Rob Murphy

10.25 miles in 1:16 in Sugarhouse Park. Maybe should have run longer today, but tomorrow is the first official day of track practice and I want to be able to workout with the team.

I ran a total of 3 miles on the track at school with my team. Today was the first day of practice and we had a lot of new kids out, so I took the group through some core exercises, striders, drills etc.

After practice, I went to the gully and ran 6.5 with Garrett. He's still getting over his sickness from last week, so I sent him back early.

Revovery day - running wise at least. I just did an easy four.

I also did a strength workout in the weight room at school. If we would get a couple high quality treadmills at Alta High School I could probably get rid of my 24 Hour Fitness membership and save some money.

Today I had a great run with three of my ace middle distance runners on the Alta High Track Team (Go Hawks!) - Garrett Jones, Ryan Fuller, and Chris Cutler. We ran a 60 minute fartlek alternating four minutes of easy running with one minute of mile race pace running. According to my garmin I reached a max pace of 4:11/mile. Did a total of 8.4 miles for the 60 minutes.

Barely managed to squeeze in the run today between work, track practice and a track team parent's meeting tonight. But managed to get in a run on the treadmill. Kept it at 8.1 mph, but jacked it up to a little over 9 mph for a couple miles. I think I'll do some cross training and lifting tomorrow.

Two easy miles.

Main workout today was a strength workout for about 45 minutes. Total of 125 push-ups. Lots of sit-ups and pull-ups. One set of dead lift with 155 lbs, back extensions, bent rows etc. Leg workout consisted of plyo jumps, leg press, leg extensions, leg curls, toe raises with 110 lbs.

I never lifted until about a year ago. I think it's a big reason why I've been able to increase the volume and intensity of my running without getting injured. It also makes me faster I think. I  think strength training is more important for over 40 runners like myself than it is for younger runners. I have to be careful though as I tend to be competitive with my lifting and have a tendency to overdo it.

I wanted to do some fast miles this morning and had to do them on the treadmill at the gym as they have child care. Ann worked last night and has to sleep today. Here's how it went down...

This was a continuous run that took about 1:15

1 mile easy - about 9 or 10 munute pace

1 mile in 8:30

4 x 1 mile in 5:30 with a .75 recovery (about 1:1)

1 x 1/2 mile in 2:40 with a shorter recovery

1 x 1/4 mile in 75 seconds

then an easy cool down at 8:30 pace

In case I haven't mentioned it before, I pretty much love treadmill running and consider myself an expert on devising fairly challenging runs. I don't listen to music while I run. The only entertainment I allow myself is watching the odd characters that populate my gym. I think this helps me develop the focus and concentration needed to race well. Plus, headphones, even I pod buds in my ears really bother me.

Probably 18 miles tomorrow.