Rhett

I headed out for a run thinking I would do 10, but then I thought of Slick's comment yesterday not to ask a question you don't know the answer to. I wasn't sure if my calf would holdup to 10 miles but was very confident it would be fine for 6, so I changed up my route and ran 6 at AP of 8:17. Then I did one really slow cool down mile. Calf feels good. 

If all feels good tomorrow maybe I'll do 10. 

10 easy miles up in the nice cool mountains of Flagstaff at 7000 feet. Calf is healthy but I'm still getting my running legs back. It's amazing how one week of not running even with cross training every day affects running. I'm confident it will all come back next week though. 

12 miles in the cool morning mountain air on trails here in Flagstaff. Still feeling the altitude but loving the temps. 

Back home in the heat. 10 slow miles.  Legs felt heavy after the weekend in the mountains. 

TM

1 mile warm up

6 miles at 6:30 pace

1 mile cool down

The most important thing is I survived running at a faster pace withou my calf freaking out on me. Now I need to take it relatively easy till race day. 10 days!

6 miles cautiously run on the trails this morning. After running fast yesterday I wanted to make sure my calf didn't act up again. I could tell it wasn't 100% today but it was ok. 

12 easy yet hot miles with Blake. 

I ran to work this morning and then got to run home in a rain storm. Since it doesn't rain during the day very often here, it was really fun. 

6 total miles. 

10 on the the trails.  Very muggy.

I have decided I will not be running the Full Monte Marathon this Saturday.  Blake has to attend a funeral and I was mainly just running it to support him.  I went back and forth a few times over the weekend, but decided I would be better served not taking my week of taper and then a couple weeks of recovery with my goal race coming up in just 7 weeks.

10 on the roads today

8 miles on the trails this morning. I decided to do something a little different and I ran hard on all the uphills and ran easy the rest of the time. That was a good workout. My lungs were burning on the last few hill sprints. 

10 on the trails. It was actually in the 70s this morning!

10 on the roads before heading out to Vegas to catch my flight to Salt Lake. I'm still heading up to Utah for the weekend even though I'm not running the marathon. I'm going to spend some time with my parents who live in Orem and my son who is a freshman at BYU. 

I couldn't resist the allure if the mountains this morning so I headed out for an early morning run up the mountain above my parents house. It got cold asi got higher so my fingers felt frozen for a while. After going mostly up for 12 miles I turned around and headed back. I ended up with 4,555 feet of elevation gain with a max elevation around 7900 feet. 

I bet it was really cold at the start of the Full Monte for Slick and Smooth. I definitely enjoyed my mountain adventure and the I went and watched BYU get destroyed by Wisconsin with my son Chase. 

10 easy on the trails

10 easy on the roads

17 slow on the trails.  I was out there almost 3 hours.  It was good to have time on my feet, but I can't believe it took that long.

10 nice and easy on the roads. I want to go really long tomorrow so hopefully my legs will feel fresh after todays easy run.

I woak up at 3:30 but didn't feel like getting out of bed, so I went back to sleep and got up a little after 6. I therefore only had time for a 13 mile trail run at a nice comfortable pace this morning.  Guess I'll be doing my really long run tomorrow. Probably the extra day of rest was the right call though.  My legs feel a lot better today than they did yesterday.

Today I got in my first really long run in preparation for my 100K next month. I left my house at 5 am with the plan of running for 5 hours. The first 20 miles I did on the roads then I switched over to trails for the last couple hours. My garmin watch broke this week so I was just running by feel and then looked at my Strava data when I was done. I ended up running 33.2 miles in just under 5 hours with an AP of 8:44 and a little over 2500 feet of elevation gain. The best part was I felt good the whole time and finished strong. I really worked on staying hydrated. I drank a 20 oz. bottle of electrolyte drink mix every 5 miles. I even had to pee twice on the run and again when I finished. That made me happy. I did still lose 6 lbs. though so I could have done better. 

This is the longest solo training run I've ever done. It seemed to go quickly though. 

6 on the trails.  I ran hard up each hill.  I was surprised how good my legs felt after such a long run on Satruday and a high mileage week last week (93). I have decided not to push my luck though and am going to take an easier recovery week this week. Then I will do 2 more high mileage weeks before I start my 2 week taper for the Javalina Jundred.

6 on the trails this morning. 

I ran to the track then did 4 x 400 with 400 m recovery jogs, then ran home.

Total run 7 miles. 

6 easy on the trails with multiple strides thrown in.  I've never done strides on the trails. I did them in areas that are less technical, but it was still a bit scary moving that fast over rocky, undulating terrain.  I don't know how those really fast guys move that fast over such technical trails.

I did a nice easy trail run followed up by some 100 m strides totaling 5 miles. After this recovery week my legs are feeling really good. Hopefully that will result with n a fast 5 k tomorrow. 

And I just realized I went over 2000 miles for the year today!

Today was the annual Lake Havasu High School 5K Cross Country fund raiser. I’ve done this race most every year since they started doing it 6 years ago. It is run on a golf course and is not an easy 5k. There are a lot of ups and downs, turns, and the worst part is all the sandy areas you have to run through. I looked back at my times and I had never broken 20 minuets on this course. 

After a couple mile warm up on the course, the race got underway right on time. As I looked down the line me there were a lot of runners I didn’t know. Dan was there and on a road 5k he can run right around 16 minutes, so I knew the best I could hope for was second. They shot off the gun and everyone took off. I counted 10 runners who got out ahead of me before it narrows tightly at the first turn. One was Dan and the others I didn’t know. They all looked young between 18-22. After the first turn there is a climb for a few hundred yards through some thick sand. I’ve learned to run that part easy because it can take a lot out of your legs. Then it moves onto grass for a while. At that point I started passing everyone. Within a half mile of the start I was in 3rd place. Dan was well ahead and runner 2 was already a good 100 yards ahead. I settled into a nice pace and just gradually worked with n closing the gap with 2. Ever so gradually it got closer and closer. A little short of 2 miles in I could tell he was starting to crack so I closed a little faster before a hill that was coming up and when we hit the hill I accelerated past him trying to look as strong and smooth as possible. I even in a nice controlled breath told him he was looking great as I went by. I wanted him to think I was feeling great and he didn’t have a chance to stay with me. To his credit he hung on about 20 yards back for a couple more minutes until he finally blew up. At this point Dan was too far ahead to see so all this had left to do was hang on to my pace and try to beat 20 minuets. I ran strong all the way through the finish and was delighted to finish in 19:45 and second place overall. 

After cooling down and chatting a bit with some of the local runners I headed out for some more running to get in my long run for the week. I had some time to kill anyways before my son had his race. He is on the middle school cross country team. I was able to get in another 12 miles before his race for a total of 17 miles for the day. He ran hard and finished in the middle of the pack for his race. He always is very optimistic and happy with his races. I’m just glad he is out there enjoying running.