dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

I slept a lot today. It was good.

Surge - 493.45

Ohana Racer - 248.1

Speedstar - 317.05

I kept the mileage lower today, in part because I want to keep the weeks mileage lower in order to do well at the autumn classic this Saturday, and also to make sure that my leg is fine after it was feeling kind of odd yesterday.  The leg felt great during the entire run, as well as afterwards, and I hope that I might not need to worry about it so much any more.  Anyhow, I started off fast today.  For some reason I just took off, and I went through 1 mile in 6:53.  I followed this up with a 6:10 mile and then a half mile in 2:53.  I didn't feel like I was pushing it at all, but when I turned around at 2.5 miles I decided to make an effort to slow down.  I then hit about 6:30 pace for the next while, before speeding up again with about a half mile to go to finish 5 miles in 32:07.  I then went out for 3 miles with Kimia on the bike, and finally slowed down a bit more to finish 8 miles with a total time of 56:04.

I ran with Sasha this morning and we did a tempo of sorts. We started by going out at 6:00 pace for a quarter, followed by a faster quarter. We then slowed down to 6:00 pace again for another quarter, with another fast quarter following. We did this for the whole 5 mile tempo. The only "slow" quarter that we got off of 6:00 pace by more than 1 second was at the turn-around halfway through and we did that quarter in 1:34. Our splits for the fast quarters are:

1:15, 1:15, 1:14, 1:16, 1:14, 1:17, 1:16, 1:17, 1:18, 1:15.

Sasha asked me to back off the pace a little during the second half, as he could no longer hold 5:00 pace, which explains the slowdown during the second half. During the last quarter I told him to slap my hand, and he made a big effort to catch me in order to do it. He then faded slightly over the last 150m as he used everything trying to catch up. I finished in 27:40 (5:32 per mile), with Sasha at 27:41. The early quarters actually felt easy to me, however the finishing quarters did not. I probably could have held 5:00 pace on the fast quarters over the second half of the tempo if I was not pacing Sasha, but I would have had to work a lot harder for it than at the beginning.  Finished 10.5 miles with a total time of 1:10:40

PM: I ran with the Springville Cross Country team again.  I ran part of a hill workout with them as well as their warm-up and cool-down.  I ended up getting in about 4 more miles.  The guys all started out really fast on their first repeat, and all but one of them faded pretty badly by the time the fifth and last repeat had been completed.  Not by coincidence, the one guy who did not fade is the fastest runner on the team.

Now that I am done with everything for today I have to say that today was one of the most tiring days I have ever had.

I ran this morning with Sasha and Josse for a few miles and then headed back early. Even though I got up at 4:45am to run, I didn't have time to get in more miles because I had to get over to Springville Junior High, where I am doing my student teaching. So, I just ran 7 miles before heading home so that I could eat breakfast and then leave. I had to bike to the Junior High because I don't have a car to use every day, and by the time I got to the school I was beat.  For some reason biking takes a lot more out of me than running does.  Maybe I just push myself harder.  Added on top of this is the fact that I didn't get much sleep despite getting to bed by 10:15 last night.  After school let out I biked over to Springville High so that I could run with their Cross Country team, after which I biked back home.

All in all, I ended up with 7 miles running this morning in 56:49, as well as 4 miles this afternoon in just under 30 minutes.  I also had about 18 miles biking when it is all added up.  In the past I have never counted biking miles towards my total mileage, as I have never biked more than a few miles a day.  My original plan was to not count them this time around either, however I have now decided that biking miles count.  I am tired.  I will add an extra 6 miles for the day for the 18 miles biking.

I ran 5.25 miles with the Cross Country team this afternoon in 39:44.  After this I came home and ran 2 more miles while Kimia rode the bike with me.

I only ran 3 miles with the Springville Cross Country team today as a taper for the race tomorrow.  Nothing spectacular.

I am not too happy with the race today.  I was wanting to place in the top 10 overall and hopefully in the top 5.  I didn't start off any harder than I normally do, and I was in a good position through about 1.5 miles and then the wheels just fell off the bus and I faded pretty bad.  I still only finished 36 seconds out of 10th place, but there were a lot of people that I have beaten before that beat me soundly (the worst was Reagan Frey who beat me by 32 seconds and I beat him by 1:07 at the Pioneer Day 10k).  It was the worst feeling as my legs just felt like lead, and other guys slowly gained more and more ground on me and the guys behind me slowly passed me one at a time.  Now I just need to start getting ready for St. George.