dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

I ran our to the lake and back with Sasha this morning.  Daniel joined us for the first 3 miles.

Today was a day of firsts, and I can not say that it was a good thing (however, I can't say that it was too terribly bad).  So, during the night I woke up a number of times because my stomach was bothering me.  Nothing bad, but annoying nonetheless.  Anyhow, I wake up and promptly make a trip to the bathroom.  At this point I know that I am in for a fun day.  I drive over to Sasha's house and we leave on our run.  At this point my stomach is not feeling too hot, but I assume that the discomfort will go away as I run, just like in times past. 

Well, my assumptions were not to be, as the discomfort only got worse.  Finally a little less than 1.5 miles into the run, and right before we were going to begin our tempo run for the day, for the very first time, and for the first time in 14 years... I threw up.  Sasha actually thought it was kind of funny, because I went back to take a look at my vomit after a minute or so becasue I wanted to see how well I could make out the food I ate the day before (the lentils were barely visible, but the carrots were easy to see, as were a couple other things).

Anyhow,  I felt good enough physically that we decided to start our tempo run and see how things went.  I was having difficulty maintaining 6:00 pace, and it was weird, because the pace did not feel hard, but I felt like I couldn't really go faster.  We went through the first mile in about 6:07-6:08 and my stomach was still screaming at me.  Subsequently, my body decided that it was not too happy with me for going close to 6:00 pace, so my bowels screamed at me and a vpb was in order.  I thought that I would feel better after taking a vpb, but when we started up again I actually felt worse.  Less than a half mile later I started to dry heave mid run, and promptly stopped and hurled once more all over the provo river trail.  I have to say, it was pure nastiness.

The worst part about puking my guts out all over the trail was that I then had to taste my vomit for almost the entire duration of the run after the fact.  It was nasty.  Anyhow, I began my tempo run anew with Sasha, and we hit the 2.5 mile turn-around in 15:16.  At this point I was starting to feel a little better, and we slowly sped up as we chased an older lady riding a bike down the trail.  At the 4 mile mark we were at 24:10 and had made up just 6 seconds on the 6:00 guy, and were holding even with the old lady but not making up any ground.  I wanted to at least break 30:00 for 5 miles, so I sped up just a little more, and after running an 81 second quarter we finally passed and dropped the old biker lady with about a quarter left.  We finished the last mile in 5:40 for a total time of 29:50 for 5 miles.

We then ran back to Sasha's house to finish up 10 miles.  On the way home we passed by Kimia and Sarah running together.  I gave Kimia a little kiss, but afterwards wondered if she could taste the vomit still on my breath.  So, ultimately I am disappointed that my vomitless streak has finally ended (the last time I remember throwing up was when I was in the 5th grade) but at least I feel fine now (although it took about 3 hours after the run was over for me to start feeling fine).

Ran 10.1 miles faster than normal.  Total time of 1:10:30

I ran quarter repeats with Sasha this morning.  We ran the first 5 heading towards the lake, and then ran the last one on the way back.  Our quarter splits were 74.6, (just warming up) 70.1, 69.4, 70.4, 70.6, 69 (exact time approximate on the last one.  It was somewhere in the high 68 to low 69 range).  None of the quarters felt exceptionally hard, but I could tell that I was not used to running them as it was m first time running quarters in a few months.  Average rest between repeats was about 72 seconds over 200m (not counting the rest from the 5th to the 6th repeats).

PM: After work I ran 2 more miles with Kimia.  We ran out an estimated 1 mile and then came back.  Assuming that our estimation was correct, Kimia set her mile pr on the way out with a 10:18!

Kept the pace easy, but ran 2 fat miles in 5:48 and 5:50.  Total time was in the 1:14:00 range for 10.1 miles

Sasha and I ran up the Provo Canyon from Sasha's house until the area just before bridal veil falls making it 10 miles in 1:14:24.  The way out was a slight uphill, with a light headwind during the last 3-4 miles, and the way back was the opposite, although I didn't notice the tailwind, I just assume it was there.

After the turn-around we started off our tempo kind of slow, as I was more interested in our pre-tempo discussion.  I didn't pay attention to any of our mile splits during the first 3 miles of the tempo.  Our splits from the 4th mile of the tempo to the end were: 5:50, 5:35, 5:40, 5:35, 5:37, 5:16, 5:15.  I was pushing the pace pretty hard over the last 2 miles, and I wish that I could have gone a little faster, but at least I was under 5:20 pace for those miles and there were a lot of twists and turns as well due to the tunnels and bridges on the river trail.  Total time for 20 miles was 2:10:19, finishing the last 10 miles in 55:55.