A.M. Started with Ted and Jeff. The plan was 20 miles with the last 15 hard. Ran to Bridal Veil and back. We met a guy named Tyler and he joined us from 3 to 5. Ted ran the first 5 then turned around. The first 5 were slow (39:11), HR was not getting up, and the pace felt fast. I told Jeff to keep my HR at 152 no matter how slow of a pace this produced. It ended up not producing that slow of a pace after all. But it was hard. I think the problem was that I was out of fuel. Maybe those guys at the BYU that were selling Starving Student cards noticed something real after all. So we did the first 5 of the tempo up the Provo Canyon (from about Orem Center street to about Bridal Veil) in 31:03 (1:10:14 at the turnaround). I had to tell Jeff my HR was 154-155 a few times, but he was pretty good at pacing otherwise. It did help that he had his HRM on as well. It felt hard.
Then we turned around, and discovered that for my HR to hit 152 we needed to go 5:36-5:40 pace on the downhill. So we did. This was for some reason harder than maintaining the same HR uphill. What is interesting is that both Jeff and I felt the same way about the effort. Next 5 miles in 28:04. Then it was time for Jeff to run fast. Yes, I know, he had just run 5 miles at 5:37 average with 15 on the odometer, and I am saying it was time for him to run fast. But he has progressed a lot in the last two years and 5:37 down Provo Canyon in a long run is not fast for him any more. So he took off and averaged 5:20 pace for the last 5. I was starting to feel the fuel issues and all I could manage was 6:00 pace. I could tell in particular during the turns - had a hard time accelerating when I lost the momentum. Legs were feeling shaky. So normal pace was a bit faster than 6:00, but I was losing more than normal on the turns. HR was often at 151 and I had to focus to bring it up to 152. However, in the last mile I was able to focus and bring it to as high as 160 in the last quarter. Last mile was 5:51.
So I ended up with 2:08:17 for 20 miles, 6:24.85 average, last 15 in 1:29:06, 5:56.4 average. I was happy to average sub-6:00 for 15 with the Provo Canyon uphill. Last 10 in 58:03, 5:48.3 average. Was happy about that as well - three weeks ago I could not break 1 hour on the same stretch even though I did not tempo for 5 miles uphill prior. P.M. 1.5 with Julia in 14:00. Benjamin and Jenny ran 2 miles ahead of us in 17:16. 0.5 with Joseph in 5:12. Wore Crocs.
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