Wheeler Farm Loops

AM - 20 miles. Long Run, easy effort (~6:50 pace), with a couple good hills thrown in the second half. I always enjoy the Sunday group runs from Highland HS. Andrea and I met up w/ Fritz, Allie, James, Adam, and Adam. We did a 5 miles loop, then another 5 mile loop, then Adam(RW) and I did a lap around SHP. That got me to 12, and I ran the last 8 solo back home. Felt good... wanted to get in another 20 miler since I'm not going to do another LR next weekend, and I have a race the weekend after that. So I won't go 20+ again until I start my specific phase in a couple weeks. 

PM - 4 miles. 

AM - 11 miles up to work.

PM - 6 miles down to SHP. Last 2 w/ Andrea. Four days in a row running w/ her... that hasn't happened since last July! 

As a follow up to my recovery post from Friday, I wrote another one about how I think I was able to get to the point where I can run so much consistently and not fall apart. Here's the link: How I went from injury prone to injury resistant. 

AM - 14 miles. LT Reps: 6 x 1 Mile in 4:58.3 average. Splits - 4:59.3, 4:59.2, 4:57.3, 5:00.2, 4:57.7, 4:56.2. 3+ up/down. Recovery was 0.3 mi back to the start.

Same workout I did about a month ago (12-6-2012), almost 6 seconds faster per mile today (average was 5:04 that morning). I spent too much time fiddling with my gloves during the 4th rep! This is a good benchmark workout for me to repeat every 4-5 weeks during a training cycle. The improvement was expected, obviously, as I ran a 10K at this pace last Monday. Solid effort - the goal is to knock out several good sessions this week, no great ones. 

PM - 6 miles easy. 

We had a USATF meeting last night. Its time for everyone to get their 2013 membership! The Utah LDR Circuit, as of right now, is as follows...

9-Feb      SLC Winter Series 10K
6-Apr      Striders Winter Series Half Marathon
1-Jun       Holladay Mile
8-Jun       Utah Valley Marathon + Half Marathon
4-Jul         Murray Fun Days 5K
20-Jul      Draper Days 5K
24-Jul      Deseret News 10K
TBD         Alta Peruvian 8K
24-Aug    Top of Utah Half Marathon
31-Aug    Wildcat Half Marathon
15-Sep    Top of Utah Marathon 

One or two more races may be added. We are aiming to have the schedule 100% finalized before the first race on February 9th. 

AM - 11 miles up to work, easy.

PM - 5.5 miles down to the gym. Hot tub. Then saw Rob dragging Andy across the street like a mother lion, to keep him safe from cars. 

Complexification. Today's Workout. Ryan Vail video. Andrea's review. Inversion is going away. And Science of Sport once again nails it. That's all I got.

AM - 15 miles. 3 mile warmup. Combo Workout: 4 mile AT Tempo in 21:27 (5:22/mi avg) + 6 x 1/2 Mile in 2:26.5 avg + 2 mile AT Tempo in 10:38 (5:19/mi avg). Rest was 1/4 mi b/w segments/reps. Cooled down until I hit 15 miles. [Splits - 5:28, 5:24, 5:16, 5:19 - 2:30, 2:23, 2:27, 2:24, 2:27, 2:27 - 5:18, 5:20]

Heat wave! It felt like... I don't know, a hundred degrees outside? But also very windy. I really need an east/west loop for the days when the south wind is cranking like that (20-30mph). Didn't feel fantastic this morning, but got in some quality miles nonetheless. My legs are sort of locked into that 5-flat pace (as the first 1/2 mi indicated!... although that one was also 100% into the wind so it felt like I was going uphill).

PM - 5 miles. Had to go pickup a friend from the airport, so didn't get out until about 3" of snow was already covering the roads. Fun snow run!!!

Some circuit updates - the Alta Peruvian 8K will be September 7th. It will be the 20th annual race... but also, the FINAL year of this event. I heard Frank Shorter once ran this race, anyone know if that's true?

The schedule I posted a few days ago might have one or two additions - Hot Pursuit 5K in October and Tour de Run in July. I should know for sure very soon and will get the final version of the schedule posted on the USATF website. 

AM - 10 miles up to work, it took me 89 minutes! Rocky IV style. I don't trust the cars, so I basically just ran where the sidewalks would be, and the snow was deep! Andrea even woke up early and ran the first couple miles with me. I never carry my phone, but today I did so I could take a picture... and I fell twice trying to get it, so enjoy this really blurry photo of Andrea running in the snow...

PM - 7.5 miles. Hannah (our friend who did a med school rotation out here in the fall) was in town for 24 hours to interview for residency at the U, so she drove my jeep up to campus this morning, and then I drove it home. I decided to run first, and did an hour up on campus and around the zoo area. I think the conditions were worse than this morning. The jeep performed exceptionally on the snowy roads, though. 

AM - 12 miles. The original plan for today was a 10-15K progression run. That got changed when winter storm Galdolf came in stronger than expected... all the roads are still covered in snow. Yesterday Rob approached me w/ the idea of running a 2 mile trial at the olympic oval with Kramer Morton, who finished 16th at the Foot Locker National XC Championships last month. I was all-in for that. We had a good crew meet at the oval - Andrea, Matt, Scott, Mike, Toni, Kevin, Collin, and Rob w/ his high school kids. Abby Murphy even joined us!

The oval was very crowded and we realized two things right away: 1) Don't go there at 8am (gotta go at 6am on the weekends if you are doing a faster workout) and 2) The 2-mile time trial wasn't happening due to the congestion. There was some skating event going on and it was a bottleneck on either end of the track. So we had to improvise.

Coach Rob suggested we change the plan to 4 x Mile, so that's what we did.  They were actually 1600s, but w/ all the weaving around, I guarantee every one was well over a mile long. I was going from lane 1 to 4 and back several times on every rep. Kramer and I ran 4:51, 4:50, 4:50, 4:50. I would set the pace and Kramer would hang behind me until 200m to go, when he would even up and it was obvious that he could blow me away with his kick whenever he wanted to. But he was nice and didn't do that. On the last rep, Rob told us to come through 1200m slower and then accelerate on the last 400m. We came through in ~3:46 and I ran 64 for the last lap, with Kramer just ahead of me on that one. 

On a day like today, any quality efforts you can put in is a bonus. I wish we had been able to run the duece, because my legs felt ready to really rip it. I feel ready for next weekend, that's for sure. It was fun to run w/ Kramer... I hope I get to do workouts with him more this spring, because he has some incredible speed and can really make me work over shorter distances. The best part of the workout was that Scott was right behind us on every rep. He's back! I also got in trouble for cutting off the zamboni. Whatever!

Andrea took a few pictures... 

PM - 8 miles.