Rob Murphy

I woke up this morning incredibly sore in my quads. Almost like marathon soreness. Not sure now what my workout plans will be for today, but they definetly won't be a long run.

pm: So I decided to go to the gym and do a little cross training and watch the tournament at the same time...

20 mile ride on the lifecycle in 55 minutes.

Nine miles in 63 minutes on the treadmill at Steiner. Snowed off and on all day with lots of wind.

Looks like close to 70 though on Wednesday!

No run today. Wasn't able to work it into the schedule.

6.5 miles this afternoon in about 45 minutes and I was lucky to get that in.

This is being a very difficult week at my work.We have had allegations of racism and religious bigotry against students, faculty, and administrators at Alta High School. This has been picked up by all our local media outlets and even by some national ones and has resulted, thus far, in the suspension of our principal and one of our assistant principals. In addition to this, we have a heavy law enforcement presence at the school and TV cameras and reporters camped just off of school property waiting to fan the flames.Those  of you who don't live in Utah can read more at the Salt Lake Tribune website (sltrib.com) or the Deseret News (desnews.com). The many comments beneath each of the articles reveal a lot of attitudes and opinions that I would associate with Mississippi in 1962.

Apparently the Department of Justice in Denver has expressed interest in what is going on as well. Rumor is that the Southern Poverty Law Center is getting involved and might be coming in to provide us with racial sensitivity training and other such info.

I taught and coached for six years in South Carolina before moving to Utah in a school that had a fifty percent minority population and didn't even come close to experiencing anything like this.

Needless to say, this has everyone, teachers, staff, and students in a bit of a funk. Kind of hard to focus on teaching history.

Eleven miles in 1:18 in City Creek Canyon. I was very surprised to be forced back by snow in the road about 5.5 miles up. It was almost 70 degrees today.

Beautiful run. Better day.

Had one hour to run today so I managed to get myself to the gully to run on the trails. Sunny and beautiful again.

More deep thoughts later... 

OK. I once read somewhere that each runner is "an experiment of one". There are general principles of good training that apply to everyone and need to be heeded, but there is wide leeway for each runner to work out the specifics.

Being on this blog has generally been good for me. Knowing that smart people who know a lot about training are reading my posts has forced me to think more about what I'm doing. It has also caused me to realize that my body can handle more mileage that I thought it could. This has resulted in much faster times, even as I work into my late 40s.

I have, however, become a little too competitive with regards to this whole mileage board thing. There are a handful of people that I am constantly measuring myself against and I find myself trying to match them mile for mile. This has caused me to abandon some things that I know to be true with regards to my own training.

For example, I am better off running 55 to 70 miles per week with two cross training workouts and two weight workouts per week. I race much better off of this kind of program than I do off of 80 mpw with no supplemental training.

Over the past couple years I have began to lift weights. I credit that with increased strength (obviously) and greater resistance to injury which enables me to train harder. A couple months ago I saw a picture of myself running and I thought I was getting too big. I have the body type that quickly benefits from weight training - I suppose it has something to do with the right combination of muscle fibers or something like that. So I have to be careful when I lift not to get too intense about it. Anyway, I decided to back off of the weights and cross training and increase my mileage so I would look more like a runner.

This has not resulted in faster times. Also, my body parts are aching more and I am missing the desire to run really hard. Generally I can count on feeling like really putting the hammer down once or twice every week in my training. But not lately. Lately I find I'm dreading hard tempo runs and intervals, so I'm just not doing them.

So, I'm going to return to the training mix that works for me. I'll have to resign myself to being on page two of the mileage board most weeks!