Every Race is an Adventure!

I got very little sleep last night so I called Larry at 5:15am and said I was skipping the morning run and going back to bed. He seemed quite un-disappointed. I feel a little bad because I'm pretty sure he followed my example.

I went down for the noon run a little early and got in 1.7 miles on the treadmill before Tom was ready to go. I think Nathan is out of town this week. Tom had done a tough 10 mile canyon run this morning (man, he's training well!) so he was only going 4 easy miles. Even though it was 82' or so, and the humidity was up, I still enjoyed the run and talk with Tom (as usual). I then added another 2.6 miles on my own. I think I averaged around 8:30/mi overall for the 8.3 miles.

The ankle I twisted about 10 days ago is doing well, but it's complaining a bit that I put 52 miles on it last week, including 16 miles on Saturday.

Many of you know that shortly after Latter-day Saint missionaries return home after serving full-time for two years they are normally asked to speak in church. Often many of their friends and family attend to hear them speak. Yesterday a couple in our ward, the Gessels, spoke in church after returning from Portland, Oregon where President Gessel had served as mission president for 3 years. Many of the hundreds of missionaries who had served in their mission while they were there were in attendance. The chapel was nearly full before the regular ward members started arriving.

What an amazing meeting. The stake president was in attendance and authorized the meeting to be extended by 15 minutes. I drank in every moment. The messages were inspiring and the spirit was wonderful. I bring up this meeting because President Gessel presented a wonderful analogy that I could relate to, both in my life in general, and in my running. He said the previous mission president told him being a mission president was like running on a treadmill. Once you get on it may slow down or speed up, but it never stops for three years. President Gessel said that for him it was more like a 3 year long game of Whack-A-Mole.

What an accurate description of how so many of my days seem to go. I wake up in the morning, whack on as many moles that pop up as I can (never getting all of them), review my score at the end of the day, occasionally consider how to adjust my strategy to successfully whack more moles in the future, then sleep, wake, repeat. Sometimes it's fun whacking the moles and I do pretty well. Sometimes my arm aches, the mallet seems so heavy, and I can't seem to hit even a single mole. What a great analogy! If that was the only thing I got from the meeting it would have been worth attending, but that was just one sparkle of a many-faceted gem. It was brilliant!

If you are not familiar with Whack-A-Mole...from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whack-a-mole:
"Whac-A-Mole is a popular arcade rededemption game. A typical Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a large, waist-level cabinet with five holes in its top and a large, soft, black mallet. Each hole contains a single plastic mole and the machinery necessary to move it up and down. Once the game starts, the moles will begin to pop up from their holes at random. The object of the game is to force the individual moles back into their holes by hitting them directly on the head with the mallet, thereby adding to the player's score."

I went out a little early this morning and got in a couple of miles before meeting Larry and Wayne. I warmed up a mile up 1600 N them pushed the mile back down in 6:16. That was it for speed today. We just ran an easy pace on the 2000 N Lindon hill run, but it didn't feel all that easy. The ankle's holding up but is still a little weak. I'm still trying to ice it after every run and wear my neoprene ankle wrap for a little support and heat therapy during the day.

Larry, Wayne, Kevin and I ran the water tank hills this morning. We took it fairly easy to the base of the hills, with Kevin half-wheeling us most of the way. Kevin started up the first hill pretty strongly. He's always run the hills well, but he's been inconsistent with his training. I couldn't let him be the fastest up the hill today so I went with him. We ran together at a pretty strong pace (for us) until the top of the second hill. At this point Kevin seemed to back off the pace and I pulled away. I felt like I held a pretty strong pace (for me) all the way to the top of hill five. I headed back down to run up with the last runner. Kevin wasn't too far behind, with Wayne not far behind him, followed by Larry. We all ran the last bit of hill five together. What a team!

For my own future reference: To hills: 12:16, Up hills: 15:16, Total: 27:32

On the way back I decided to push the last mile. This is the same "fast mile" I ran yesterday that starts near the old WordPerfect buildings and comes down 1600 N then into my neighborhood almost to my house. It starts with a bit of gradual uphill, then a bunch of good downhill, with some level at the end. I ran it in 6:12 today, 4 seconds faster than yesterday. As Wayne said, it feels good to open up. It was also good to be cheered on by a group of 8 or 10 runners going up the other side of the road. Rich Lamoreaux and his wife were among them. We had seen them sprinting down the hill earlier as we were headed up. I think they were doing downhill repeats.

I'm easing some speed work into my training with these "if it feels good do it" fartlek runs. My goal is to maintain my weekly mileage at 50+ and add a little speed work, while waiting for my ankle to get back to 100%. I'd then like to add some "serious" speed work in the form of mile repeats and tempo runs. It's odd I guess, but I'm eager to feel the pain of effort instead of the pain of injury.

I'll be skipping the noon run today for personal reasons, and it's not because I'm lazy. 

I ran 10 easy miles with Wayne and Larry this morning, our new standard Thursday run...3 miles to Provo Canyon, then 2 miles up the trail, then back home. It was a beautiful morning, albeit a little more humid than normal.

We were asked to help drive some youth up to hike Ensign Peak last night. Jack Christianson, a Church history expert and motivational speaker, and member or our ward, was our tour guide. Two of our daughters were among the youth and we took our youngest daughter along, too. At the top, after learning about the history of the peak, we all sang the hymn "High on a Mountain Top", which was written about that peak. What a great experience. Even if you don't care about Mormon Church history and you just want a great view of Salt Lake Valley I highly recommend this short but fairly steep1/2 mile hike. Brigham Young and other pioneer leaders laid out the city from this hill two days after first entering the valley on July 24, 1847. It's 1.5 miles due north of the Salt Lake Temple. You can Google for more info.

I chose to do a little cross training this morning by playing basketball with my son Andrew and the gang (only 5 of us this morning) again. My ankle felt good, but my right hip was pretty stiff and sore until it loosened up. I'm glad I haven't played basketball for a while, because at times I sure needed some excuse for my play this morning. Andrew on the other hand played great. It was a lot of fun and I survived unscathed.

We were planning on running down South Fork from Trefoil to Fort Utah (about 17 miles) tomorrow, but tonight Larry called to see if I was interested in running the Diamond Fork run with the Sojourners. I've never ran or hiked that area, but I'm up for a new adventure. My ankle survived basketball well. I'll have to keep a close eye on the trail tomorrow and avoid any missteps.

I enjoyed this morning's Diamond Fork run with the Sojourners running club. There were about 30 runners that showed up for this roughly 18 mile mountain run. These included Wayne and Laryy who I drove there with, Bill Rieske from our relay team, Rich and Marci Lamoreaux who live nearby and who I stayed with at Boston last year, and Hawk and Cheryl Harper of Runner's Corner.

The run starts at Three Forks on a single track trail. Wayne, Larry, and I started near the back with Hawk and Rich and a few others. As we worked our way uphill, I enjoyed talking with Rich about the relay and about his experience running the Squaw Peak 50 the past two years, among other things. Wayne had pulled ahead of us and I didn't see him again until the gathering point at the top where the run moves onto a paved road. Larry had been running in front of us talking to Hawk, but then Larry stumbled and fell. He was okay, but when we started up again Hawk was in front followed by Rich and me and then Larry. Hawk pulled quickly away from us and Rich and I pulled slowly away from Larry and the other runners behind us.

There was a big uphill to start the paved portion of the run. Wayne, Larry, Rich, and I all started together with a couple of other runners. It wasn't long before Wayne started pulling ahead again. A little later Rich pulled away, too. I hung out in the back taking it easy on the big uphills. At the top of one hill we could a long downhill leading off into the distance and could see many of the runners strung out ahead of us. I was surprised how far ahead Rich and Wayne were ahead of me, so I told Larry I was going to try and catch them. He had a couple of other runners to run with so I took off. It took me almost a mile to catch them, a mile I ran at 5:46 pace. I was quite surprised to look down at my watch and see how fast I was going, but I was also quite pleased. There was a final big hill at the end of that mile, and we had been following the ultra marathon strategy of walking parts of the steep uphills, so I was able to recover by the top.

About that point the course leaves the road and starts on the trail back down past the Hot Pots and back to where we started. Wayne, Rich and I started out together for a while but when we hit the single track trail Wayne gradually pulled a little ahead of me and Rich dropped back behind me. This left me alone running down a beautiful shaded trail listening to the babbling brook and singing birds. This probably my favorite part of the run.

We caught up with most of the other runners at the Hot Pots, where some were taking a soak and others were continuing on down. Wayne and I didn't wait too long and decided to continue on down the last 2 or 3 miles. We passed some small groups of hikers and a couple of bikers and made pretty good time down to the cars.

Some of the runners, including Bill and Rich, had parked at a parking lot farther down and had run about a mile up to where we parked to start the run. I knew we'd have to wait a few minutes for Larry, and I didn't want Bill and Rich to think poorly of me for running less than them, so I ran down to the other parking lot and back up. When I got back all the runners were down and the snacks were out and Cheryl offered me a big bunch of grapes. They tasted way good, as did the cold bottle of water I had in the car.

On the drive down we stopped at Red Cliffs (I think) and took a short hike to see the ancient carving of a sun in a cliff. It was pretty cool.

I wouldn't want to drive this far very often (I love Provo Canyon being so close) but I really enjoyed the run today.

By the way, the distance is kind of a guess. My Garmin registered 17.22 miles. However, Hawk says that Garmins are notorious for being inaccurate on trail runs. He said some guys rode this course on mountain bikes and their odometers registered 18 miles. He also said that his son had measured 7.5 miles of it with a distance wheel and his Garmin only registered around 6 miles I think. So I'm counting 18 miles for the run, with an additional mile for run down to the other parking lot and back. That was closer to 1.5 miles, but I figure counting a Garmin reading of 17.22 as 19 miles is generous enough.