dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

It was a relaxing day at church today.  Kimia and I got to speak in sacrament meeting, and later on my siblings came over for dinner.

I ran with Sasha this morning, and we ran 10.1 miles in 1:16:45.  We ran one fat mile in the middle of the run, and we got excited, so it wasn't really a fat mile.  5:30 for the mile.  I was happy with how the mile felt because I was trying to feel as relaxed as possible, and still keep up the effort.  The end result was that I progressively sped up as I went, even though I didn't really feel like I was increasing the effort.  After we finished our run, I went out with Sasha and Benjamin and ran 2 more miles with them, in order to help Benjamin run a mile time trial.  He finished with a 6:07 for a new mile pr.

I ran a tempo with Sasha this morning.  We didn't want to push the pace too hard, but we planned on hitting the last mile hard where I would try to go as fast as possible, and Sasha would try to hang with me for as long as he could before slowing down and tempoing the rest of the way to the finish.  Anyhow, we started off slow, and went through the first 2 miles in 5:57, 5:57.  The third mile was a 5:52, followed by 5:48, 5:47, 5:49 for miles 4-6.  I then sped up a little, probably in anticipation of the mile to come, and ran the next half mile in 2:51 (86, 85) before launching into my all out mile.  My goal for the last mile was to run it in 4:55 or faster, and I went through the first quarter in 73 (on pace for a 4:52, good).  The second quarter was also a 73.  Sasha lost contact about 300m into the second quarter, and after that I really had trouble motivating myself to go faster.  Without realizing it I slowed down quite a bit, and the next thing I realized the pace no longer hurt, I had run a 77 second third quarter, and I was having trouble motivating myself to speed up.  I think that I slowed down even more during the 4th quarter before finally speeding back up over the last 200m to finish with a 76 last quarter, and 4:59 for the last mile.  I was not too happy with myself for the lack of focus, or for the inability to push through the discomfort as soon as I was alone.  However, I still finished under 5:00 for the last mile, and it does give me some consolation knowing that the mile is slightly uphill the entire way.  The total time for the tempo was 42:59.  After this, we finished our run by running back to Sasha's house for a total of 10.25 miles in 1:05:57.

I ran 10.1 miles with Sasha this morning.  We started out pretty slow, and just barely caught the 8:00 guy before the turn-around.  On the way back we ran a couple fat miles (5:45, 5:40), and our pace otherwise was also quicker, so we finished with a total time of 1:14:26.

PM:  I ran 4 miles alone (probably slightly more than 4 miles), running the first 2 miles in shoes, and the last two miles barefoot on the grass.  Total time of 31:00.

I ran a 2000 repeat today with Sasha as part of our run.  We were trying to hit 74 second quarters until Sasha no longer could.  The goal was to make it for at least a mile, but hopefully farther.  We were right on by my watch hitting the first 4 quarters in 74 to go through the mile in 4:56.  At this point Sasha started to struggle a little more so I slowed just a little, but we still made it through the next quarter in 75 to make it to 1.25 miles in 6:11.  On the way back we ran a quarter in 68 to finish up our speed work for the day.  Total time for the run was 1:11:43 for 10.1 miles.

I ran with Sasha this morning.  Nothing special about the run, just out to the lake and back.  On the way back we ran 2 fat miles, both in 5:43.  Total time for the run was 1:12:16.

PM: I ran 4 miles alone, 2 miles in shoes and 2 miles barefoot on the grass.  Total time was about 31:00 for the run.  I also am excited, because I have now broken the 1,000 mile barrier on a pair of shoes for the first time ever.

I ran 20 miles with Sasha this morning.  We went 10 miles from his house up the Provo canyon, and the came back.  The original plan was to start a tempo run at the turn-around and tempo back to his house, but there was a lot of construction on the road and it made running miserable (cars driving 40mph+ and only 5 feet from the runners, dirt in your eyes and mouth) so we decided to start our tempo early.  So, we started out our tempo, and within a short period of time as we started to get into the canyon, a nasty wind hit us.  So, we were running uphill into a decent headwind, and at what I can best describe as an aggressive marathon pace we were not even hitting 6:00 pace.  We made it to 5.75 miles and we were 29 seconds behind the 6:00 guy.  During some of the nasty stretches we were hitting anywhere from 93-96 second quarters.  We turned around shortly past the 5.75 mile mark of the tempo finishing up the first 10 miles in 1:09:19.  We then started to make our way back down the canyon, and without even trying hard we were going much faster.  With a heart rate that was almost 10bpm lower than my average coming up the canyon I was going 20-30 seconds faster per mile coming back down.  I ran the last 2 miles of the tempo in 5:29, and 5:14.  My heart rate during the last mile was about the same as my heart rate going up the canyon, which tells me that the difference between up and down was anywhere from 40-50 seconds per mile.  Total time for the tempo was 58:38 for 10 miles.  We then finished running back to Sasha's house and ran a fat mile in 5:53 at the very end.  We finished with a total time of 2:14:37 for 20 miles, running the last half in 1:05:18