Winning Back What I Lost

630AM: 4.82 easy miles.  Legs were stiff this morning.  I had some stomach issues again after a weekend camping and eating a ton of trail mix and about a thousand smores w/ my little girls.  Good times.  I pondered my race on Saturday, and while I was pleased w/ the result I was a little humbled by the fact that I've set a goal to run that pace for the entire TOU marathon in 2 months.  This will be a daunting task.  I currently project at somewhere near a 3:24 marathon.  IMO, I'll need to increase my weekly mileage base to somewhere around 65-70 mpw and probably drop at least 12-15 lbs to get that extra 9 mins I need.  I will be difficult but I believe its within reach. 

1015PM: 6.3 miles at roughly 8 min pace.  Legs felt light and springy.  A noticeable improvement in my base cardio pace.  Looked at the official results on Blue Circle Sports for Saturday's run and I picked up 4 seconds from what was reported at the event!  Four seconds is four seconds. 

I don't like to run this late because it makes it that much harder to get up for my early morning run, but I had to wait for my wife and son to return from their run.  Ran into a half dozen sprinklers which isn't too big a deal but a little surprising when it comes in the dark.  I can't believe how many businesses, schools, parks etc. set their sprinklers to water the pavement.  Besides being a safety hazard its a huge waste of scarce water resources. 

Started a fundraising website for my next marathon, Top of Utah.  I'm hoping to raise at least 1k dollars for the Family Advocate Program here in Boise. 

645AM:  Hit my snooze a couple of times and I almost didn't get up.  I started making bargains w/ myself that I'd run 10M this evening.  After about 5-10 mins of internal debate I finally rose and quickly got on the road.  3.8 slow, easy miles.  About a 60% effort was all that I could muster this morning.  Same stomach issues as yesterday which dissuaded me from venturing too far from home.   

Still having problems w/ my GPS (Garmin) watch shutting down for no discernible reason.  I keep forgetting to do the 'hard reset.'  I'll do it after I post this entry and see if it solves the problem. 

8PM: Temp in the upper 80's; 2.5M fast miles at the start and then some slow, easy miles to finish it up as I got dehydrated and fatigued; I wanted to stretch the run out a little longer but as is often the case, time wasn't on my side.  Mick Jagger is full of it!

640AM: Nice temp this morning, low 60's, w/ a little breeze and bright sunshine.  The kind of morning that makes it easy to run.  My Garmin failed on me again but after a hard reset it worked the last 3.5M or so.  I'm so familiar w/ my running routes now that I don't even have to do a google map search to determine my distance.  4.6M easy, slow miles overall.  My slow pace has improved to around 8:40/mi.  It was 20 seconds slower back in April/May.  As I noted on the discussion board, I've seen speed gains by consciously avoiding speedwork and increasing my mileage.  One would think that you have to run fast to get faster but apparently there is more benefit to be gained from running more miles.  I imagine that changes once a runner reaches a certain fitness level of running 80+ mpw. 

1030PM:  Extremely late start tonight.  I was more than a little sluggish from eating a ton of pizza & breadsticks for dinner tonight.  Slow, easy pace that picked up a little after 3M or so.  I keep telling myself that I'll start getting my diet squared away again but its so difficult when there's so much grub around. 

Got a physical tonight for the upcoming Boy Scouts' High Adventure Trip to the Frank Church in a couple of weeks.  Been awhile since I've had to turn my head and cough and  I could go at least another couple of decades before doing that again. 

930PM: Waited until the temp at least got down to around 90 degrees before venturing out.  I'll be camping w/ the family again this weekend so I had to get my long run in before leaving for Ketchum/Copper Basin tomorrow night.  There's a fair chance that I'll actually get a run in early on Saturday so I'll try to squeeze a short one in tomorrow morning.  Its 1130PM as I'm typing this message so I'll probably get somewhere near 5 to 5 1/2 hours of sleep which is not nearly enough but sadly its the norm for me.  Easy pace throughout which quickened in the middle miles and then tapered off as I stopped at the convenience store 3/4M from my house to stock up on G2.  I went through a full 12 oz bottle of water and then downed a large G2 as if it were a dixie cup.

645AM: 3.9M easy recovery run this morning.  My knees are a bit sore, the right one especially. I need to roll out the IT band real good, been awhile since I've done that.  The temp outside read 68 degrees when I left the house but I swear it felt more like 80 degrees. No breeze whatsoever and apparently a farmer to south, probably Kuna, is burning his ditches because there was a nice haze of smoke to make breathing even more of a chore. 

Didn't get out for a run this Saturday.  Took my shoes along but no dice.  We did some hiking up and down Trail Creek and Corral Creek.  Picked up one really nice rainbow and a bunch of small brookies lots of fun w/ the family.