Larry, Wayne, and I ran from Trefoil down to the mouth of Provo Canyon. I think it was warmer when we started than when we finished. The weather was cool but not cold, but there was a pretty steady and at times pretty strong headwind coming UP the canyon. It normally is going DOWN the canyon, but I'm guessing the approaching storm was the cause of the wind reversal. The headwind was stiff enough that I turned my hat around to keep it from blowing off.
We ran together and took it easy as we started down from Trefoil. I had thought about pushing hard the whole way, but I decided to spend some time with my buddies and warm up for a few miles. I was going to starting pushing at 3 miles but I missed the beep. We were in the middle of good conversation so I decided to push at 4 miles. I started to push but we were almost at Vivian. Wayne stopped for a drink and I wanted to tighten my shoes a little so I stopped, too. The mile splits to this point were: 8:43, 8:26, 8:13, 7:46, and 6:51/mi for the 1/4 mile after I started pushing and before I stopped at Vivian. At this point I decided to do a five mile tempo run between Vivian and the fountain near Mt. Timpanogos Park. My mile splits were 6:44, 7:02, 6:53, 6:59, 6:55. I lost the GPS signal briefly during the 2nd and 4th miles so the times may be off slightly.
I waited at the fountain for Larry and Wayne and we ran the last 0.85 miles at around 8:05/mi. Overall I ran 10.15 miles averaging 7:35/mi. I intentionally ran slower than marathon pace at the beginning and end, and considerably faster than marathon pace for the five mile tempo, and averaged pretty close to marathon pace overall. I felt good after the run, like I had many more miles in the tank...just not at sub-7:00 pace. It was a good reminder of what "too fast" marathon pace feels like so I hopefully can avoid it early in the race next week.
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