Wheeler Farm Loops

AM - 20 miles at Jeremy Ranch. Ran 15 w/ Andrea (she ran very strong today) at a relaxed pace, then added on 5 more a little quicker (6:00 pace). Gorgeous up there this morning. Saw moosetracks (the footprints, not the ice cream, unfortunately) in the dirt, but no mooses!

PM - 4 miles easy. Trying out my new Kinvaras. The Tangent has been my go-to shoe, but its discontinued and I only have 2 pairs left. The Kinvaras are money, though! Love the feel and the flexibility. 

AM - 13 miles up to work. Started early, nice & cool out.

PM - 13.6 miles. Ran home (8 miles) and as I came in the door, Andrea was about to head out for her run, so I just joined her since it was so nice out and I was feeling great.  

AM - 10 miles. Went to the Skyline High School w/ Andrea and did a workout. Warmed up, then did a 2 mile tempo on the road (10:20), jogged a few minutes, then went to the track and ran 8 x 400m (Avg 70.4 seconds) w/ 200m recovery jog. Felt good considering I ran 50+ miles in the previous 2 days.

PM - 4.4 miles after spending a fun couple hours at the DMV. Now I'm officially a Utah resident. I probably should have gotten that taken care of about 15 months ago.

AM - 15.6 miles up to work. Ran ~5 w/ Andrea. Kept the pace nice and easy.
PM - 7.1 miles down to Sugarhouse to meet Andrea for her shakeout.

AM - 12 miles easy.

PM - 8 miles. Did a light "get the legs moving" workout. Also wanted to try out my Saucony Peregrine trail shoes. Ran 4 miles on the outer loop at Sugarhouse, then did 10 x ~200m on the grass. Garmin tells me my average pace on the reps was 4:38/mile, so they were like 35s. Nice to do it on the grass, and I like the shoes.

Before running this morning I went down to the human performance lab at the U and got a BodPod test. I didn't have to pay for it, and actually get my health insurance premium reduced by doing things like this. We have a pretty good wellness program on campus.

The test result was that my body fat percentage is 1.5%. Yeah right! These pods (which cost >$30,000) are pretty accurate, but only within 1.0-2.7%. So realistically, maybe I'm actually somewhere ~4% or maybe even a little higher. That is still pretty good, and exactly where I should be based on how much I am running. This is what the results show... 

When I got to work, one of my co-workers had left a 2 lb chunk of cake on my desk. Based on the result of my test, I think I can afford to munch on it! 

AM - 7.4 miles up to work, easy. Tomorrow I'm running a 15K trail race in Park City. Just using it as a tempo / progression run and not going anywhere near all out. It should be fun.

PM - 4.4 miles easy. 

AM - 14 miles - Park City Trail 15K. Report below.
PM  - 4.4 miles shakeout, probably too fast. Biked downtown to see the Tour of Utah, too.

Race Recap
Despite a flat tire on the way over, we got there in plenty of time for a short warmup. The course was primarily on singletrack at Round Valley. As I said yesterday, my objective today was tempo run (and to not twist my ankle!). Here's the course elevation profile:

I found myself in the lead after about a quarter mile, and didn't see anyone else until the finish line. Splits were 5:39 (a little hill then mainly flat), 5:57 (all uphill), 5:42 (net downhill, but very rocky / technical), 5:55 (rolling on the twistiest trail I have ever run), 6:22 (all uphill on more of the twisty trail), 5:53, 5:50 (these two miles were downhill but it was impossible to get moving b/c of all the switchbacks, I was just trying not to get hurt!), 5:19 (jeep road, woohoo), then 4:22 for the last 0.9 miles. The course was 0.4 miles short :-) Average pace was 5:45/mile. Final time was 51:05.

Perfect tempo run at 6500-7000 feet on some really fun trails. I really wasn't even breathing hard by the end of it, so I stayed well within myself as planned. I'm not a fantastic downhill runner on technical trails, so I was just happy to not injure myself on the downhills in the middle of the course... a few times I came into the switchbacks too hot and almost ran off the trail... 150 degrees turns are tough! I am very impressed by the folks who can fly down that type of terrain. I think 2nd place was about 7 minutes behind, and Andrea was really close to the other top guys.

After the race I actually got a massage, which hopefully will help me recover quickly, since I have another harder effort planned for tomorrow. Cooled down a little over 3 miles on the grass fields.

While we were waiting for awards, Galen Rupp, Mo Farah, and their crew came running by looking crazy smooth and fast. Its cool to just randomly see some of the top runners in the entire world cruising along. 

We both had our new fluorescent uniforms that Saucony sent us for this one... they are very bright!...

From August 2011