Rob Murphy

Eight miles in 62 minutes. Cold with eye-stinging pellet snow this morning.

This is the worst time of year sports wise. No baseball, no football, the NBA is on its All-Star break, March Madness has yet to begin. In short, no excuses not to be productive on Sunday afternoon. 

PM: 4.25 miles on the treadmill and about 20 minutes in the sauna. Lots of stretching.

I'm going up Emigration Canyon to I-80 tomorrow morning to celebrate President's Day. 

I love 3 day weekends. I love morning runs too but I'm just not that into 4 am morning runs which is pretty much what I have to do on weekdays to make my commute, drink the requisite amount of coffee, and be at work by 7.

 Fourteen miles in 1:47. Beautiful, but cold, morning and I got to "run the sun up" as Amby Burfoot likes to say. Knees a little more achy than I would have liked.

Potato pancakes and a glass of Muscle Milk after. I'm living right! 

I am second only to some guy named Jake K on the mileage board. 

As I was driving south on I-15 this morning heading to work I found myself gazing at the entrance to Little Cottonwood Canyon and wishing I was on vacation. I pictured myself waking up in my room at the cozy Alta Peruvian Lodge getting ready to eat a huge breakfast followed by a day of skiing.

But here I am at work.

Not sure what I'm going to do today workout wise. Probably some cross training.

PM: Yep, some cross training. I had a really nice afternoon as a matter of fact. Left work a little early as it was a slow day and I'm all caught up on my grading. Ann and I went for a 2 mile walk around the neighborhood.

300 floors (6.25 miles) on the Stairmaster in 41 minutes plus one mile on the another bizarre machine.

I've come to the realization that a typical week for me needs to be five days of running, one day of cross training, and probably a rest day. Maybe one or two of the running days can be doubles. 

I was checking out the Quantcast data on people who view my blog every month. Basically my blog is seen by religious people who like to travel 

Nice, steady treadmill run after work. 10.25 miles. Kept it around 7:10 to 7:20 pace most of the way.

Here's something interesting. In my U.S. history classes we are in the early 20th century now - a time period dominated by Theodore Roosevelt. Whenever I teach a subject, I try to come up with something interesting that makes people who lived long ago seem more human to high school kids in 2013. Today we talked about the most tragic day in TR's life, February 14th, 1884. On that day his young wife Alice gave birth to their first child and died later that day due to complications from the delivery. To make matters worth, TR's mother died that exact same day in the same house of typhoid fever. Roosevelt was devastated by this and gave his infant daughter, whom he named Alice, to his sister to care for and he moved to the Dakota Territory and purchased a cattle ranch. For several years he lived in relative isolation while he recovered from this tragedy.

If you all want to see something pretty powerful and moving you can google "theodore roosevelt diary entry day wife died" to see what he wrote in his diary that evening. You might cry if you are the sensitive type.

My students found it doubly sad that this occurred on Valentine's Day. But I had to tell them that I'm pretty sure Valentine's Day was a 20th Century invention of the floral and greeting card industries to make us feel like jerks if we don't by their products. 

I just looked it up. Valentines Day is older that I thought. I still maintain that your wife and mother dying on the same day in the same house cannot be made worse by occurring on Valentines Day. 

Finally, an early morning run before work. 4 miles plus some fast striders. Felt good.

5.25 miles with 4 x 1/4 mile at a little faster than 6 minute pace.

It looks like maybe the really heavy snow might hold off until after today's 15k at 10 am.

So my daughter Abby is taking part in this Kiwanis Club community service/citizenship/essay type thing. After thinking about it for a while, we decided that she could volunteer at a nursing home near our house. Ann and the kids know this place pretty well as they bake cookies every year and take them to the old folks there at Christmas time. So Ann took Abby there to volunteer - keeping people company, helping out during "game time", that kind of thing. She has to do 15 hours for this Kiwanis Club contest.

Anyway, the activities director at the nursing home said that before Abby could volunteer she would have to submit to an FBI background check! You know, actually go down to the police station and get fingerprinted and all that. 

Did I mention she's twelve?

So we took her to another nursing home where they were overjoyed to have her and put her to work right away. 

No race report today. I hitched a ride with Jake out to Saltair for the SLTC 15K this morning. When we got there we went for a one mile "warm-up" but the conditions made it impossible to get warm. I'd say 30 mph winds whipping off the lake along with white-out type horizontal snow that was the ice pellet type that stings your eyes. Add to this the lightening and thunder snow and you have quite a delightful package.

So we called the game and went to the gym to do a treadmill workout. If you ever want to feel inferior you can run next to Jake Krong on a treadmill. You know, running at 12 mph and wanting to carry on a conversation like he's on a cool down jog.

I did run 9.3 miles on the treadmill in 63 minutes with a warm-up and a cool-down jog. 63 minutes is about what I would have raced today so I'm OK with that. 

67.25 miles for the week. Not bad. I feel like I'm holding together pretty well. I felt good this morning and I would have run a decent race. I held 5:50 pace on the treadmill for a while without too much trouble. Good news.