Was planning on running down Payson Canyon with three miles fast (below 6:45), but we ended up not having a driver up so we had to run up and then down Payson Canyon, with the Boy Scout camp as the turn around.
Going up the first four miles were pretty easy slow (9:05, 8:49, 8:36, 8:41). The fifth mile going up the canyon gets steeper and I pulled away from the group to try to do that mile hard. I obviously didn't do the uphill at tempo pace, and when I do it's that fifth mile that is hard for me. I ran the fifth mile in 8:38, which is actually faster than my last split for that mile during a tempo run. I then had a slower .44 to the top (9:20 pace) and another .37 of circling around while waiting for the others to be ready to head down.
I told Mark when we started down, "I'm going to try to run this first mile under 7 minute pace since the first mile is the only serious downhill." Well, I didn't see him much after that, but started seeing more runners coming up, including our own prodigal son, Tom Lee. I ran that first mile in 6:00, I think my first 6 flat mile in 9 years, even when considering downhill (and this obviously was downhill). I continued to push the second mile down but it was flatter and my split was 6:45. After two miles down I knew I would slow if I didn't have company so I looped back for Mark who was running awesome, and we ran 6:46, 6:53 miles together. He pulled away on the third mile and I had a 7:01 split for that one (dang, that sucks to be just over 7 minutes). Once we got down to the bottom I tacked on another couple of slow miles (around 9 minutes).
Overall, had 13.58 miles in 1:49 (8:02 ave pace) | 