Met up with Clyde this morning to do the first part of the marathon course as a tempo run. I wanted to go and run the Mesquite course but I am glad I ran with Clyde today. The elevation is higher and the course is a little tougher. We have wanted to run the 1st part of the marathon some what hard to see how it goes. I wanted to make sure the run today had at least 4 miles of hills and this part of the course does. We parked a couple miles from the start and ran up the starting line to get a decent warm up in (3 miles). It was pretty warm and I knew I was going to have to drop everything on the way back down. The plan was to do about 5:35/mile for 13 miles because that is all I am needing to shoot for in Mesquite. This was planned to be the longest tempo run I have done all year. A little nervous but excited at the same time. I just relaxed until Veyo and then had to work for the next couple miles of up hill. We ran into the start of the Snow Canyon Half which was kind of fun. I was okay until about mile 10 and then really needed to push through. I did the 1st half of the course in 1:13:51. We finished with a 2 mile cool down. It was nice to deal with the lady sitting in her truck smoking. Nothing like a wonderful morning of running to be ruined by someone smoking! Nothing spectacular but a very good workout heading into the half in a couple weeks. I will take the time due to a couple big workouts already this week and not really tapering. Happy to get this one in. I couldn't believe how warm it was. Crazy to think I was in a short sleeve shirt for most of the run. Another solid week and I am happy with hitting only about 70 miles a week for now. It seems to keep me more fresh.
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