Wheeler Farm Loops

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.