Ran the warm-up with Ted from my house. Lots of runners on the trail today and yesterday, a lot more than usual. Thanks to the blog I have an idea why - it is the start of the 18 week training program for St. George. It is my hope that we can do enough education and motivation through the blog that there will not be a significant increase in the number of runners at that particular time period in the near future. One's training patterns should not have to drastically change just because a marathon is 18 weeks a way. I find the mentality of cram training particularly annoying. I often get asked which race I am training for when people find out about how I train. I have been perplexed about that question for a while. I think only now am I beginning to realize the significance of the question. It comes from the mentality of not training most of the time and then taking a plan out of a popular running magazine a few weeks before a race and trying to follow it. This is like creating a farming plan that begins shortly before the harvest time. Weeds is about all you can harvest that way. Can that mentality ever be broken? Rather than training one magic race we should train to be fit, and when we are, find a race to prove it.
After the warm-up 5x400 on the Provo River Trail with 200 very slow recovery alternating directions at the standard location (1 mile marker of the standard tempo run, which starts at Geneva Road and goes towards the Utah Lake). 74.1 - 73.3 - 71.8 - 72.3 - 69.5. Had a hard time getting started, but felt strong on the last one. Actually was not trying to run it in 69. Again, the splits show that the direction towards the Lake is about 0.5 faster.
Jogged a mile back to Geneva road, and ran the 3 mile tempo. I had two conflicting goals - to run faster with every mile, and to keep the last two miles under 5:30. The conflict was that on that road the second mile under 5:30 would make the third one under 5:30 a challenge for me. Splits by quarter - 1:23 - 1:23 - 1:21 - 1:21 (5:28) - 1:21 - 1:20 - 1:21 - 1:22 (5:24) - 1:22 - 1:22 (13:36 at the turnaround) - 1:23 (from a 180 turn) - 1:18 (5:25), total time 16:17.6. Third mile was hard, but I managed to hold on. Jogged another mile back to the standard location and did the same 5x400 again. 73.3 - 73.8 - 72.0 - 72.7 - 68.4. Pushed hard on the last one. Then ran the cool down with Ted. It was not much of a cool down. Ted was chasing the 6:30 guy. I decided not to ruin the party. We averaged 6:24 pace for the last 2.36 miles, and finished the quarter in 1:30. Ran with the kids in the afternoon.
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