What ever it takes!

My poor dog Nellie has been at Grandma's for the past 3 weeks and hasn't been able to get out for a walk so this morning I decided to take advantage of a perfect morning and take her for a quick little run.  4 mile loop around the dirt roads of Traverse Mountain, very slow 9:00 avg pace.  Legs are pretty sore from yesterdays run.

Ouch!  I'm going to feel that tomorrow.  I wanted to accomplish a couple of things this morning.  Find out what my downhill, with a tailwind pace should be for next weekend, and beat my legs up a little bit with time to recover.  I definately accomplished the beat my legs up part.  Not sure I know what pace I can run downhill for 13 miles though.  4 miles at that pace about killed me.  I would like to go out at 5:30 - 5:45 just to give myself a chance for a 1:15 if I'm feeling good but really I'm thinking I'll be pretty lucky to be 1:18.

Started from my work and ran up Big Cottonwood canyon  5 miles, took it kind of easy  going up, partially on purpose, partially cause it was really hard, turned around at 5 and pounded back down.  The top had some very steep sections where I hit sub 5:00 pace a couple of times but I felt really un-stable and thought I was going to fall on my face so I had to slow down a bit.  I've decided I'm 10 - 15 lbs top heavy, my legs could handle the pressure much easier if I was about 15 lbs lighter I'm sure.

Good workout, I might go for a bike ride tomorrow instead of run.  We''ll see how I feel later tonight.

Distance	Time	Avg Pace
1	8:10	8:10
2	16:53	8:43
3	25:34	8:41
4	34:25	8:51
5	43:46	9:21
6	49:03	5:17
7	54:35	5:32
8	1:00:11	5:36
9	1:05:54	5:43
10	1:12:28	6:34
Total	1:12:20	7:14

During my injury recovery I really learned to love cycling again, I used to ride bikes quite a bit until I had a very bad wreck in LoToJa and quit riding completely.  I turned down a ride last Saturday cause I had an 18 miler planned with Ryan, this morning I had a 14 on the schedule but really wanted to ride my bike.  I had quite the internal argument with myself last night about weather I should ride or run.  I finally realized the the fact I was having to argue with myself over something like that meant that I have serious issues.  The only reason I was even considering running is so I could put miles on the mileage board.  So this morning I went for a nice bike ride by myself.

Drove to work and then headed up to Wasatch Blvd, I was going to just make a big loop but started riding up Little Cottonwood canyon and decided it would be cooler, less traffic and much prettier to ride up to Snowbird.  It was a very difficult climb, there were times where I thought to myself I could be running up this hill faster than this, but it was very enjoyable, kept my HR up for at least a solid hour.  This ride was worth at least a 14 mile run.  Legs are a bit jelloy now, I may go out for a short lunch time run just to get the legs moving.

22.5 miles in 1:40

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Afternoon run, for some reason I thought a nice "easy" 6 miler for lunch sounded like a great idea.  Asked Ryan what his running plans were and he needed 6 so that sounded perfect.  I convinced him to go run outside instead of the Gym,  we headed out from the office under I215 to the CottonBottom, thought about stopping for Garlic Burgers and then headed down Highland drive, ran out 3 miles, thought I was going to die of heat exhaustion, begged some lady for some water and then headed back.  Net incline all the way back and brutally hot.  A mix between my downhill sprint yesterday,  my Snowbird hill climb bike ride this morning, and the heat was just to much.  Time to take it easy for a couple of days. 

8 easy recovery miles on the treadmill on some still sore legs.   Rolled out, then stretched with weights, stretched in the hot tub, stretched in the pool.  I'm about 2 inches taller now but feel really good.

8 miles in 57:25 7:10 avg pace.

4 miles on the treadmill while waiting for the light, ran 5 X strides in the last mile at < 5:00 pace.  Talked to Riverton Paul for about 10 minutes, he is still alive and looks great.

4 miles in 29:10, 7:17 avg pace

Went out to the JRP trail and ran 3 slow miles out and back for a total of 6.  Very nice morning, cool temps.  I hope it's this nice and cool Saturday morning.

6 miles in 47:45,  ~8:00 avg pace

Legs were a little more stiff than I'd like them to be 2 days before a race, I'll try swimming tomorrow.

2 weeks ago on my flight coming home from New York I helped a lady lift her bag into the over head bin, doing so I pulled a neck muscle, you know the one, where you can't move your head back and forth quite right for a couple of days.  Well for some reason it decided to start acting up again last night from giving my 4 year old a shoulder ride, so I had a terrible nights sleep trying to find a comfortable position for my head.  I was quite happy when it was finally time to wake up this morning.  The airlines should make a rule that if you can lift your own bag into the overhead bin you need to check it.

Plan was to swim, so I swam, easy 1600 meters.  Swimming unlike biking and running is something you forget how to do if you haven't done it for a while,  it took me about 6 laps before I got the rhythm right.

Good news, my legs feel totally sore free, probably the best my legs have ever felt the day before a race,  hopefully my neck problem isn't an issue, luckily I don't run on my neck.  I've also had stomach problems lately when I try to run fast, not sure why but the acid really builds up and makes me sick.  I'll just have to watch what I eat really closely today.

I’ve spent some time thinking about how I feel about this race and how I performed and have come to the conclusion that I’m thrilled with how I did.  My goal was a 1:15 but that was a completely arbitrary number that I pulled out of the air and I really had nothing to back up being able to do that.  Second goal was a PR, so hey that’s always nice to meet some goal, beat my ½ Marathon PR by almost 1 minute.

Slept OK last night, better than staying in a hotel somewhere with the entire family in the room, so having the race 10 miles up the road from my house was very nice.   Woke up at 3:00 am got ready, drove to Ryan Jonson’s house to meet him at 4:00, but I showed up 30 minutes early,  I Sat in his front yard stretching and jogging up and down the street for 30 minutes while I waited.

We drove to the buses got on what must have been an early bus cause it was the nice LaBus with nice seats,  The start area was kind of a mess, didn’t seem big enough for everyone there, I only got one shot at the Porta Potty, that worried me a little bit but I actually ended up OK.

The race was suppose to start promptly at 5:40 am, 5:40 came along and they announced that we still were waiting on a few busses.  Lot’s of grumbles from the crowd, I actually don’t mind waiting around a bit, plus it was still pretty dark at 5:40 so I think the road could have been dangerous in the dark, the only thing I was upset about was that I didn’t go to the bathroom one last time while waiting, but when your lined up on the front row you don’t really want to leave.

Lined up with Ryan.   The only “fast” person that anyone really recognized was Justin Park (I think that’s his name, he ended up winning), the gun went off about 6:00 am I would guess, I didn’t have my watch set to time.  I figured from the race report of the American Fork ½ that there would be people taking off at sub 5:00 pace but everyone was going pretty slow, I know cause I was in second position at about ¼ mile.  There were 6 of us in the lead group and everyone was very chatty, that bothered me cause I was thinking how hard it was to even breath and these guys were chatting about the weather.  Justin and another guy finally split away and took the lead, Ryan and 2 other guys started a little group of 3, and I created my own group of 1 about 50 yards behind them.

I was actually hitting my splits right around how I had thought I should,  5:30 – 5:40 pace,  kept questioning if that was the right pace, didn’t really know if I should go faster and try to catch up to Ryan, or go slower and save myself a little bit.  But all and all I felt OK, breathing was a little heavy but I was hanging in there.  I was really enjoying the canyon but kept telling myself it was going to get bad out of the canyon, at around mile 7 I passed one of the guys from the pack of 3, we chatted some, kept alternating position but eventually he fell back.  That gave me a little bit of confidence to know that I had actually passed someone,  this put me in 5^th overall, I seriously questioned being able to hold that position for 5 more miles but kept pushing through.  Once I reached the bottom of the canyon I could tell the heat would be an issue.  Heat over all other things is my nemesis, every race I’ve every done I just completely crash as soon as the sun comes up.  I’m not sure what I need to do to get over that, I’ve struggled with heat exhaustion as long as I can remember, whether it’s riding bikes, running or what ever.  Anyway, it got hot, and humid.  Then I got to the trail by the Golf course, I had no idea there were up hills on this course, I should have rode it on my bike or something.  That first hill, I seriously thought I was going to collapse, my calf started to tighten up and I realized then that 1:15 wasn’t going to happen even though I was still on pace to do so.

I switched from race mode to survival mode at around 8.5,  I was planning on this happening around the 10 mile mark but I was still happy I pushed through as hard as I did for that long.  I don’t remember a whole lot threw here, I passed a few of the full Marathon people, and passed 1 person that I thought was maybe one of the guys ahead of me but I couldn’t remember.  At 11.5 I got passed by someone, I tried to keep up but he had kicked into a different gear, and then at 12 a friend of his met him and paced him the rest of the way, I didn’t have a chance.

Turned the corner at 13 feeling pretty dead, but my wife tells me I always look slow coming down the home stretch so I decided to speed up and bit and put on a show for the kids, ran all the way across the street to high five my kids (they love that) and then I was done.

So the only thing I’m really mad about this race about is that somehow they really jacked up the timing, Ryan and I weren’t even on the printed result sheet so we went and complained, They had manually written my number down in 5^th place but didn’t have Ryan at all (he finished 3^rd overall at 1:13:59)  eventually they said they found both of our names in the computer with chip times (1:16:51 for me) but they weren’t on the official results sheet.  They tried to give Ryan’s 3^rd place prize away to someone else, but he went and complained and they fixed it, they did end up giving my age group plaque to someone else and told me they would make me a new one and send it to me.  I’m not sure how they made such a mess of it,  I only new 3 people, Me, Ryan, and Allie and somehow all of our results got messed up.  Allie took 3^rd overall but they tried to give it to someone else.  I think she was angry and left before all that anyway.

All and all, a good race, not quite as “easy” as I had imagined, I wish I would have ran the last 7 miles earlier cause I wasn’t expecting all those hills and turns at all.  Based on the fact I have been out with a stress fracture all summer and only been running for 4 weeks I’m very pleased with the result.  Who would have thought I could come back and get a PR that soon after recovering from a stress fracture.  Pretty sure I have a 1:15 in me but I don’t have any other races set until St. George Marathon due to work conflicts with all the other races coming up.

Distance	Time	Avg Pace
1	5:26	5:26
2	11:09	5:43
3	17:00	5:51
4	22:44	5:44
5	28:08	5:24
6	33:33	5:25
7	39:04	5:31
8	44:47	5:43
9	51:08	6:21
10	57:26	6:18
11	1:03:37	6:11
12	1:10:10	6:33
13	1:16:24	6:14
13.1	1:16:52	5:28
Total	1:16:52	5:53