Boo Legs

A hot humid "easy" 8 miles this morning. "Easy" is a relative term. If by "easy" you mean lots of effort to maintain a 8:30 pace, then yes it was "easy". I think my legs are feeling the higher mileage last week? Perhaps they are tired from the extra evening runs last week? Maybe my legs are wussy?

Afternoon run was 2.5 easy miles. The legs actually felt better on this run.  

I think I've got ADD when it comes to speedwork. I can't handle the same thing for too long. I was all over the place. I did a descending ladder that looked like this. 

1 mile warm up

1 mile fast, recover, 1/2 mile fast, recover, 1/4 mile fast, recover and repeat descending ladder.

1 mile cool down 

The fast miles looked like this for round number one 6:35, 3:06, 1:23  and round number two (no surprise here, my legs finally got used to going fast, you can tell I felt better the second time around) 6:31, 3:03, 1:21.

Cross training today. 1 hour spin class. 

AM: 5 miles easy. Average pace 8:35. I was planning to do the whole 8 miles in the am but I had some serious stomach issues and decided to cut it short, hoping I'd get a chance to finish it up later.

Afternoon: 3.5 miles easy. So much better this afternoon! Average pace 8:20. Happy that I didn't talk myself out of finishing the run. (cuz lets face it, I'm good at that.)

6.1 easy miles. Average pace 8:27. That first mile was about a 9:40 min/mile. It took a couple miles to get the lead out. I definitely felt better the last few miles.

For right now, here's the short of it.

Got suckered into doing a half on Friday. Course measured long. Felt pretty good. 

My sister in law is training for St. George and she wanted to do a training/tune up half so last minute, she asked if I wanted to run this half. Sure, I had a free Saturday morning...why not? I knew that it wasn't going to be a PR for me because I took June, July, and most of August pretty easy with my running. Plus, I had heard that there were some good sized long hills from miles 4-8. I went into it with absolutely no expectation.

So this half used to be called the South Valley Half Marathon but I guess some other people directed it this year and it was changed to the Only Half Crazy Half. Same course, new name. It starts up Rose Canyon in Herriman and ends in South Jordan/Daybreak. My garmin (as well as my sister in laws garmin) showed the course was long. Its a smaller race, probably about 200 people? (How else could I place in the top three women with that time? :) I don't know how it was last year but this year it felt disorganized. Even our bus driver didn't know where the start line was, someone on our bus had to direct him. I'm sure its a lot of work to organize a race so I don't want to be critical but...it just felt a little chaotic.

Onto the race. Miles 1-4 were a gradual downhill. I kept about a 7:00 min/mile here and it felt fast but controlled. Miles 4-8 were a series of rolling hills. This is where I started to pass people. My pace slowed to anywhere between 8:00-8:40 min/miles. I was very happy to reach mile 8 because I knew it was mostly downhill from there. I gradually picked up my pace back up to a 7:00 min/mile and tried to cruise in. Around mile 11, I knew there were only a few women in front of me and if I could pick it up and catch one of them, I'd place in the top three. So after much back and forth, I can catch her, no I can't, she's too far away, I can at least try, I can do it, no its too hard.... I decided to go for it. In the last half mile, one of the race volunteers yelled out, "You're fourth right now! You can catch her!" That gave me just what I needed to kick it into gear. I clocked a 6:12 min/mile for the last mile and beat her by 1 second to be the third overall female. :)

Like I said, I really wasn't expecting much out of this race because I had a higher mileage training week, I just started bringing back speedwork, and I knew there were some good hills. I felt good about my performance and I was happy to place in the top three, knowing full well if this was a different Utah race, I'd be smoked right and left by fast running bloggers! (Note to self, run smaller races from now on, it makes you feel fast... :)