Wheeler Farm Loops

AM - 14 miles. Easy run along the waterfront and through the town. Hood River is very hilly once you get away from the water.

PM - 4 miles. Quick pre-wedding / post-pool+hot tub shakeout run. Windy out, and the kite surfers were getting radical.

AM - 4 miles. Lavender poisoning. The wedding we're in Oregon for was at a beautiful organic farm at the base of Mt. Hood. Unfortunately there was lavender everywhere, and I woke up this morning quite ill. The last time I felt this bad was after the Lavender 1/2 race last summer. Needless to say, I'll be skipping that race in the future. That vile weed cripples me! It took me 35 minutes to run these four mies so I figured bagging it there was the wise choice.

AM - 10 miles. Still pretty sick. Anything under 8 minute pace felt way too hard. 

PM - 7 miles. Not feeling much better than this morning. Wanted to go further but my stomach couldn't handle it. 

Enjoyed our weekend in Oregon, although Andrea and I both were feeling rough traveling home last night. Here's some photos of the Columbia River Gorge and the wedding near Mt. Hood. Beautiful area... but I'd have a hard time adjusting to the rain up there.

AM - 16 miles. 6 mile AT Tempo in 32:51 (5:29/mi avg) on the tempo loop. Splits - 5:22, 5:28, 5:28, 5:28, 5:31, 5:34. 6 up, 4 down. This one goes down as a regression run. Still not feeling back to normal... first mile felt harder than normal and I decided to slow down and keep going as long as I was under 5:30 pace. I was hoping I'd get to 8-10 miles, but I would have had to take the effort out of the right range to make that happen. On one hand I'm still recovering from being sick, but on the other hand I need to be realistic about the fact that I'm probably at my lowest fitness point over the past 2+ years. I am confident I can get myself back to a competitive level by sometime this summer. But for now, I'm going to do workouts that reflect my current level, not what I think I should be running based on what I've run in the past.

PM - 4 miles. 

AM - 14 miles. Super easy wandering.

Yesterday I got the chance to tour Rob Murphy's classroom. The only AP History class I've ever seen with a 4 foot poster of Steve Prefontaine on the wall. Made me wish I was 17 again! 

PM - 7 miles.

AM - 14 miles. AT Reps: 10 x 1000m (200m jog) in 3:13.5 average, on the track. 3 up, 3.5 down. I was aiming for the faster end of the AT spectrum, somewhere in the 3:12-3:15 range. I put them all in that bucket (not hard to do, as its not a very aggressive pace); splits - 3:14, 13, 14, 15, 13, 12, 13, 13, 14, 13. Another goal accomplished in this session was simply completing a higher reps/volume workout again... its been a while.

I think this is probably a realistic target pace for UV 1/2 next weekend (~1:08). In April I was about to rip my eyeballs out after running that time at the SLC 1/2, but right now it would actually make me pretty happy. But I will say that I'm very motivated to get to the fitness level where I view 1:08 as a halfway split in the marathon :-)

PM - 8 miles. Alta XC practice... ran 4 miles w/ the guys, then we did 6 x ~100m strides on the soccer field, at which point they were done. Then I did 6 x 200m on the track in 32-33 seconds, and another 20 minutes or so of easy jogging on the grass.

AM - 17 miles. Jeremy Ranch. Easy pace with a little half-mile pickup at the end.

PM - 5 miles. Bike path between PC and the Canyons.