Justin Park

Rest day. Strolled daughter to and from church. Later on, strolled my boy down to in-laws for dinner (~1-1.5 miles). Caught a pretty cool little lizard on the way down. Kids loved him. Let him go in the flowerbeds.

A.M. - 60 minutes on the treadmill down at the Life Centre:

5 minutes @ 9.5 mph, flat
15 mins @ 10.0, flat
20 mins @ 10.5, flat
15 mins @ 11.0, flat
5 mins @ 11.5, flat

Good workout by my standards. I was a pleasantly surprised by the good effort so close to Saturday's race. But that's why I love half marathons as they don't require a lot of recovery time afterwards.

P.M. - 40.25 mile ride to the top of Millcreek and back. I love this ride!

Good day. My 3 week paternity leave is off to a good start.

A.M. - Little Cottonwood Rd/Wasatch Dr triangle route. Reverse direction.

P.M. - Mountain bike ride. 2 times up and down the Little Cottonwood Creek Trail. Wanted to get some pedaling in today, but wanted to switch it up and hit the mountain today. My mountain bike's seat is softer (~20 miles give or take)

A.M. - 51.5 minute treadmill run at the Life Centre. Somewhat of an interesting run and, in the end, a bit disappointing. I was a little pressed for time this morning as my office was having its annual golf day. I needed to make it to Bountiful Ridge Golf Course for a 7:30 AM tee time. Original plan was to get in about a 10-mile/60-minute run. Legs were feeling somewhat heavy last night and in the morning mostly due to the afternoon bike rides the last couple days. Initial plan was to get the run done quick, but at the same time not go too hard:

Started with 5 minutes @ 9.0 mph, flat
5 mins @ 9.5 mins, flat
5 mins @ 10.0 mins, flat
Feeling in a pretty good groove here, so decided to go to 10.5 mph.  My mindset at that point was to stay there for 15 mins and then bump it up to 11.0 and see if I could hold at least that the remainder of the run. The 15 mins at 10.5 went fine, but toward the end, I was having doubts about being able to hold 11.0, so instead of going up to 11.0, I backed down to 10.0 for the next 10 mins.
Thought I'd try my luck again and went to 10.5, but after 5 mins, my body was telling me it didn't want any faster than 10.5 mph today. So I back it down to 10.0 again. At this point I was feeling a bit discouraged and feeling pressed for time. So after about 6.5 mins at 10.0, I chicken-out and decided to call it a day. Total run time of about 51.5 mins for ~8.6 miles. In retrospect, I should have stayed easy/conservative from the start. Would have felt better about the run had I got the 10 miles.

P.M. - Golf day and lunch ended around 2'ish. My work buddy Aaron and I had brought our road bikes so that we could do an easy flat ride on the Legacy Parkway Trail. Unfortunately, would couldn't convince any of the other road bikers in the office to join us. Many of them were going to be participating on the Deloitte Ragnar team Friday and Saturday and didn't want to risk blowing their legs on a bike ride. Aaron got on the trail around 5th South, rode south for a while and then headed back north just past the Frontrunner station. We kept the ride relatively easy, but there was a pretty good headwind while going north that increased our perceived level of effort. 26.5 miles.

A.M. - Modified Little Cottonwood out-and-back. With Ragnar tomorrow, 9.5 fairly easy seems just about right for me today.

Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay - This is the 4th (consecutive) year that I've done this run. Kind of hard to call it a race as it is more of a social event than a race. The first two years I participated (2010 and 2011), I ran with my work team. It was a lot of fun. But my friends convinced my to defect over to there team and that's what I did last year and this year. We were by no means in it to win it. The team consisted of some good buddies of mine and their spouses and a few other extended family members of those folks. We qualified as a co-ed team meaning we had a lot of girls. Our team name was "Wish We Were Runners"... Very dumb name and not very representative if you ask me, but someone picked the name long before I joined the team and it has just kind of stuck. This was my first year being in Van 1 and I was 'Runner 1' (Legs 1, 13, and 25). My leg involved running the most miles of any of the 12 runners (~21 miles total), but my legs weren't necessarily the hardest or most technical.

Leg 1 - 7.7 miles (rated "Hard" in the Ragmag for the relative length, I think?) - My team had a 6:45 A.M. start, so we were one of the first teams out on the course. The earlier start times are generally given to the slower teams, so you can see that neither we nor the race organizers had high hopes for us pulling out a competitive time. I was happy to have the 6:45 start. It meant I could run my first leg close to the same time I'd usually be doing my normal morning runs and I'd get to run before things started getting two warm. The gun sounded and everyone in my start group of ~30 runners headed northeast out of the USU stadium. I didn't go out real fast, but took the lead before we even reached the end of the track. Knowing that our team was never going to be competitive, similar to prior years, I didn't want to approach my Ragnar legs as an all out race. Any fast running I was going to do would just be negated by some other team members' slower pace, so why kill myself? So, my strategy was to run reasonably fast, but not go all out. At the same time, there wasn't any excuse for me to get passed by anyone as I didn't expect anyone real fast to have started the race the same time we did. The fast runner teams would all be starting later and I theoretically wouldn't be running against them unless they caught up to us which wouldn't likely happen, but if it did, it wouldn't be until the late stages of the race. For my first leg, I knew the first 1.5 miles or so would be the most difficult as they were mostly uphill heading west to the Bonneville Shoreline trail. Once on the trail, the route would continue to ascend for the next ~0.5 mile and then start dropping off the face of the earth for the third mile. Miles 4 and 5 were on the road and almost all downhill. Mile 6 flatted-out and had a pretty decent little climb. The last ~ 1.7 miles were mostly flat with little up at the end. I felt good and ended with an average pace of 6:03 for the leg. Total time of 46:42. I think I had ~57 kills on the leg (all of people who had started in earlier heats) and didn't get passed (Kinvara).

Leg 13 - 8.5 miles (rated "Very hard" for the relative length and steep decents, I guess). We took over the race again at about 3:30-3:40 in the afternoon up at Snow Basin. Temperatures were quite warm at this point (low 80's I believe). The first 0.25 to third-of-a-mile starts by running a steep incline underneath some chair lifts. There was a faint trail, but not much of one. I wasn't able to move very fast through this section. Once at the top of the lift, it was virtually all downhill from there. You make your way out of a little parking lot and onto the road and then its just a drop off the fact of the planet for the next 7+ miles. There were a few flat and slight uphill spots, but for the most part, it was steep downhill. Additionally, there was a bit of a tail wind. I just let gravity and the wind carry me and had several splits well below 5:30. The only negative factor was the heat. I felt very hot. But I tried to hydrate at each aid station and averaged 5:28 for the leg. I measured it as actually being 8.5 miles compared to the stated 8.2 miles. I passed 52 people and didn't get passed. My body would later pay a little bit (but not too bad) for all the pounding downhill on this leg (Kinvara).

See Saturday entry for my report on Leg 25.

Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay - Leg 25 - The last of my three Ragnar legs. Run at about 2:30 AM in the morning after less than 2 hours of sleep. Started to move okay, but he legs were tired and I really didn't feel the best during this stretch. The portebello sandwich from Redrock that I had about 10:30 PM didn't seem to have settled as well as I hoped it would have. The route was a relatively flat and should have been easy. I only pulled out 6:13 ave/mi. for this one.