Dave's Addiction

EZ 8 with a break at the gym for upper body. Tried to run slow but averaged 7:20. Still annoyed by Saturday, going to run angry at AF. It will be fun :)

I am going to go for 60 this week. But today was a run with Sasha and Ben - same workout as last week. The first mile felt like less than tempo pace, forgot to breathe a few times. (5:30) The second mile got into the yellow, but not too far. I did have a little hunger because I was trying to get under 150, looks like my base muscle weight has come up 3 pounds and I will just have to deal with it. There just isn't any fat to burn. Anyway, felt a little weak there but it went away after 2.25 because it was time to push. I tried a little too hard, kind of coasted on the third quarter, and then decided to give it everything on the last. They passed me anyway but it felt good to give everything I could. (5:23, 5:13) Unfortunately not enough of the run was in the yellow or better zone to count as a sufficient speed workout for the week, so I will pace Ben in the last four miles of UV half. Maybe I will bring a 1:16 pacer sign just to look legit :)

Getting bored with the 8 EZs so I threw in an 8X10 hill sprint at the end. That was different. Harder and easier at the same time.

I didn't want to do another EZ today, but with a nasty workout coming up Saturday I didn't want to go all the way to 10 hard either. So I split the difference and did a 10 HardEZ. Ha ha. I ran 1 easy then 1 hard on the 10 hard course, hard being somewhere between marathon and half marathon pace except the last one which I pushed a little past HM and almost to Threshold. EZ average as a little under 8, hard was a little under 6. We'll see how that goes for tomorrow.

Well what do you know - it really is exactly 5K to John's house.

 EZ 6

OK, so today's goal was to pace Benjamin Pachev in on his first run of any kind longer than 10 miles. It was hard to do the math for some reason, but I knew that if I started running at 5:30 at Provo Towne Center I could go up 8.5 and catch MM9 52 minutes into the race, just before he passed it, assuming that it was 2 miles to the finish line from PTC. Which it wasn't. So my careful pacing plan went out the window and I just ran up the canyon to Timp park at 8.25. And to my surprise the leaders were passing right at that moment!

I had never had the pleasure of accompanying the leaders this far into the race, usually being dropped by mile 2:), so I took advantage. I had to go at a 4:36 pace for a bit to catch up to Josh and Jonathan, who were running flawlessly in sync. It was awesome to behold, the perfect form, the submaximal effort. I ran out front for a little while but then I realized I needed to keep the speed in the tank for Ben so I dropped back in the gravel and tried to jog down SLOWLY. Then Jake came by, and Riley, and Matt, all looking really good, except Jake looked better than everyone, and with each person it was really hard to keep it slow, in fact I kept getting down in the 5s by accident. A group of 4 guys came by and I figured that Ben could be coming up any moment. So I ran backwards for a bit to see if I could see him. It turns out that the fastest I can run backwards is about a 5:40. I almost had a most embarrassing moment right there at mile 8. I saw Karl, then I was at mile 9. Waiting. For only about 2 minutes yikes he is moving! Looking kind of hashed but hanging in there great.

Turns out Sasha just couldn't let him run the first one solo, ha ha. So I joined the windbreak and hoped I still had the juice to keep up since they were running 5-10 seconds faster than I was in the Provo Half at this point. It was decently hard, but not too bad - perfect tempo pace! Ben went right up the hill and the finish line came into view. He was right at his max but the pace picked up to a punishing 5:44 for the last two miles, which put me into VO2max by the 13thmile. I backed off so they could cross the finish line without me falling over next to them and it was most triumphant! 1:15:26 is most impressive for a 14 year old. Then I realized that if I had actually entered the race I could have won Masters. ARRGH! Oh well it was really fun anyway.

So I jogged the last 2 miles back to my car with them and Steve, including a 64 second quarter at mile 16.5 just because I was still feeling great. Had to run around the parking lot to get my First Ever 60 Mile Week! Woohoo! I still feel great. This is really psycho. Splits were 7:04 to 7:25 for the uphill 8, 6:30s for the trip back to MM9, 5:57,5:58,5:44,5:44 for the last 4 of the race, and 9s back to the car.