Rob Murphy

Let me get the excuses out of the way first.

1. Hot - 75 degrees for the 6:45 am start.

2. Humid and raining.

3. Headwind the entire way.

 4. New eco friendly racing flats suck - no traction on wet, slippery roads, slipping on every stride push-off for 13 miles.

5. Less than 2 hours sleep.

The conditions were really less than ideal. All of the times across the board were about 3 minutes off of last year. So even though I didn't reach my goal of 1:14 or so, I'm really happy with my overall finish in the masters field which brought in a lot of top runners from all over the country. Not me though - I brought myself in.

 Two things I'm happy with - my 10k split of 35:50 ain't bad for January, and my last mile in 5:40. Not happy with my attitude in the middle miles. Lacked intensity and was generally apathetic and was mostly letting my mind dwell on the difficult conditions and poor footing. All things considered though, I think I'm ahead of where I was last year and can maybe shoot for a 1:14 at the Salt Lake Half.

I really enjoyed my run today. Did 8.75 miles in about 65 minutes. Just a nice bread and butter mental health run.

I did a lot of thinking about where I'm going with this sport and whether I need to do some re-prioritizing. Is that a word? I want to continue to find ways to improve but I don't want to sacrifice the joy I get from running. 

Four miles on the treadmill in 30 minutes

125 floors on the stairmaster hard enough to breath hard and sweat a lot.

Pretty decent treadmill run on my lunch "hour". He he he....

9.25 miles averaging around 7 minutes/mile with some occasional forays into the 6 minute range. Nice soak in the hot tub after.

Conferences at Abby's school tonight. No doubt we have volunteered to bring food to feed the teachers.

This was the workout I've been waiting for for about two months. In the weeks leading up to Austin, I did some pretty decent workouts, but I never really felt that special "it" that you get when you know you are primed and ready. All of my threshold workouts were a real struggle. Today was different - I ran hard, but always felt I could go harder. Even when I pushed the pace up to 5:18 or faster.

9.6 miles in 60 minutes - treadmill fartlek

6 x 10 minute increments (2 minutes at 7 mph, 2 at 9 mph, 2 at 10 mph, 4 at 10.5 mph)

Kept the speed the same (7, 9, 10) for the first six minutes on all of them, but gradually upped the pace on the last four minutes each time so I was at 10.9 mph on #5 and averaged 11.3 mph for the last four minutes of the run. Felt great!

11.25 total with warm-up and cool-down,

am: Gym workout...

1 mile warm-up

Some general strength training of the circuit variety.

125 floors on the stairmaster