A.M. Moderate workout. 6:30 AM by myself. Temperature around freezing. Warmed up 4.12 in 29:43 to the trail gate by the Utah Lake. Then ran Provo River 5 Mile Tempo except started at the other end of the stretch. Figured it would work better for teaching me to negative split since that makes the first half a slight up, and the second slight down. It worked quite well. I hit the first mile in 5:40. It was still dark. The pace felt just right. I adjusted for the cold, leaves on the road, post-marathon residual fatigue, and a recent increase in mileage. So although it was slow, I was expecting to hit slower splits with more effort. Started to get into a good rhythm on the next 0.5, ran it in 2:47. Then hit the uphill section, and it took the wind out of my sails. Dragged myself through the next mile in 5:40 with 14:07 at 2.5. My legs felt like they were stuck in a low gear. The way things were going, it looked I was headed for about 28:05. I began to wonder if the marathon, and the sickness before it perhaps took more out of me than I thought, or maybe I was just underestimating the effect of the cold weather and the leaves on the road creating slippage. Next quarter was 1:27 recovering from 180 turn, followed by 1:24, a bit of an encouragement. This gave me 16:58 at 3 miles. Then the sun came up, it started getting warmer, and I hit the downhill section. This kicked me into gear. Next mile in 5:28, and the last one in 5:26 with the last quarter in 1:19. Total time 27:52, last 2.5 in 13:45. While the time was not particularly fast, nor were any of the splits in the middle, I was happy with being able to find myself not feeling that great half way through, yet still be able to run a 22 second actual negative split, which translates into a 15 second effective negative split adjusting for the profile of the course. Then ran 3.88 in 26:51 back to the house. This gave me 1:24:26 for 13 miles, 6:29.69 average. P.M. 2 miles with Benjamin in 16:11. Tested his sense of pace - did not give him any splits until we were done, and had him estimate every quarter. He was fairly consistently off by 5-10 seconds guessing a slower pace that he was actually running. Then 1.05 with Jenny and Julia in 10:29, and another 0.5 with Jenny in 4:32. Then 1.5 by myself in 10:24. No stroller today. The good news is that while in the late morning and early afternoon I was feeling like I had done something, by tonight I started to feel like a slacker. Not bad at all after 74 miles in 4 days.
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