Every Race is an Adventure!

I went out with Larry in the morning. My legs were still pretty tight from Saturday's race. I thought running some easy miles might loosen them up. It might have a little, but they were still pretty tight after the run. Larry ran a little farther than I did this morning as I had to make a pit stop at Orem High about halfway through. I'm sure glad the school opens early in the morning.

In the afternoon I ran Eagles View with Tom and Nathan. Nathan was coming off being sick and told me to go ahead with Tom, but Tom was really feeling good today and my legs told me to not even try to stay with him. He was about 15 seconds ahead of me at the top of Eagles View. He maintained that lead until the light stopped him at State Street. Nathan and I caught up and we all waited for the light together, but as soon as it changed Tom was off again. I tried to at stay at least close enough that I could shout some friendly trash talk at him to keep him working hard, but by the time we finished he had built up a 10+ second lead again. It was good to see Tom back to his old self and feeling good again. I'm also sure this is one of the few times I'll finish ahead of Nathan.

I didn't run today because my legs have been feeling tired and I needed to save my strength for the annual adults v. young men basketball game at 8:30pm. I did some running before the game to warm up, and felt pretty good most of the game, but near the end of the game I pulled myself out because my legs were beat.

The tradition is to play to 100, with half-time whenever the first team gets to 50. We rotated 14 adults against their 10, but without success. They beat us 101 to 90, but that wasn't too surprising. Our young men's team repeated as region champs this year, with another undefeated season. For this game they also had the services of two players who didn't play on the church team because they were playing on the high school team. One of them was a valley all-star. He probably scored 40 points or more. On the other hand, our men's team only one a single game this year. We were no match for them, but it was a lot of fun.

I ran the normal Orem route this morning. It was probably good I was alone. Otherwise, we would have been splashing slush all over each other. The temperature was about 32 F with with a fresh covering of snow on the ground and more coming down. I was dressed well and didn't get real cold, but I did get very wet by the end. I had to keep shaking snow off my hat and gloves, and I stuck my glasses in my vest pocket after a mile or so. They were so wet I could barely see through them. In some spots there was about 1 inch of snow. I didn't mind running in those areas. Unfortunately, the rest of the run was through about 1/2 inch of slush, hence my comment about getting really wet. It was also surprisingly noisy as the cars sloshed through the slush.

I ran the Orem route alone again this morning. There was a light rain falling, but the running conditions were far better than yesterday morning. I managed to get in 5+ miles at marathon pace this morning, plus some warm up at an easier pace. The marathon pace miles ranged from about 7:30/mi to 8:30/mi (depending on the grade), with the average being 8:01/mi.

I ran the 20 mile up/down route between the mouth of Provo Canyon and the top of South Fork with Tom, Kerry, and Greg. We started about 6:30am just as it was getting light. The temperature was around 36 degrees, but there was a cold canyon breeze. The other three all wore long pants. I had mine in the car, but my legs were only kind of cold, not really cold, so I didn't put them on. I was afraid they would be too warm at the end. In hindsight, I probably should have worn them. It never did get real warm before we finished. Ah well, I feel like I had a good run anyway.

We averaged 8:57/mi up to Vivian Park. At this point, Kerry wanted to give is sore knee a break so he got on his bike he had stashed there earlier. Even though the road gets quite a bit steeper starting up South Fork, Tom and Greg started up at the same pace we had been going. I felt the extra effort right away but managed to hang on. We only slowed 1 sec/mi and averaged 8:58/mi up to the Trefoil gate.

After refueling at the top, we started down. It didn't take long for me to realize we were going to go down considerably faster than we came up. Greg had led strongly coming up, and took off at a strong pace to lead us back down. We averaged 7:42/mi back down to Vivian, then slowed slightly to 7:50/mi down to the gate just above Bridal Veil.

It was along this stretch I felt myself getting tired and sloppy in my form. I decided to tighten up my form, shorten my stride slightly, and pick up my turnover rate a little. This little bit of focus really made a difference. I pulled slightly ahead then stopped and waited for the others at the gate. When we started up again I focused again and again started to pull away. I averaged 7:19/mi for about the next two miles. I could tell I was pushing too hard to finish at that pace so I backed off and ran the next mile or so at 7:48/mi to try and save something for the last mile. At one mile to go I picked the pace up slight to 7:40/mi for 1/2 mile. I then tried to take it up a gear and I averaged 6:54/mi for the final 1/2 mile.

My Garmin showed 20.11 miles in 2:46:48, average pace 8:18/mi. I felt very good about the run. I held on through the difficult times and ended up finishing strong. I did feel a blister forming in the strike area of each foot near the end, but they weren't bad. My legs were pretty tired after the run, but they recovered pretty quickly.

The best part was spending the morning with Tom, Kerry, and Greg. I also saw four other people I knew on the trail, including Doug Eddy. He looked good. It's good to see him getting enthused about running.