Wheeler Farm Loops

AM - 11.1 miles, easy around the neighborhoods... 6 w/ Andrea.

PM - 3 miles shakeout.

117 miles for the week, after weeks of 134, 142, and 141.  The main thing is that my workouts have been very solid in addition to the volume. Nice, consistent progress. I'm going to back it off a bit for the next 2 weeks, hopefully run well at Long Beach, and then do a cycle of very marathon-specific training before Philly.

Great day in sports... a new marathon world record, a very strong comeback race for Paula Radcliffe, and the Bills beat the Patriots! I loved this picture of Patrick Makau in Berlin after the race...

AM - 13.4 miles, up to work. 8.5 w/ Andrea. 

PM - 4.4 miles, down to Sugarhouse. 

*OktoberFAST 5K: We'll start the race at 9am on Saturday (Oct 1) at the Highland High School track. If you are planning to come, send me an email / private message w/ your name, age, and a seed time. We need to know how many people to expect. If we have a volunteer to start a timer, we can use my laptop and a stopwatch as a backup. If we don't have any volunteers, it might end up being more of a time trial (and I'll try to finish quickly and get the times for everyone behind me). Supposedly Saucony is sending us race bibs.

AM - 7.5 miles

PM - 7 miles. Track session: Warmed up 2 miles + 2x200m (34,34). Workout was 1600-1200-800-400 (400m b/w reps). Targeted 5K pace for the 16/12, then stepped it down a little for the 8/4. Splits were 4:46, 3:35, 2:21, 65. Then I added on another 2x200m in 32, 31. Overall I felt pretty good and think that if I run with even a decent amount of mental fortitude, I can dip under 15:00 this Saturday. 

AM - 13 miles, up to work. About 7 w/ Andrea. My legs felt really good this morning.

PM - 4.4 miles, down to Sugarhouse. 

I'm a little peeved about this whole Canyons-Solitude tram idea. To try and justify it on grounds of reducing traffic in BCC is ridiculous! Nobody in their right mind would drive all the way over to Park City, take two lifts to the top of the Canyons, then a tram to BCC, then another lift or two to the top of Solitude. Best case scenario, you'd be skiing by 11am! The real problem is that this would set a precedent and open the flood gates for other ski areas to expand into Twin Lakes Pass, Grizzly Gulch, and White Pine. Ugh. 

Andrew McLean will surely be leading the charge (or at least helping spread non-biased information) on this one. His recent posts: Wasatch Conflict Primer and The Canyons Tram and Ted Wilson are worth reading if you're interested in what is going on.

AM - 7.3 miles, up to work.

PM - 2.5 miles w/ 4x200 on the grass at Sugarhouse. 

*Last chance... OktoberFAST 5K on Saturday morning... email me if you wanna run by tomorrow night. It will be pretty low key but should be fun. Good chance to run fast and meet some fellow bloggers. 

AM - 6 miles on campus. Easy McBreezy. The "down" week has already worked its magic in terms of getting rid of any little aches and stuff like that. I hold up to the bigger mileage really well, but it will be nice to go into my last cycle of marathon training (after Long Beach) feeling good and fresh, because that will be a challenging 3-4 weeks!

PM - 2 miles, shakeout.

Look what Saucony sent today... awesome... who wants the #1 seed?

Good luck to everyone running St George tomorrow! Negative splits!!! 

OktoberFAST 5K!

Awesome morning... our little track event turned out to be a great time. We ended up having 9 runners, several volunteers, and a handful of awesome spectators!

My race recap... I thought I'd be able to crack 15 flat, but it turns out that is a more difficult task than it seems! My kilometer splits were 3:00.1, 2:59.8, 3:02.2, 3:03.4, and 3:03.9. Total time was 15:09.5. For another solo effort, I'm not exactly thrilled with the time, but I have to be happy with it. Its 13 seconds faster than my time trial about 5 weeks ago, and in reality its the fastest 5K I've ever run (Draper Days was probably short this year, and the Fight for Air doesn't count b/c it was aided). I fell off the pace in the last mile and didn't really muster any type of kick. But, in the past week I've time trialed 5K and 10K PRs. I'm looking forward to the half marathon next weekend... I think I'm ready to really pop a good one... hopefully an honest PR on a fair course. [~9.5 miles w/ warmup & cooldown]

Here's the results:

Jake 15:09.5
Adam C 17:07.3
Andrea 17:16.3
Adam W 17:40.7
Chad 18:17.4
Dave 18:31.1
Sandy 19:01.9
Kam 20:09.1
Ashley 20:32.6 

Allie did an excellent job taking photos. I've put all of her pictures on my picasa site: OktoberFAST 5K

Paul and his kids came out to spectate, as did Adam W's family, and Kam's son (who helped me with the timing... thanks!). 

Afterwards we had some chocolate milk and then ran a couple laps around Sugarhouse to cooldown. 

We are definitely going to do this again - October 29th - Spooky Fast 5K. Mark your calendars! (It was originally the Boo Fast 5K, but Andrea decided to change the name, and I don't argue with her! :-) Sorry Adam!)

Thanks to everyone who came out this morning. You all ran great, and that was a lot of fun! 

 
The whole crew after the race

 
First lap

 
17:16?!?! I am really impressed by another big PR for Andrea. That's sub 17 at sea level!

Check the Picaca link for more actions shots... there are pics of everyone.  Saucony was awesome to hook us up with some race bibs, stickers, and some token prizes, so that was really nice of them.

PM - 3 miles shakeout. Legs feel really good.