Breaking the Wall

Started the morning with a 1 mile jog. Then went to Benjamin and Jennifer's swimming lesson. Afterwards drove to the Provo Canyon to do my long tempo run. I decided to do something slightly different today to have more downhill miles. 4 miles from Nunns park down to the Riverwoods shopping center on the trail, then back up, and back down to make 12 miles. The trail is very well marked - a mark every 1/16th of a mile, which is roughly 100 meters. I have verified with my wheel that the marks are correct. This makes it a great place for tempo runs as you can monitor a lot of things. 2 mile warm-up to the Nunns Park. It was unpleasantly cold, and somewhat windy, although quite bearable. Nevertheless, much less than ideal for a hard tempo, especially given the tendency of my form to dramatically deteriorate when quads cramp up. 1:30 for the first quarter. No wonder it felt so easy. Time to wake up. 5:43 for the first mile, then 5:40, 5:38, 5:37. 22:38 for 4 miles. Turnaround. Now I am going uphill. The wind keeps changing, there seems to be an equal balance of head and tail. That makes things slower, at least for me. The quads tense up working into the wind, and then it takes them a while to relax. You do lose quite a bit on those 180 turns. At least I do. 47 seconds for the first 200 after the turn. Then solid 45s on the following ones. 5:59 for the mile. Next mile 5:57, then 5:54. Not bad at all for the uphill. However, the next mile is slow - 6:10. That one tends to be a slower mile going up - the grade gets steeper, and the winds get stronger. Nevertheless, 24:00 for the 4 uphill miles, 6:00 average, and 46:38 for 8 miles. Another turnaround. Now I am shifting into a threshold pace. My mind is fighting it as usual. It is cold and windy. I do not want to do it. Finally the turbo engine starts to kick in. 5:32 for the first mile. Next one in 5:26. I pass joggers and walkers on the trail. There are not many, possibly due to cold weather, but enough to cause problems sometimes. I see two ladies walking. They are just about to enter a narrow section of the trail. This is going to be a mess. I just got into a good rhythm. I do not want to slow down, dodge, then speeed back up. Even thinking about it makes my brain hurt. I yell :Watch out, passing to give them enough warning to figure out what is going on. They hear me and step aside. I feel very thankful. Now my body starts telling me that this pace under those conditions is a little too fast for the marathon. That is actually a good sign. My body dares to think it could run a marathon that fast. It is thinking about a marathon. It was thinking about running a 10 K when I picked the pace up at the end of a tempo 10 miler last week. And because it is thinking about running a marathon, it does not want to start breaking 5:20s. Maybe it has something to do with the alternating winds and the cold temperature. 5:29 for the next mile. Now one more mile to go. I try hard to shift gears to sub 5:20, and my body really does not want to do it. Finally, with half a mile to go, I get a bit of a tailwind, and the air seems a bit warmer now that I am out of the canyon. I do two quarters in 1:19 and 1:17 to hit 5:21 on the last mile and 1:08:26 for the total. 2 miles back to the car for a cooldown. Now this is starting to feel like a long run - I feel the fuel gauge leaning towards low. Done, and enjoying the warmth of the car. Went for a run with Benjamin and Jennifer. Benjamin tried to drop her on the last 200 meters, but could not. She ended up running a PR for 200 (51), and 100 (24). Additionally, jogged a bit more in the evening which brought the total mileage for the day to 19.