A.M. 12 total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 4, Julia 2, Jacob 2, Joseph 3, William 1.
Jenny did a little workout. My intuition told me she needed scheduled fast running in the middle of her regular run. She's had a rough couple of years, actually more than a couple, when she hit her growth spurt. Growth spurt is good for boys, but often wreaks havoc for girls, and it did for her. There has not been a day in the last three years when we did not have to solve some kind of a problem - chronically sore muscles, back pain, fatigue, being unusually out of breath at relatively slow speeds, quick dehydration, and others. The side effect of that is that her training has been at a very slow pace - around 8:30 - 9:00. Some of the mileage at her fitness level can be done in that zone, but not all of it. The challenge in getting her to go faster has been her perception that that pace was all she could do. So I had a thought - she needs to spice things up in the middle of her run, and had her run a quicker 0.5 mile stretch from 2 to 2.5 which is a slight downhill with nice tailwind. Even though I knew that she was capable of more, to remove the psychological pressure I told her I only expected 7:30 pace, but hoped to see something slightly quicker. I did see something quite a bit quicker - 3:17 for 0.5, or in other words 6:34 mile pace. Her cooldown after that confirmed my intuition - she was running 8:20 pace and thought she was resting.
After Benjamin's 3 K experience I wanted to know what was up with his fitness. So I had him do our 2 mile uphill course from 800 N bridge to the house. To remove unnecessary psychological pressure I did not give him any specific pace guidelines except that it had to be faster than 6:00 which was more or less a no-brainer. I also told him that if he did not feel good we were not going to finish the interval. I let him set the pace and just followed trying to be not much of a factor. I divide the course into splits of 0.5, but they are not exact as in wheel-certified, and I know the last one is actually 0.51 from a wheel measurement. His splits were 2:51, 2:45, 2:45, and 2:52 for the uphill one that I know to be 0.51, total of 11:13.9. He said he felt quite a bit stronger than in the 3 K, and was not sure if he felt stronger or not than in the 2 K. All in all, this is a good indication that his fitness is returning. It was also good to get a reliable fitness measure on a course I trust.
On the positive side of things for me I did not get dropped this time and ran faster (although I probably still would have been dropped had Benjamin been 100%), and actually felt much better than when we did it on Aug 22. So hopefully that means I am in better shape. We'll see in the Big Cottonwood Canyon Half Saturday and in the TOU a week later.
William started the run a little bit faster than normal, so we decided to encourage him to try to break 9:00. He had permission to spank Benjamin (I was pushing the stroller which made it diffucult to approach me), which greatly helped the cause. His first quarter was 2:20, then 2:18, 2:09 and 2:05 - 8:52.9. Again, the same wheeled out-and-back course, no hand holding. So William is now a sub-9:00 miler - first time we've had a kid that went sub-9:00 before turning 5. Now we can say that in our family if you cannot break 9:00 in the mile we make you wear a diaper - the only people that have not done it yet are Stephen (age 3) and Matthew (8.5 months).
Now I suppose the "wear a diaper if you are not sub-9:00" is not that big of a deal if mom and dad are reasonably fit, you have a kid or two that are little, or if they are spread enough apart that they are either wearing diapers or are old enough that sub-9:00 is no big deal for them. But for a family with 8 kids with the oldest being 14 I imagine that is rare.
P.M. 5 miles.
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