long run.  Sasha and I ran a little bit of speed work on Monday, so we added a little extra to make the run 12 miles.  On Thursday I slept in and when I ran in the afternoon I felt like running a few hard quarters so I added an extra mile (I ran 4x400 on the trail in 65, 65, 65, 66 with about 2:10-2:20 recovery).  On Saturday Sasha and I basically did our standard 10 mile run twice (10.2 instead of 10.1 because of the added construction) and afterwards I added a little extra to make it 21 miles for the day.  We ran our Saturday run pretty fast as well.  We started out at about 6:30 pace and eventually got down into the 6:10 range.  It really felt like we were just cruising the entire time.  Eventually we started speeding up even more, and we decided to tempo the last 5.1 miles.  5.1 mile splits were 32:45, 31:16, 30:48, and about 28:20 plus or minus a few seconds.  I lost Sasha during the last 3 miles or so, and after I finished I ran back until I met up with him, and finished with him.  I then jogged a little bit extra in order to get to 21 miles for the day.  Total time for 21 miles was about 2:07:30, but maybe a little slower.

I was also able to talk to one of the BYU professors this week (Iain Hunter) about my grad school application.  On the plus side he told me that I have one of the best looking applications that was submitted (of approximately 50 total, which I didn't find out until later) as far as GRE and GPA are concerned.  However, I was hoping to work with him during grad school and he told me that the university will not let him take on any more grad students.  He said that one of the other professors might be willing to take me on and be my advisor because my test scores were so good.