Wheeler Farm Loops

Really happy with this one... shows the big mileage over the winter is paying off and my speed is coming around since the 50K. Averaged 5:29s for the first 6 miles, then 5:25s for the next 4, and then ran sub 5:20s for the last 5K. Nice controlled negative split race.

Full report here: http://wasatchandbeyond.blogspot.com/2011/05/provo-city-half-marathon.html

AM - 20.2 miles. Easy long run in the rain, 11 w/ Andrea.

PM - 2.8 miles. Shakeout w/ Andrea.

AM - 11.8 mi. Ran to Sugarhouse w/ Andrea then to work.

PM - 8.3 mi. Ran to Sugarhouse and did a few laps w/ Andrea.

AM - 10.2 mi. Ran to work.

PM - 11.2 mi. Ran to Highland track and met Andrea for a workout... 400-800-1200-1600-1600-1200-800-400 w/ 200m jog b/w reps.  4s and 8s @ 5K pace, 12s @ 10K pace, 16s @ 15K pace. Good workout. 

AM - 13.8 mi. Ran w/ Andrea for a bit and then up to work.

PM - 6.5 mi. Ran to Sugarhouse, met Andrea along the way, did a loop and called it a day. 85 miles in the last 4 days... tomorrow I'm taking an easy day in terms of running, but planning to go big w/ some ski mountaineering objectives. Then a long run on Saturday. 

AM - 10 miles on the trails in Dimple Dell park. 

Not exactly what I had planned for the morning... I had the day off from work and planned on doing a big ski mountaineering day. Long story short, conditions were unstable, and I took a very scary fall... came out of it with some bruises and cuts, but luckily nothing major. Got humbled by the mountains today. I wrote more about what happened on my website: http://wasatchandbeyond.blogspot.com/2011/05/lesson-learned-in-limber-pine.html

So after I decided to pull the plug on my ski day, I went for a nice run in Dimple Dell to clear my head. Great to be on those wood chip trails.... and even better to finally be running shirtless! Its about time!

 PM - Ran from home up to Sugarhouse, met Andrea, and did a few loops around the park. 

AM - Long run w/ Andrea and my friend Bryan from work. Started at Mutual Dell golf course, ran down Emigration Canyon, then along Wasatch Drive/Blvd to the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon.  http://twitpic.com/4xk55e  Andrea ran 17 and then jumped on a bike that we had stashed along the route. I pretty much always do long runs w/ no water, so it was nice to be able to actually take some drinks while Andrea was biking along and could hand me a bottle. Great run... feeling awesome... 4 weeks until UVM!!!

 PM - Did the hardest thing I know... RESTED. No running, no skiing, no biking. My back was pretty sore from my fall yesterday, so I figured it needed some extra rest. I don't want that problem to linger around. 

AM - 10.8 miles. Felt fresh and sharp.

PM -  Andrea (wisely) talked me out of doing anymore running! We skied a few laps up at Alta, then rode our bikes for a while...

http://wasatchandbeyond.blogspot.com/2011/05/recovery-weekend.html 

AM - 6.4 mi. Easy run. Workout later today.

PM - 16 mi. Tempo run on bike path, out & back. Andrea biked along with the GPS. Ran 13.1 miles in 1:12. Felt super smooth and even a lot easier than the race a week ago. Having Andrea keep me on pace really helped. This is a big confidence booster for UVM. Up until last weekend, it would have been a 30 second half marathon PR.

AM - 7.5 mi. Ran to Sugarhouse w/ Andrea then up to work. Felt a little tired, but not as tired as I thought I would be after last night's workout.

PM - 7.5 mi. Ran back down to Sugarhouse, met Andrea, ran a loop and then ran 5x200 w/ her @ her 5K pace.

AM - 7.7 mi. Ran to work.

PM - 9 mi. Ran down to the track and met Andrea. It was raining, but the weather doesn't look like it will be any better tomorrow, so we went ahead w/ the workout we had planned... We did 6 x 800m @ 10K goal pace w/ a 200m jog. Went fine (Avg 2:30) except my hands were frozen at the end!

AM - 9.1 mi. Ran to work. Cold and raining. Ugh. In the winter I call this "character building weather." But I feel like at this point, my character is already built! :-) I want nice weather!

PM - 6.1 Ran down to the park and met Andrea.

AM - 20 mi. Woke up to the sound of thunder and pouring rain. Lovely. Went back to sleep for a few minutes and finally got out the door just after 5am. Figured I might as well just get the long run in. Highland - 6200S - Wasatch - Parleys - up to Campus. Some good net elevation gain on this one. This will probably be the last 20 miler before UVM.

PM - 4.5 mi. Quick lunch run, now heading down the St George / Zion until Monday night. Hopefully we'll bring back some nicer weather!

AM - 7.5 mi. Ran in St George w/ Andrea. Mix of some trails and on the roads. We spent the rest of the day hiking around Snow Canyon w/ Andrea & my parents: https://picasaweb.google.com/Jake.Krong/SnowCanyon#

Great to be in some WARM weather! Snow Canyon was really cool. It was our first time there.

AM - 13 mi.  Andrea and I started in Springdale and ran on SR-9 to Virgin. She was doing this as a progression run and I was just along for the ride! She ran a great workout, and its awesome that last year a 13 miler would have been a long, long run for her, and now she is doing runs like this and averaging 6:0-something pace for the last 5 miles and is totally in control.

Once we hit Virgin, my parents were waiting for us... we drive up the Kolob Res road and hiked from the Wildcat Canyon trailhead to the West Rim Trail, and then all the way to the Angels Landing trailhead. It was about a 21.5 mile hike. So a pretty long day overall! I'll post some photos from that hike shortly.

AM - 7 mi. Easy run in Hurricane.

PM - 6.5 mi. Ran a loop around Sand Hollow Reservoir. 83 degrees and sunny. A few hours later we drive back up to SLC and hit the 50 degree rain again! Ugh!

AM - 9 mi. Ran to work. Several easy days in a row have my legs feeling really fresh, which is good after putting in some hard work for the previous couple weeks.

PM - 8.5 mi. Down to the park and did a lap w/ Andrea, then to the track... just wanted to do something light to get my legs moving - 8x200m (200m jog) in 33-34 seconds. My left calf had been tight since the long hike on Saturday, but this seemed to loosen it up, so mission accomplished.

AM - 6.4 mi. Easy morning run. Feels like cheating to only run for 45 mins! :-)

PM - 8.1 mi. Track workout at Sugarhouse. The idea was to do some "rhythm"  reps to tune up for the 10K on Saturday. Everything was done w/ a 200m recovery jog:

400 (75), 400 (76), 800 (2:32), 400 (74), 800 (2:31), 400 (74), 800 (2:29), 400 (73), 400 (68) 

 Felt smooth and easy. Looking forward to racing this weekend. 

AM - 7.7 mi. Ran up to work.

PM - 4.7 mi. Down to the park. Then to Costco to get lots of free samples!

AM - 6.3 mi. Easy jog. Race tomorrow.

AM - 10 mi. Ran the 10K in Orem... 31:55 for 3rd... I'm pretty happy with that... I just wanted a hard effort and to get under 32 mins. My PR is 31:39, on the track, at sea level, so this is a solid indicator 2 weeks out from UVM.

Teren took off quick from the start, shadowed by a BYU guy who I don't know... I hung back, but really wish I had just gone out a touch faster and put myself in the mix, because we turned and ran into the wind for the second mile, and it would have been nice to be latched onto somebody for that part. According the the mile markers, I was 5:15 at Mile 1, and then 5:33 for Mile 2, and 4:19 for Mile 3! Haha I don't think so! I don't know why its so difficult to get mile markers in the correct spots! Anyways, at that point Teren and BYU guy were pretty far ahead, and I had no confidence in any of the splits, so I resigned to just run steadily hard the rest of the way. Not by any means an amazing performance, but I did what I set out to do, and felt recovered almost immediately afterwards. I'm definitely in much better shape for longer races than shorter races right now.

Andrea ran great once again... winning the women's race in 37:10 and she knocked over 20 seconds off the course record. She's ready to run another great half at Utah Valley in 2 weeks. 

(Added the recap on our other blog, which has Andrea's report that she posted on here as well) 

PM - Easy 30 minutes... was bored and wanted to shake the legs out a bit. 

AM - 16.5 mi. Started at East High track and ran up Emigration Canyon. Easy (7:05 pace) on the way up, then came back down quicker (5:27 pace). Wanted to get my legs used to a little more downhill pounding. Was actually surprised I was running sub 5:30 pace b/c it felt a lot easier. That's a good thing! I think my downhill running form is getting a lot smoother.

Today marks the end of a streak for me. I count my weekly mileage starting on Monday and ending on Sunday... for the previous 27 weeks (starting November 15th), I haven't run less than 100 miles (GRAPH). The average for those 27 weeks was 124 miles / week. (This week I'm at 95 and I'm not running again today... and I'll cut back quite a bit more in the next 12 days). This is pretty incredible if you knew my injury history from 2003-2008... I don't think I was ever able to run triple digits for more than 3-4 weeks w/out something going wrong. 

So no matter what happens at UVM, I've already accomplished what I set out to do... I got myself back in the game. After falling below expectations in college, and then not even running a single race from summer 2008 until 4 months ago (and running maybe 45 mpw during that time), I've gotten myself back to a competitive level, I'm totally healthy, and I love running more than I ever have (but I'm not obsessed with it like I used to be). I have a much better balance in my life these days (and Andrea gets 99% of the credit for that!). My next 5-10 years will be my best years of running... I truly believe that.

AM - 11 mi. Started at Mt Olympus high school, down to 6200S then back on Wasatch blvd. Planned on doing a set of 200s at the end of the run, but jogged over to the track and realized all the construction equipment I saw when I was pulling in was there b/c they have torn out the track! So no 200s. But at least there will be a track new track close to home once they put the new one in.

I can't believe the Collins plot at Alta is showing 10" of new snow. A huge part of me wants to ski, but I've skied a ton this winter and right now I shouldn't be doing much other than resting. Boooo! :-) 

PM - Couldn't resist going to up Solitude and skiing a quick lap. There's still as much snow up there as there was 5 weeks ago! 

From Memorial Day 10K

 

AM - 4.5 mi easy.

PM - 13 mi. Last big workout before Utah Valley. Plan was to do 2 x 5 miles @ MP. I usually do tempo runs on the Jordan River Bike Path, but figured it was probably flooded, so I drove out west of the airport and started from Exit 111 and ran on the frontage road (where the SLC Track Club does the winter series races). I rode west 2.5 miles on my bike and marked out 1/2 mile splits with chalk on the road. I figured I'd do out & back loops. It was pretty windy, but since I was running east to west and back, and the wind was primarily from the south, it was more of a cross-wind.

(1 mile warmup) 
Rep #1 - 5:21, 5:21, 5:15, 5:21, 5:09 = 26:37
(1 mile recovery)
Rep #2 - 5:13, 5:11, 5:18, 5:18, 5:09 = 26:09
(1 mile cooldown)

The hay is in the barn now, so to speak. This obviously ended up being a bit faster than marathon pace, but I felt totally in control the whole time, and was actually surprised it ended up being so quick. But not too surprised, b/c I feel like I've jumped to a new level, and this is where I'm at now. Between the 10K on Saturday, a big negative split longer run on Sunday, and this workout today, I've done quite a bit of quality running in the past 4 days. Now its time to rest and not doing anything silly in the next 10 days :-)