![](/u/sasha/picture.jpg)
| Location: Orem,UT,United States Member Since: Jan 27, 1986 Gender: Male Goal Type: Olympic Trials Qualifier Running Accomplishments: Best marathon: 2:23:57 (2007, St. George). Won the Top of Utah Marathon twice (2003,2004). Won the USATF LDR circuit in Utah in 2006.
Draper Days 5 K 15:37 (2004)
Did not know this until June 2012, but it turned out that I've been running with spina bifida occulta in L-4 vertebra my entire life, which explains the odd looking form, struggles with the top end speed, and the poor running economy (cannot break 16:00 in 5 K without pushing the VO2 max past 75).
Short-Term Running Goals: Qualify for the US Olympic Trials. With the standard of 2:19 on courses with the elevation drop not exceeding 450 feet this is impossible unless I find an uncanny way to compensate for the L-4 defect with my muscles. But I believe in miracles. Long-Term Running Goals: 2:08 in the marathon. Become a world-class marathoner. This is impossible unless I find a way to fill the hole in L-4 and make it act healthy either by growing the bone or by inserting something artificial that is as good as the bone without breaking anything important around it. Science does not know how to do that yet, so it will take a miracle. But I believe in miracles. Personal: I was born in 1973. Grew up in Moscow, Russia. Started running in 1984 and so far have never missed more than 3 consecutive days. Joined the LDS Church in 1992, and came to Provo, Utah in 1993 to attend BYU. Served an LDS mission from 1994-96 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Got married soon after I got back. My wife Sarah and I are parents of eleven children: Benjamin, Jenny, Julia, Joseph, Jacob, William, Stephen, Matthew, Mary, Bella. and Leigha. We home school our children.
I am a software engineer/computer programmer/hacker whatever you want to call it, and I am currently working for RedX. Aside from the Fast Running Blog, I have another project to create a device that is a good friend for a fast runner. I called it Fast Running Friend.
Favorite Quote:
...if we are to have faith like Enoch and Elijah we must believe what they believed, know what they knew, and live as they lived.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie
Favorite Blogs: |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 4642.68 | 441.67 | 263.47 | 86.80 | 5434.62 |
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 187.10 | Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 487.82 |
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Night Sleep Time: 2468.67 | Nap Time: 145.16 | Total Sleep Time: 2613.83 | |
| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.25 | 2.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.35 |
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A.M. 15.1 with minor events in 1:42:09. Events were - ran with Ted for the first 10.1, 11 degrees at the start, good traction on crunch snow, two VPB stops with catch up at 5:55 - 5:35 pace (depending on how much snow was on the ground), and picking it up on the last 0.25 with Ted (1:27) and last 0.5 (2:56) at the very end. Fixed two bugs in the mileage board (I hope) - triathlete swim now will not bump them up into the spaceship mileage category, and the rollover from the lost sheep from the last month/year should not make them leaders for a couple of days in some cases in the current month/year mileage. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:51, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:17, 1.05 with Julia in 11:20, and 0.7 in 4:45 alone. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.80 | 0.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 21.40 |
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A.M. Almost uneventful 15.1 in 1:50:18. The events were "balmy" 14 degrees compared to 8-11 yesterday, having Ted around for the first 10.1, nice crunchy snow with good traction, and a tempo pick up on the last 0.6 with the last 0.5 in 2:53. First 10.1 were done in 1:17:14, 7:38.81 avg, we've been so engrossed in the conversation that we did not even bother to chase down the 7:30 guy. On the last 5 I picked it up a bit, total time was 33:04, 6:36.8 avg.
P.M. Cross-country skiing in the Hobblecreek Canyon while the kids were sledding. Today is Joseph's birthday, he turned 3. He loves sledding. So we figured we'd give him a bit of a present. Did not bring The Toy, used landmarks and a regular watch to judge the distance. Took it easier starting out, went up for 14:59, figured it was about 1.5 off the landmarks. 12:11 on the way back. I need to start waxing my skis. I do not know that much about cross-country skiing, but I think there is something wrong if on a certain stretch you run up at 6:00, with the same effort you run at 5:00 down, you ski up at 9:00, and with the same effort you ski down at 8:00. Going down 3% grade I cannot just coast, I would come to a standstill in 5 seconds, and going down 2% I cannot go into pushing off with both poles at the same time. Forget skating, down or up. At first I thought maybe the road was really bad, or maybe my arms were just too weak, but now I am more inclined to think it is the lack of waxing. I found a small patch of ice, and was able to accelerate skating on it, and if felt much different. 1.05 with Julia in 11:07, 2 miles with Benjamin in 17:05, Jenny joined us for the first 1.5 in 13:12. Additionally 0.25 from Benjamin's Boy Scout meeting place home, and from home to church.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.13 | 3.60 | 3.75 | 0.00 | 21.48 |
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A.M. A very eventful morning. It started at 12:10 AM. Jacob was teething, and refused to sleep. So I took him downstairs and worked. After a bit over 1 hour he was done crying and fell asleep. Then I was too wound up to sleep, so I read the scriptures. Finally laid down and fell asleep. Another event was forgetting it was Thursday, and that Michelle was going to join us at 6:00 AM. So I arranged with Ted earlier to run at 6:30 AM. Michelle, of course, was on time. So she had some time for a nice warm-up. We decided we would run fast when we could. I had an unplanned tempo pick-up for about a quarter due to a VPB stop, and then the road was clear, so Michelle kicked into gear and that extended the tempo to 0.5. Then we ran 2.1 stretch in 13:04 with a slightly negative split and a 180 in the middle. The road was mostly clear. On the last mile, I challenged Michelle to break 6:20 knowing that two things would happen. It would be easy and doable, so she would succeed. She would not think it is easy, so she'd kick seriously into gear, and after the first quarter or half at a good pace, she would feel up to a raised bar. It worked out as planned. She hit a quarter in 1:29, the bar was raised to catch the 6:00 girl, then 1:31, then Ted pulled ahead a bit to do his standard Ted-rabbit thing, and we ran 1:28, and 1:27 with a college kick on the last 60 meters at a pace that felt like 5:20. This gave me 1:19:30 for 11.61. Then it was time for more miles to finish the 15.1. After not sleeping, and not having anybody around to push the pace, I was perfectly happy to trot along at 7:20-7:30 pace wishing for the run to be over, and looking forward to a breakfast and a good nap. Then I met Tyler. He said he was planning to do a 4 mile tempo and invited me to join. Even though at that point I wanted little else other than breakfast followed by bed in that order, I remembered a principle. When you are invited to do something out of your comfort zone, do it! Many times while serving a mission there was a door I did not want to knock on for one reason or another. And I learned that those doors had a very high probability of having somebody who was very interested behind them. So I decided that I'd always knock those doors, on a mission and afterwards. An invitation to do something hard is often an opportunity for a blessing of some kind. Since there was no good 4 mile stretch anywhere on the trail, we decided to do 6x1000 (actually 0.625 going off the magic triangles to be more precise) on the dry stretch between the Union Pacific and 800 N bridges. It has a fairly steady about 1% grade. To get the tempo effects we kept the rest very short, about 40 seconds, barely enough to lose the momentum, turn around and jog back to the start. There were a couple of snow patches. I did not like them. They broke the rhythm, and at that point, rhythm was very important. The times were: 3:31 (up) - 3:24 (down) - 3:33 (up) - 3:24 (down) - 3:32 (up) - 3:22 (down). This was good training for the third leg of Del Sol. I was doing OK on fuel, but the neural drive was seriously lacking, as you would expect. Ended up with 19.23 miles for the run. P.M. VanGoGo had a coolant leak. Took it to Computune. The manager, Todd, knows his cars like a good shepherd knows his sheep. At least for VanGoGo, he could probably recite 90% of its maintenance history without looking at the record. Turned out the problem was a bad radiator. We are going to get it fixed.
VanGoGo is a GMC Safari 95 van. It got its name partially from Kip Kangogo. Interestingly enough they have actually had a brief meeting on one occasion in the Slate Canyon. We even wrote a song about naming VanGoGo (we name our cars as you can tell): When Zhu got too crowded we needed a van. So we bought a Safari to drive our small clan. When we pressed the gas pedal, it made Zhu seem slow. So we thought that maybe it could be VanGo. But then we remembered that Van Gogh was weird. We thought of his paintings, and the dreadful lost ear. We thought of a runner, a Kenyan we know. With this inspiration we said: "VanGoGo!"
It now up to 191K miles. Second engine, third transmission (we did two of those, but one was fortunately under warranty). When we get another kid, it will be time for an upgrade to GMC Savannah. But until then I want to see how far VanGoGo can go. Ran back with Benjamin and Jenny, 2.25 in 20:12. Benjamin was complaining that Jenny would not let him catch the 9:00 guy. Then Jenny got into a good rhythm on the last mile, closed with a 1:57 quarter, and beat the 9:00 guy by 3 seconds.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.60 |
| A.M. The stomach flu that hit our kids finally made its way to me. Fortunately, last night I noticed that there was a problem and did not eat dinner. So I had nothing to throw up, otherwise it would have been messy. Woke up around 1 AM, was not feeling good, drank some raspberry tea, felt better, drank some Powerade. Then had a hard time falling asleep. Decided running 15 would be counterproductive due to starting depleted and the difficulty of post-run carb replenishment, so just ran easy 10.1 with Ted in 1:18:38 to get a breath of fresh air. Nice balmy morning - 37 degrees! Handled a phone call with a client, then took a nice 2 hour nap to regain strength. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:55. Had him guess the splits, no feedback the entire time. He thought he was going 8:40 pace all along, this is a good sign. Then 1.5 with Jenny and Jared. Jared was a bit sick, and struggled. So we had to stop and wait for him a couple of times. Jenny's time was 12:58, not counting the stops. Then 1.05 with Julia in 11:40. Then 2 on my own in 13:59. The stomach is still giving me problems. Was able to eat one light meal, regular breakfast along some with crackers and honey sandwiches. Also was able to drink a fruit smoothie, and Powerade. Held everything down so far, but it was asking to come up during the run when I'd pick it up to 6:40 pace or faster.
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Night Sleep Time: 5.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.66 | 3.75 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 24.66 |
| A.M. Ran with Ted and Tyler. Slept fine last night, woke up only once to drink some raspberry tea and go to the bathroom. Was originally planning on going only 15 figuring the carbo-depletion from the stomach flu and eating less would make 20 counterproductive. Ted and Tyler were doing the Uneventful Half. The start was rough, had a hard time getting going. However, felt stronger and stronger as I went along. We kept picking up the pace. With about 2 to go Ted picked it up to about 6:10 - 6:20 pace. I really dislike that pace. It feels like driving through the mud. It is almost as hard as 6:00, and I do not like seeing 6:something splits when working that hard. At sub-6:00, and especially sub-5:45 I start feeling relaxed, like I am flying, and I do not mind working a bit harder to get that feeling. So with a mile to go I picked it up so we'd be sub-6:00. That felt good. Finished with the last mile in 5:44, last quarter in 1:22. Total time for the Uneventful Half was 1:31:41. Drank some Powerade to refuel. Amazingly I somehow found a way to compensate for the effects of the stomach flu and extract the energy out of something. My body was telling me it could handle the whole 20 productively, so I went for it. It started raining pretty hard. I ran the first 4 in 26:55, 6:43.75 avg, and then my body said it felt good about 6:00 to the end. So I did 5:59, 5:55, and closed with 5:47 feeling progressively stronger. Last 3 in 17:41. Total time for 20.11 was 2:16:17, 6:46.61 avg. P.M. Lots of snow on the ground, the kids ran slower. 1.5 with Jenny in 14:52, 2 with Benjamin in 17:20, and 1.05 with Julia in 12:05.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Got good night sleep, went to church, stayed awake for all meetings, then after some missionary visits came home and took a 2 hour nap. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.25 |
| A.M. Jacob kept us awake all night. Did not get a lot of sleep. Ran with Ted and Jeff this morning. Very slippery I first did 5 on my own, the watch got messed up, but it was a bit slower than 40 minutes. Then 8 with Ted and Jeff, and 2 more with Ted, total of 1:21:41 for 10 miles. So that gave me around 2:02 for 15 miles. P.M. Josse came and showed me some stretches for my extra tight right hip. Will give those a try. Took a 2 hour nap. Ran with the kids. 1.5 with Jenny in 13:27, 2 with Benjamin in 15:51, and 1.05 with Julia in 10:02. Then 0.7 on my own in 5:15. |
Night Sleep Time: 4.50 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.70 | 0.40 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Uneventful 15.1 in 1:52:19, first 10.1 with Ted in 1:14:41. Still slippery, although not as bad as yesterday. Was able to beat the 7:30 guy. On the last 0.4 finally got out on some dry ground, still patches of ice, but much better. Picked it up, ran 5:45 pace. Did the magic hip stretches later. P.M. 3 miles cross-country skiing in the Hobble Creek Canyon. When we came back, 2 miles with Benjamin in 15:56. Jenny and Julia ran with Sarah. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.83 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.83 |
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A.M. We got a serious snow storm. However, at 5:00 AM it was still decent. Ted was being usually late due to snow problems. I waited, then decided to start without him. Went about 200 feet, fell down. Never had an event happen that soon! Got up. Saw Ted about 0.14 into the run, turned around. We ran 10.1 on the trail in 1:18:50. After the first two miles we began to wonder what kind of time we would get in Painters if the roads are like this (we were in about 4 inches of snow). So we picked it up for a mile at a tempo pace. It was one of the better miles of the course, and we did it in 6:29. I've given the issue some thought and realized that I really do not enjoy anything very much anymore that does not require significant effort, either physical or mental. There are things I do not mind doing, such as watching a movie, but that is where it stops. It is always at the level "I do not mind" vs "I would really like to". Sleep would be one exception, I always look forward to it. I get so much more joy out of doing things that require effort that whatever I can get out of those that do not just pales in comparison so much that they are not worth the hassle and/or the money unless something else of significance is being accomplished at the same time. P.M. Ran 2 miles in 15:12 on the trail, then ran 2.2 to the BYU indoor track, did a mile time trial with Benjamin which turned out not so good - he was 3 seconds ahead of 6:40 pace after three laps (0.6), but he was overdressed and got too hot, this frustrated him enough to just stop and call it quits in the middle of the fourth lap. But he PR'ed on 1000 meters en route - 4:06. Ran a bit with Benjamin afterwards outside, he got a talk about mental attitude and Winston Churchill's "never, never, never give up". We will try again today (Thursday). Jenny ran 1.6 easy, and Julia ran 1 mile. Also ran a small errand to the church and back. Did the magic hip stretches.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.11 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.11 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Another uneventful 15.3 in 1:59:55. Nobody fell down. 16 degrees, lots of ice, but enough traction to average sub-8:00. Had our Sasha and Ted uneventful run talk show. After discussing upcoming Dubai and the possibility of Haile being beat by a pacer, we talked about Haile's business success, how much good you can do even with a little bit of money, the Kiva program that allows ordinary folks to provide small business loans to aspiring entrepreneurs in developing countries, the waste of the welfare program that fails to prevent people on welfare from buying alcohol and tobacco, then the discussion turned to the history of the Soviet Union, politics in Russia, and the grip of the Russian mafia on the Russian livelihood today. In reference to Revelations in the New Testament I mentioned the whore that sat upon many waters, and from then on we discussed the current American politics and Hillary Clinton in particular. Dropped Ted off at 13.3, and added another 2 miles by myself. A.M2 2.1 to the BYU indoor track, then 1 mile warm-up with Benjamin, then 1 mile time trial. With the help of shorts and t-shirt, as well as Winston Churchill Benjamin did much better today. 6:32.2 with the splits (by 0.2) of 1:17 - 1:19 - 1:19 - 1:20 , and 1:17 for the kick. New mile PR. Benjamin's progression in the table below: Age | 1 Mile
| 5 K
| 5.9 | 7:58.8
| 27:25
| 6.9 | 7:31
| 25:07
| 7.9 | 7:09 | 23:18
| 8.9
| 6:32.2
| 22:14
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His current 5 K PR is relatively weak, he was not feeling quite 100% when he set it, and it was done on a slow course. A month prior to that he ran 13:57 flat 2 miler closing it with a 6:43 mile, which until now was his 1 mile PR. I imagine also based on his Thanksgiving 800 in 3:00.6 that he really has about a 6:20 mile in him if he was racing kids outside. The indoor dust confuses him, and he starts getting a false sense of fatigue. But his 7:09 last year was also done on the indoor track with comparable dust/lack of kid competition challenge. So it would be fair to say that his true mile speed improved by 37 seconds in a year. Ran another 0.7 to Computune this time for a tour for the kids. Learned some things about a car shop. Later took the kids to the Love To Learn store in Salem to get their prizes. Benjamin got a solar car kit for $18 for his new mile PR. Did the magic hip stretches later in the afternoon.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.95 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.20 | 21.15 |
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A.M. Uneventful 15.1 in 1:56:13. First 10.1 with Ted. It warmed up on the last 5, and the snow got so slippery that I was down to 8:30 in some places. At the end I figured I'd break 40:00 for the last 5. Then I realized that the only way this was going to happen was if I ran 5:00 pace on dry sections, which was doable because there were not that many of them. So I got 0.2 of VO2 Max mileage, and 39:59 for the last 5. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 18:47, Jenny joined us for the first 1.5 in 14:33. Cross-country skiing for 3 miles in the Hobble Creek Canyon. The arms felt stronger, got good push off, although went slow most of the way as the snow was sticky and the road was usually rough. Chased three free roaming cows. The kids went sledding. 1.05 with Julia after we got home in 11:38. Did the magic hip stretches.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.12 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.12 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.72 | 6.38 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 26.10 |
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A.M. 1 mile with Julia in 10:34 to see the fence ice sculpture on the trail. Then 5 mile shakeout by myself in 37:08. Will do the long run with Ted and Jeff later in the afternoon. Did the magic hip stretches. P.M. Ted got hurt snowshoeing, so it was just Jeff and me. It was warm enough for shorts, probably about 40. But still lots of snow on the ground. We ran 10.1 in 1:09:44. Got good traction, so I thought I could do a tempo run. Took Benjamin and Jenny for a run, we did 1.5 in 13:21, then Benjamin closed with a 3:37 0.5. Ran 8 more, including the Provo River 5 Mile Tempo. The snow kept getting more and more slippery as I went along. Did the first 2.5 in 15:27 and thought that was slow until I got through the second half which took 16:00, 31:27 for 5 miles, 6:17.4 avg. I am hesitating if I should really call this a tempo because I was not working super-hard although I was tempo-focused. Decided since I was fresh, and the remaining 1.38 had more traction I'd just keep the effort to the end. Plus I needed to get home fast for missionary visits. So I ran that part in 8:28, 6:08.12 avg, with the last mile in 6:03, and the last two quarters in 1:29 and 1:25. Needless to say the last quarter was the driest. This gave me 39:55 for 6.38 of tempo, 6:15.39 avg, and 2:18:09 for 20.1, 6:52.39 avg. Felt very good.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.15 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.15 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Since church now starts at 11, slept without the alarm, figured I'd be awake long before it is time to get ready naturally. Woke up around 6:00 - 6:20. Home teaching visits after church took a bit longer than I expected, but they were good and I was able to get a nap in late afternoon anyway. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.72 | 0.00 | 1.50 | 0.00 | 20.22 |
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A.M. Ran the first 8.02 (we missed the turnaround by a bit) with Jeff and Ted. Well, actually a good part of it was without them as I had 3 VPBs and then took forever to catch up due to slippery conditions. The last stop was with about 0.8 to go, and then I started booking it because I wanted to catch them before they got to my house. With about 600 to go it was finally dry enough to go 5:20 pace. With about 150 to go an SUV passed me, and then tried to pass Ted and Jeff, but could not get around them. So I passed the SUV back. It always feels good when you can pass a car running. Then I passed Ted and Jeff as well, and just kept going to time my last quarter, which was 1:20. Last 0.75 was 4:17. Then we ran to the snow field and did stride measurements. All of us had even length strides off either foot this time. Jeff went home after that, Ted ran to 10.02 with me. Then I added 5 more. Towards the end started feeling like a tempo, so I did pickups on dry section. Timed a 200 in 39 down 1% grade, and then ran the last quarter, which had some icy spots, in 1:23. Total time for 15.02 was 1:47:17. Did the magic hip stretches. P.M. 1 mile with Julia to the ice sculpture and back in 10:31, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:25, 2 with Benjamin in 17:57 - his foot was hurting, and 0.7 in 4:50 by myself. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.12 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.12 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.60 | 1.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 21.10 |
| A.M. Slept in and missed Ted. Ran alone. 15.1 in 1:47:43. It was 23 degrees. The road was good at first, could go 7:00 pace, then it got slippery and I slowed down to 8:00. Picked it towards the end. Ran from the DI bridge to my house (1.5) in 8:40. It was a mix of marathon pace and threshold, depending on the road conditions. Sometimes 5:20, sometimes 6:20. P.M. Ran 1 mile with Julia in 10:16, then 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:08. Cross-country skied in the Hobble Creek Canyon - 3 miles. Then ran to the church and back twice. First time to teach the ESL class, second time to retrieve the forgotten hat - total of 0.5 miles. Ran out of necessity, as it was cold. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.85 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 18.85 |
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A.M. 8 F at the start. 10.1 with Ted in 1:19:05. Ted helped me jump-start Zhu afterwards. Zhu had not been driven in a while, so the battery lost the charge. We had to drive VanGoGo through the front yard which was covered with snow to get to Zhu. Zhu was parked in the other unpaved and not shoveled driveway, and it was not possible to push it out from there on the road. Fortunately VanGoGo has a 4-wheel drive. The jump start was the biggest event of the morning. P.M. Ran 1 mile with Jenny and Julia in 10:26. Jenny had a cough so she ran shorter and slower. Then drove VanGoGo to Jiffy Lube for the oil change and other scheduled maintenance. Ran home with Benjamin, 2.25 in 20:04. Then ran back to get VanGoGo in 16:56. Drove it to the parking lot on Geneva Road. Ran 0.5 to check out the trail to see if you could cross-country ski on it. Looked good. Cross-country skied on the 0.625 stretch out and back twice, 2.5 miles in 19:29, 7:47.6 avg. I did stop the watch on the turnarounds, as those take quite a while on skis. The trail is mildly rolling, and had hard-packed snow with a a couple of asphalt patches that you could avoid by skiing through the snow on the side, only a small loss of momentum. I tried to skate, but there was not enough glide in the skis for that, and pushing off with both arms did not work well either. So I just did a regular running-like stride. Nevertheless, averaging out my time, this is 14:31.7 for 3 K which is a 2 minute PR. Of course, the old PR was set at the age of 11.8, but on a well groomed course, and at low elevation (Moscow, Russia). On the other hand, I suspect the skis I have now (even though I got them for $20 from Paul) are quite a bit better than the wooden skis I had then. I did really enjoy being able to just put my skis in the van, drive, take them out, put them on, then take them off, put them back in the van, and drive straight home. In Moscow I had to drag the skis down 4 flights of stairs, then walk with them 0.1 miles to the bus stop, wait 20 minutes for the bus, ride the cold bus for 30 minutes often standing up and holding the skis the whole way, then walk some more from the bus stop. Then repeat everything backwards when done, except now sweaty. Added another .25 to teach the ESL class at the church and back. Again had to run because it was cold. Teaching ESL can be a lot of fun, especially in settings when you are not allowed to use the student's native language. My student was having a hard time with the Z sound, they do not have it in Spanish. After a demonstration that did not seem to work I finally decided to explain how to say it - do it like a bee, bzzzz, not like a snake - sssss. Turned out she did not know what a bee was or a snake for that matter. So I showed her the snake, explained about different types of snakes with hand demonstrations and snake noises, she got that one. The bee was harder. I explained how bees make honey, she did not know what honey was. I explained that a bear likes to eat honey, and showed her the bear. Still not much progress. Then I decided to cheat a bit, knowing that the Spanish words for insect and flower sound very similar to those in English, and explained that bees are insects that land on flowers and then make honey, which is sweet stuff that you can put on bread. That worked. Then we got the Z sound down. Did the magic stretches later in the evening. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.11 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.11 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.15 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.15 |
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A.M. Ted came in and announced that it was 3 F outside. I put on some extra clothes. Then Jeff came. We started with 3 laps around the block (1.05) with only one purpose in mind - for me to avoid a VPB stop. It turned out to be a wise decision as my body lived up to the statistical patterns of the past. Afterwards we ran 4 out and 4 back. The conversation, appropriately for the weather, turned to the Russian history of the 20th century. The weather and the discussion reminded me of the places where one of my grandfathers died, and the other spent 18 years before being released by Khruschev's decree after Stalin's death. Among other things, I recalled the story of how my grandmother went to see Stalin's dead body twice to be 100% sure he was really dead before she felt free to speak her mind. Afterwards, added 2.1 around the block with Ted, this time to help him avoid a VPB. Then 4 more on the trail by myself. Total of 15.15 in 1:57:17. Julia had read all of her Bob books. So Sarah made her some more books with stories about a fat pig and a bad pig. Then Benjamin decided to join the fun, and on his own wrote and illustrated a book titled The Slow Runner. The story reads as follows: The slow runner was slow. The slow runner lost a race. The slow runner was sad. The fast runner came. The fast runner trained the slow runner. The slow runner won a race. The slow runner was not slow. The End. P.M. 1 mile with Jenny and Julia in 11:38 - both had a sore throat. 2 with Benjamin in 17:27 - his foot is doing better. 2 more by myself in 13:59. Magic stretches.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.60 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Ran with Ted. Very slippery. We invented a new term "to get grandpa-ed", or "to get grandped". It means a guy who has grandchildren is beating you in a race. Ted has plans to enter the grandpa division around the age of 44. My plan is to do it at 48. During the discussion I also set a goal to run a sub-3:00 marathon as a great-grandpa, which could happen when I am around 70. Met Adam with about 2 miles to go, he joined us. Turned out he had fulfilled the scripture earlier in his run: "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25). The interesting coincidence is that right before the run I had read 2 Nephi 2. Dropped Ted off at 10.1, ran another mile with Adam and 4 more on my own. The last 5 miles were exceptionally slippery, I went 9:00 pace in a lot of spots and lost ground to the 8:00 guy, but then gained some back once I got out on drier ground. 1:59:48 for 15.1. P.M. 1 mile with Jenny and Julia in 10:49, 2 miles with Benjamin in 16:44, drive to St. George, then 2.05 in 13:43 with 0.5 in 2:45 pickup to feel race pace. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Race: |
St. George Painters Half Marathon (12.95 Miles) 01:10:29, Place overall: 3 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.60 | 0.00 | 12.95 | 0.00 | 23.55 |
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A.M. Raced Painters Half in 1:10:29, third place after Logan Fielding (1:08:57) and Nick McCombs (1:09:00). The course measured 12.91 on my GPS, 12.92 on Logan's and 12.95 on Ted's. Ted's never measures long. So for now we'll call it 12.95, given the fact that the start was about 0.15 further ahead of where Steve Hooper and other St. George guys thought it should have been. Details to follow later. More details. Around 30 degrees at the start but it kept getting warmer. I called out for Mr. Little Bad Legs to identify himself. He did not hear me. Then Ted noticed his legs and pointed him out to me. About 1 minute into the race I found myself right next to him, we talked, and it was discovered that it was indeed Glen Tucker as Steve suspected. But I think the name Little Bad Legs is now going to stick. I love those 5:30 pace introductions. Incidentally, that is how I met Paul Petersen as well. We started at a brisk but comfortable pace trading quarters. In addition to myself, Nick, Logan, Dave, Little Bad Legs, and Karl Wilcock, a talented high schooler that needs to run more miles, were in the pack. This was a perfect picture moment - four FRB team members in uniform in the lead pack with police escort. Karl looked a bit scared, so we did not make him take his quarters. Everybody else did their turn up front religiously. We went through the first mile in 5:35, followed by a 5:31. Then we hit the downhill, and picked it up - 5:19. It flattened out, but Nick pressed the pace, and we ran a 5:24. Somewhere around there we lost Karl. Then Nick put some serious pressure up the little hill, he climbed it as if that hill was not there. This lost Little Bad Legs, and made Dave show some signs of struggle. I started hurting as well, but acted normal in response to pace changes. Now we were on some rolling hills in the neighborhood, and Nick was pressing the pace relentlessly. 5:25 on the next mile which was uphill. That hurt. Now downhill. We are moving. Next mile in 5:11. Dave fell back a bit, Nick gapped me and Logan. I told Logan to go with Nick if he felt confident he could keep up, otherwise hang around with me for a while and trade quarters so we would not both end up in no man's land. He felt good enough to go with Nick. As we hit the bridge coming off the downhill and charging hard, the 90 degree turn on an icy surface did wonders. Nick went down then quickly got up like a hockey player, Logan did exactly the same, Dave and I saw it and eased off enough to avoid their fate. Then Dave suggested we should close the gap. I told him it was a bad idea. That was all I had the breath for then, but here is the reason. In a half marathon you should almost never forcefully close the gap. There are a few exceptions - e.g if you think the competitor had just made a move he would not be able to sustain, or if you are approaching a section with strong headwind, or if you are within a mile and a half of the finish. In distances up to 10 K it is all about how bad you can hurt. In a half marathon, it is the opposite. Any pain that is past anaerobic threshold pain makes you run eventually slower, you pay for it. So Dave and I traded quarters for another mile, then Dave fell back. We hit the Bloomington loop. It did not seem to have one flat spot - you were on a constant roller-coaster. I focused on running steady and naturally. Even though Dave was only a few seconds behind, I felt confident about my position due to the laws of nature. I knew that as long as I hit around 5:30 flat equivalent I was safe. There is something about half-marathons. Things rarely get better between 8 and the finish, and they definitely do not get better if you fall behind. Hit 10 miles in 54:12 (by GPS, course mile markers were fairly consistently 0.15 short), so 26:59 for 5 miles, was quite happy with that. By that time I was also fairly certain that the course would be short. This made me lose focus a bit. I was not excited about running a fast time any more because I knew it would be about a minute fast. So from then on I was just coasting, just running naturally and not trying to fall asleep. Slowed down to about 5:35 pace once we got back on the trail. I think that section had a mild grade because going the other way the same effort gave me 5:20, and I did not feel I had lost that much steam. Lots of runners coming in the other direction, many of them were cheering. That was nice. However, dodging them was an interesting exercise in eye-leg coordination. I remembered a story my mission companion once told me about how while he worked as an EMT his boss made him drive an ambulance at 90mph on the wrong side of the freeway. Finally made it to the finish, safe in 3rd place, but Dave made a heroic effort and closed the gap to 9 seconds. Still had some miles left for the workout, decided to use them wisely. Ran back, paced every blogger I could find. Messed up a couple of times, and mistook two fast blonds for Marcie. She would have beaten them on a good day, but I did not realize she was struggling. So I paced two Marcie-looking runners for a while, and only afterwards realized that they were taller than 5-1! But on the bright side of things they got to see the blog commercial. Total of 20.25 for the run.
P.M. 1.1 with Jenny and Julia in 11:09, then 2.2 with Benjamin in 17:15 in St. George on the 0.55 loop near Steve's house.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Got good sleep. Did not need a nap in the afternoon. Had an interesting discussion after the missionary correlation meeting in the evening with somebody who served a Russian/Ukrainian speaking mission in the Ukraine. We discussed the use of zhe. It is a Russian word that means nothing, and is randomly inserted into spoken and sometimes written sentences for flavor and emphasis. If you do not use it, your speech sounds dry. If you use it improperly, you sound like a foreigner. There are no rules for the proper use of zhe, you go completely by feel. So very hard for our missionaries to learn. As we spoke, I had a bright idea of how to teach this concept. Imagine J. Golden Kimball speaking. Every time he would insert a certain word for emphasis, that is when you say zhe in Russian!
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. We got our share of snow. 10.1 with Ted in 1:19:35, form drills, then 2 with Benjamin in 17:47. Then Sarah told me the oats lady called and said our 400lb of oats we were supposed to pick up in Lindon on Saturday was getting snowed on. So she hurried there while I stayed home with the kids. Unloaded the oats after she got back, then ran 1 mile with Jenny and Julia in 11:53. Jenny still had a cough, so she is running less. Then added 2 on my own in 15:56. P.M. Provo River 5 Mile Tempo on cross-country skis in the dark in 43:58. There was quite a bit of snow to work through. In the first and the last half mile it was clear enough to go 8:00 pace. I went 9:00 pace the rest of the way. For our Family Home Evening activity, packed the oats into buckets.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.21 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.21 |
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A.M. Uneventful Half with Ted in 1:41:18. The biggest even was a VPB stop for me followed by 4 miles of catching up. The road was so slippery that 7:45 was all I could do. Then 2.1 with Sarah in 23:41. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:36. Then 3 by myself in 22:31. Jenny and Julia ran 1 mile with Sarah. The event of the night was giving Zhu a jump start from VanGoGo for which VanGoGo had to drive through lots of snow front yard - the 4wd has to be good for something after all. Zhu's internal light got accidentally left on after Joseph had been playing in the car and the battery was dead before we noticed it. Jump starts when it is below 20 F outside are always a lot of fun. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.11 | Nap Time: 0.02 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.55 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 17.55 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Ted and Jeff in 1:21:08. Very slippery still, although better than yesterday. We got beat by the 8:00 guy and we did not care as we were lost in the discussion of performance enhancing drugs and Quality X. P.M. Had an odd night with lots of happenings, so the run consisted of fragments. 2 miles with Benjamin in 17:18. After we found Jenny's shoes, 1.75 with Jenny in 17:04. Then 1 mile with Julia to the ice sculpture and back in 11:09. Then dinner and the Daily Dose ESL class at the church (ran there and back with Julia, total of 0.2) followed by family scripture study. Then 2.5 in 18:45 by myself afterwards.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 21.35 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 21.85 |
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A.M. Ran 15.1 in 1:58:58. First 10.1 with Ted. Temperature was 15 F. Lots of snow on the trail still, slippery, had a hard time with 8:00 pace. There was one dry stretch where we did a couple of pickups at 5 K race pace or so, around 5:00/mile if Ted's GPS was right. It did feel like it could have been right. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 18:57, Jenny joined for the first 1.5 in 14:48. 3.75 cross-country skiing on the Provo River trail out and back on a 0.625 section in 28:46, 7:40.27 avg, which gives a 23:50 5 K. This would be a 5 K PR for cross-country skiing. The entire time I was in a running-like gait when you move both the arms and the legs as if you were running (as opposed to pushing off with both arms and gliding, or pushing off with both arms and only one leg at a time). I had to because the skis did not glide very well. I wonder what I could do on racing skis that glide optimally and a well-groomed track. Would anybody familiar with cross-country skiing venture a guess? The effort felt like 6:30 pace running, but if I put any more, it did not seem like I was going any faster. Afterwards ran a mile with Julia in 11:29. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.02 | Total Sleep Time: 0.15 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.15 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.15 |
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A.M. Uneventful 15.1 in 2:00:00. First 10.1 with Ted and Jeff. The events were the heat wave of 29 degrees, and a very slippery trail on the last 5 miles which slowed me down to 8:40 pace in a lot of places. P.M. A heat wave has come - 39 F! 1.5 with Benjamin, Jenny, and Jared in 13:20. Jared was a bit behind with 13:37. Had an adventure with a couple of feisty dogs that got off their leashes. Told the kids to run ahead. Stopped and chased one dog until it started running away from us, but then it resumed the bad behavior once I started going in the planned direction. Finally decided to stop and throw a snowball at it. Being able to hit the dog with a snowball gave me a boost of confidence in my throwing skills (I've always been a very much below average thrower), and it also convinced the dog that I meant business, and it ran back to its owner. On the way back, I armed the kids with snowballs just in case, but both dogs were very timidly hiding behind their owners this time. Added another 0.5 with Benjamin and Jared in 4:29. Then 1.05 with Sarah around the block in 11:27. Pushed Jacob and Joseph in the double stroller up to this point. Left the stroller at home, and added 2 more in 15:28. Julia ran 1.05 with Sarah. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.11 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.11 |
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| Race: |
SLC Track Club Winter Series 5 K (3.107 Miles) 00:16:25, Place overall: 4 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.80 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 3.10 | 20.90 |
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A.M. Raced the SLC Track Club Winter Series 5 K in 16:25.1 taking 4th place after B.J. Christensen (15:44.0), Aleksander Thomas (16:02.1), and Steve Ashbaker (16:24.2). Adam Wende was 6th with 16:54.0, Ted was 8th with 17:16.6, and James Barnes was 13th with 17:46.3.
When we got to the start, Ted's car read 19 degrees. Fortunately there was no wind. Unfortunately there was still some snow and ice on the race course. Did some jogging around, then Rebeca Walter after realizing that the race was starting at 10:00 AM and her work was starting at 10:30 AM decided to just run hard on the course by herself and asked us if we wanted to pace her. So Steve and I paced her through a 20:25 5 K for our brisk warm-up. Did some more jogging around, realized it was now warm enough to run in shorts (24F), got dressed appropriately, and jogged to the start. The race started at Saltair and went east on the frontage road along I-80 for 2.5 K out, then back the same way to the finish. Essentially flat course with some very insignificant rises and drops, nothing greater than 0.75% grade. Went through the first mile in 5:08. B.J, Aleksander, Albert Wint and Steve Ashbaker were ahead of me. By the mile mark, I finally caught up to Steve. That 5:08 mile felt hard. No surprise - it is the fastest mile I've run since Thanksgiving. We worked together to close the gap on Albert. 8:07 at the turnaround, we had to come to a complete stop, and then accelerate back to pace through some slush. B.J had 7:47, Aleksander 7:51. We passed Albert, he saw our FRB commercial, and we kept on moving. 10:34 at 2 miles, that was a 5:26 mile. Wow! I did not think it would be that slow. But Steve was still with me, and B.J and Aleksander were within the correct amount of distance ahead, so I figured this was just a slow mile, nothing to worry about. Now we started seeing oncoming traffic of runners. This made it harder to run in the clear grooves, and we've been hitting slush and ice more often. Steve pressed the pace. At first, I said to myself just make it through a minute of this, then back off. I made it through a minute, it was painful, painful enough to where I would have been forced to back off in the past. But something has changed. I did not have to back off, and just kept moving along. We made it to 3 miles in 15:54, 5:20 mile, not bad at all for the third mile through all the slush and snow. Then it was time to kick. Steve picked it up, I hung on most of the way. He had a little bit more umph in the last 30 meters or so and ended up beating me by 0.9 seconds. Ran the course again for a cool down, plus some distance to Saltair. Got some food in, then drove back with Ted and Steve. P.M. It was pleasantly warm in Provo, 40F. 2 miles with Benjamin in 15:00, Jacob woke up and I had him in the stroller the rest of the run, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:02, 1 with Julia in 10:44, and 6 through more snow than I hoped for still pushing Jacob in 47:35. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Good good sleep. Went to church. Got a nap in the afternoon. In the evening, heard the news about President Hinckley's passing away. What a great life he lived! It is hard to comprehend. He has done a lot in 97 years, and he finished strong with the last 12 years serving as the President of the LDS Church, and being actively involved in the work. He sure practiced the doctrine of enduring to the end. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.30 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.30 |
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A.M. The heat wave continues. It was 40 F this morning. A very pleasant temperature. Wore shorts and two long-sleeved shirts. Ran the first 10.1 with Ted. The trail was slippery. We fell behind the 8:00 guy by over 2 minutes in the first 3 miles. Then we got some light and dry ground, and we caught him with vengeance. What a drama! It was more entertaining than a movie. We would hit a dry spot and close 30 seconds on him. Then he gaps us on ice. Then we close again on a dry spot. Finally we are ahead of him, but the battle is not over - there is some ice up ahead. Finally, on the last 0.4 it was dry all the way, so we really showed him who's the boss and beat him by 1:03 finishing 10.1 in 1:19:45. All of this fun while spending no money and building aerobic fitness as opposed to sitting in front of a TV and just getting fat and lazy. Much good can be accomplished when you realize that joy comes from simple things. Dropped Ted off, ran some more. About 1.7 miles later ran into Tyrel Jensen, a BYU middle distance runner, best mile in 4:05. Ran another couple of miles with him, then headed home. Ended up with about 15.8 in 2:00:39. P.M. End of the heat wave. Got a nice snow storm, temperatures down to 25 F. Slick roads. 1 with Julia in 11:47, 2 with Benjamin in 17:42, 1.5 with Jenny in 14:27. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.12 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.12 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 22.55 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 22.55 |
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A.M. Ran with Ted at 5:00 AM. His knee was hurting, he went only 6 miles. The roads were pretty slow, although they did not look too bad. We ran 6 miles in 54:05, got beat by the 9:00 boltushka. Boltushka is a Russian word that means "talkative woman", but Sarah and I use in a variety of other ways. One of the meanings is "a recreational female runner that runs primarily for social reasons". Thought I'd be able to go much faster after dropping off Ted, but no luck. Ended up with 2:16:53 for 16.1, 8:30.12 average! Got beat by the 8:30 quicker boltushka. P.M. 2.1 with Benjamin in 16:58, Jenny joined us for the first 1.75 in 14:35. The funny thing is that Jenny's average pace (8:20) was faster than on my run earlier in the morning. Julia tried to run, made it about 0.1, but her knee was hurting. Cross-country skied, tried the Provo River Trail by Geneva Road, did not like it, tried the Provo Canyon, did not like it either, but got a total of 4 miles in. Ran the church and back later in the evening for the ESL class - it was unpleasantly cold.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.12 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.12 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 18.60 |
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A.M. The trail was covered with snow today. Ran with Jeff at 5:10 AM. We got beat by all kinds of boltushkas. 10.1 in 1:26:40, 8:34.85 average. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:12. The trail was quite clear. Provo City plowed it well. Tried to cross-country anyway, made it to almost a mile out, and then one of the poles got caught in the fence, and it broke the handle. Managed to make it back nevertheless, the broken handle was an annoyance but not as a big of a deal as I thought it would be. Total distance of about 1.7. Then ran with Jenny around the block, 1.75 in 15:43, added another 1.75 by myself in 12:55. A little later 1 mile with Julia in 11:19, plus some errands on foot.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Had two interesting dreams. In the first one, Google managed to put together a very strong team that beat our team by 10 minutes in Del Sol. I woke up before finding out our finish time, then decided to go back to sleep to find out, but then as I woke up more realized that the next dream would not have that information. The next dream was very different indeed. I was running on the Provo River Trail and saw a tiger. Climbed on a tree, tried to call 911. The cellphone was not working. Finally got through, but the operator was not very helpful. Then some people came and said there was no tiger. Others said there was. I began to wonder who was right, and woke up. There was no tiger indeed. Cold morning. Ran 5 miles with Sarah around the block in 52:34. Then decided to chase down the 8:00 guy for a challenge. I was 12:34 behind him, but I had 10.1 miles to close the gap. Would not be a challenge on a normal day, but with the snow and ice it was interesting. However, the cold temperature in combination with the abundance of asphalt patches made the task reasonably possible. I decided the 8:00 guy had a name - Ded Moroz, or Granpa Frost, the Russian version of Santa Claus. Half way through the last 10.1 of the run Ded Moroz started getting concerned, because I had closed half of the gap. However, it was getting warmer, and the roads were getting slicker, so he had that to his advantage, and was hoping he'd be able to hold me off. With a mile to go he saw me coming, and knew he was doomed unless he made me trip on ice. He tried, but I was smart enough to slow down under the bridges, and then quickly accelerate on the dry spots. Finished in 1:59:57, beat Ded Moroz by 51 seconds, 1:07:23 for the last 10.1, 6:40.3 avg, 7:56.62 avg for 15.1. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:34, first 1.5 Jenny was with us (13:28), 1 with Julia in 11:35, then 2 alone in 14:57. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.14 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.14 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 23.70 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 24.70 |
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A.M. Tomorrow is going to be a very busy, so I decided to do my long run today. Ran the first 10.1 with Jeff. At first, the roads were so slick that we were trailing boltushkas - 43:37 for the first 5.05. I had never run 20 miles at the average pace of slower than 8:00, and thought today would be the day. On the way back at first things did not look so good, and then we ran a mile in 7:46. I could not believe it, double checked my calculations, yes, indeed it was 7:46! Something happened to the snow and we got more traction. We were able to run 2 more miles under 7:30 and finished 10.1 in 1:22:53. Dropped Jeff off, ran the second half alone . Now I was excited about catching Ded Moroz, the 8:00 guy. At first things looked great - closed 42 seconds in the first 2 miles, thought I'd get him easily. But then it started snowing, and the trail got very slick again. So for the next two miles I lost ground. I thought perhaps today Ded Moroz would win. But then I got out on a good stretch of road where the snow composition was just right and gave much better traction. I took advantage of the opportunity and ran a 6:12 mile. The rest of the way was decent - it kept snowing, and the snow started covering the ice well enough to be able to run 7:30-7:50 pace. I ended up with 2:39:46 for 20.2, 7:54.55 avg. P.M. 1.5 with Jenny in 13:28, 2 miles with Benjamin in 17:12, and 1 with Julia in 11:15.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.30 | 3.80 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 15.10 |
| P.M. A very long day, but managed to squeeze in a 15.1 mile run. Warm day, around 35 F, ran in shorts. A lot of snow has melted. First 2 with Benjamin and Jeff in 15:35, Jeff went another 10.1 with me. We did a tempo pickup on a dry section for 1.05 in 5:50, 5:33 pace. Hit 12.1 mark in 1:28:30. Then went for 3 more to finish off 15.1. After about a quarter realized it was dry enough to run sub-6:00, so just went for it. Ran the last 2.75 in 16:07, 5:51.6 avg. Slipped on snow, but then made up on dry ground. Total time for 15.1 was 1:46:22, 7:02.65 avg. Jenny and Julia ran there regular distances with Sarah. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
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Got good sleep. Went to church. No nap in the afternoon - was busy with home teaching. Decided to study Bulgarian. Figured it sounds very odd to Bulgarians that a guy with my last name would not be fluent. Like a guy with the last name of Williams not being able to speak English. Sarah joined me. Due to our Russian background we were able to read and understand a lot right away. We read a general conference talk. I kept a version of the same talk open in separate tabs in Firefox in English and in Spanish. I would not have even bothered with the English version, but the Spanish translation omitted a phrase with the Bulgarian version retained. Otherwise, with the help of Spanish, I could understand everything in the Bulgarian version, but Russian and Bulgarian are different enough that I would definitely not have been able to understand it without my cheat sheet. To me Bulgarian sounded like something spoken by a very drunk Russian. To Sarah it sounded like just like some advanced Russian that she had not yet learned.
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Night Sleep Time: 10.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.20 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.20 |
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A.M. Another morning of chasing Ded Moroz. We got some new snow. It was slick, but not too bad. First 2 miles were very slow (17:36), after that we were fairly consistently sub-8:00, and even low 7:00 in some really good places. Ran 10.1 with Jeff in 1:19:07, then added 5 more. Total time for 15.1 was 1:59:03. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:24, 1 with Julia in 11:08, 1.75 with Jenny in 17:14, another 0.35 alone in 2:42.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 22.35 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 22.35 |
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A.M. Slippery roads but not as bad as in the last few days. 1.75 with Sarah in 19:36, then 14.2 alone on the trail in 1:45:47, 7:26.97 average. Much better than the recent Ded Moroz chases. Got a punching bag yesterday. A little family history about a punching bag. My great-uncle, whose name incidentally is Sasha Pachev as well, lived in a small village near Sukhumi, a town in Abkhazia on the shore of the Black Sea. He had a son. When he went to school at the age of 7 he was getting beat up by older kids. Uncle Sasha solved the problem by getting him a punching bag. Soon enough his son was not getting beat up anymore. We do have a different purpose for the punching bag, though. I want to see if hitting it might activate my arm muscles, which I hope in turn will result in the improvements in the nervous system in general. It is good for Benjamin as well as he happens to be exceptionally feisty some days. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:44. Jenny joined for the first 1.5 in 13:12. 1 with Julia in 10:48. We saw the BYU team. Somehow all those good looking young men got Julia, who is only 5, thinking about dating. She said to me: "Daddy, what did you do when you were a teenager?" I replied that I ran. She clarified: "No, that is not what I mean. What kind of girls liked you?" Then we went to the Hobble Creek Canyon. The kids were sledding, and I cross-country skied 3 miles. The road was very rough the entire way, however there were a couple of good spots in the parking lot and around it, which gave me a chance to discover that I could skate at a good speed with my new poles. The entire time I did not realize that my old poles were too short. So I never got a good push off from the arms. I just thought my arms were too weak. With the new poles I could skate up a 3% grade and feel strong, while with the old ones I felt like I was going to stall even on a 1% down. I think now I am beginning to understand why I beat everybody in my school, and even in my district, but then got beat by some ridiculous amount in the Moscow championship. In the school and in the district everybody was skiing on whatever they happened to have. In the city championship I was racing serious skiers that had proper gear. One day I should go to Soldier Hollow and see what I can do a well-groomed course with my new poles. Ran random errands for 0.4 miles. Afterwards we went to vote. We spent 2 hours in line. Our friends watched our kids. We considered going home to avoid the socks/hand-written Russian dictation punishment for missing the bed-time curfew, but figured that fulfilling our civic duty was a noble exception. We ended up being only 5 minutes late.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 18.60 |
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A.M. Easy 10.1 with Jeff at 5:10 AM in 1:14:19. Ded Moroz was ahead of us in the first 2 miles, but then the road cleared up, and we woke up on top of it, so we caught him quickly and left him in the dust. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:51. She was wondering if we'd see the BYU team on the trail again, but we did not. Then took VanGoGo to Computune to check the power steering system and the coolant leak (another one), and ran from there with Benjamin and Jenny. 2.25 in 19:55. Jenny thoroughly beat the 9:00 girl with Benjamin's encouragement closing the last mile in 8:28. Then 5 more by myself in 36:56. Some slippage on the trail, but a lot less compared to my recent Ded Moroz adventures. A random errand - 0.25 later in the evening.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.11 | Nap Time: 0.01 | Total Sleep Time: 0.12 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 21.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 21.00 |
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A.M. Ran alone. Uneventful 15.2 in 1:46:13, 6:59.28 avg. The roads were decent, although still quite a bit of snow and ice. But they were decent enough to average sub-7:00. One of those rare special times lately. P.M. Eventful afternoon. Logistical problem. Tasks: take kids for their runs, take them to the library, retrieve VanGoGo from the car shop, get some running in, and go cross-country skiing. Solution: put the skis and boots in Zhu, take the kids to the library on foot via a scenic route. Sarah picked up Julia at 1.12 mark (12:10). We then continued on to the library with Benjamin and Jenny reaching it in 21:03 (2.03 miles). I continued to Computune (3.05 in 28:29), turned out they found nothing wrong with power-steering, and they could not reproduce the noise that bothered us. I demonstrated the noise, they will be diagnosing it tomorrow. Took VanGoGo to the library, left it there for Sarah, now she had a way of taking them back home, took Zhu to the Provo Canyon, skied 2.5 miles in 27:29, the conditions were not good, either deep snow, or hardly any snow, cannot push off well with the poles. Also ran a short errand (0.25 miles) later.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.30 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.30 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff. More snow today. He is getting married in a couple of weeks. As we were talking about it, we noticed that somebody drew a heart on the snow. How appropriate! Dropped Jeff off at 10.1 (1:19:16), and ran some more. Ran into a guy named Drew and joined him. Then we found Tyler, and he joined us. Drew then continued to BYU, and Tyler and I ran to my house. About 15.3 in 2:00:55. P.M. A warmer evening. Some snow melted. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:00 pushing Jacob in the double stroller. Then 1 mile with Julia in 10:16, and 2.5 alone in 18:03. The last 2.5 were somewhat of a steeplechase without the hurdles, but with a water pit nevertheless. Landed in a big deep puddle of water under the bridges 4 times.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.13 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.13 |
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| Race: |
SLC Track Club Winter Series 10 K (6.214 Miles) 00:32:59, Place overall: 3 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.40 | 0.00 | 4.00 | 2.21 | 23.61 |
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A.M. Raced SLC Track Club Winter Series 10 K in 32:59.6, 3rd place after Aleksander Thomas (31:46.5) and BJ Christensen (32:22.7).
Brought Benjamin and Jenny with me to the race. We picked up Steve Ashbaker on the way as well. Warmed up with Steve and Adam 2 miles. The weather was close to ideal, about as ideal as you can expect it in February - about 34 degrees, 8mph cross-wind which I thought at first was going to be neutral, but it ended up overall favoring the second half. Benjamin and Jenny were both in the race with the following compensation package from Daddy: Benjamin (age 8)
- Appearance fee - $2
- Bonus for finishing the race - $2
- Quality time bonus - $1/minute for the gap on the 50:00 guy
- Competitive bonus - $0.10 for each defeated male competitor, $0.05 for each female
Jenny (age 7)
- Appearance fee - $2
- Bonus for finishing the race - $2
- Quality time bonus - $1/minute for the gap on the 1:00:00 girl
- Competitive bonus - $0.20 for each defeated male competitor, $0.10 for each female
I knew that given my focus on base and virtually no speed work aside from a few races and tempo pickups, my threshold pace would be very high and would feel very comfortable, but I would not have very much room above it both in the dimension of how much faster I could go, and in how long I could stay there. So the plan was to run threshold pace to 4 miles, and then if I felt good, go into the 10 K race pace misery zone and try to make up some time. I figured the threshold was somewhere around 5:20. Steve and I worked together from the start. In the first mile there were a couple of guys with us, but they fell back shortly before the mile mark. First mile in 5:20, second in 5:20 as well. 2.5 K in 8:18, 3 K in 9:57, 4 K in 13:18. BJ and Aleksander were around 5:05, and it did appear that Aleksander was pressing the pace while BJ was just hanging on hoping for the best. Felt some unfriendly wind, but it was not a killer, especially when trading leads. On the third mile the wind picked up, or maybe we just changed the direction a bit to make it more unfriendly. We slowed down to 5:29. I think we slowed down more than we should have, though, because I felt a bit of an easement in the effort. Shortly before the mile marker 3 I moved up and pressed the pace a bit. 16:44 at the 5 K mark. The 5:20 guy is ahead, not good. Oh well, hopefully he would not put too much distance on us. Thinking maybe 33:25 is possible with a strong last mile and if we do not lose focus in the next 2. 20:05 at 6 K, 21:32 at 4 miles. That is an improvement - 5:23 mile with a 180 in the middle. I was encouraged. Saw Benjamin around 19:10 into the race, and Jenny around 20:37. Not enough oxygen to figure out how fast they were going, especially now that Steve started to press the pace and take me right into that 10 K misery zone. However, still enough oxygen to calculate that the 5:20 had 12 seconds on us. That is better, we lost only 3 seconds, and the next mile would have no headwind (hopefully), and no 180 turn. 22:40 with 2 miles to go. 7 K in 23:25. That was 1 K in 3:20, a bit faster than 5:22 pace. Lost some ground on the 5:20 guy, but looks like were are not going to lose any more, Steve is pressing the pace pretty hard trying to lose me. I am experiencing what one could call tepid comfort, like you are sitting in a bathtub, the water keeps getting colder, but the room is even colder than the water so you try to stay in the bathtub for as long as you can. In this case, Steve's back was the bathtub, and he was trying to lower the temperature of the water as much as possible. 7.5 K in 24:59. We are still behind the 5:20 guy, but we are now 1 whole second ahead of the 3:20/km guy, very encouraging! And we closed 5 seconds + gained one in just 500 meters! 5 miles in 26:48. That is progress. The 5:20 guy has only 8 seconds on us. We ran the last mile in 5:16. 1 mile to go - 27:55. I add 5:20 to that, this gives me 33:15 and brings a smile to my face. I know that barring a major disaster I have a 5:20 mile in me with the help of a kick, and 33:15 would give me a 24 second 10 K PR for a non-aided course. But Steve is not happy with that, he keeps pressing. I see Saltair in the distance and it keeps getting bigger fast. I like that. 32:02 at 6 miles. We just ran a 5:14 mile, and we are headed for a very low-33:00. I was just about to open my mouth to share the good news with Steve, but three things precluded me: a) I was out of breath b) it was time to kick c) I realized that there was a remote chance of dipping under 33:00. So, time to kick. I do not like that. The bathtub was still quite comfortable even though the water kept getting colder and colder. Very appropriately, I had the frozen Great Salt Lake in my view. A kick is like jumping from a lukewarm bathtub into a frozen lake. Steve shifted gears, I am still there, the water got colder, but I am still in the bathtub. If I am going to do my best today, I need to get out of the bathtub. So I reluctantly move alongside Steve with about 250 to go positioning myself for the final dash. My instincts tell me now is the time to strike. Out of the bathtub! I floored it for about 50 meters knowing that once you get up to speed you can run off the momentum for a while even if the anaerobic bear jumps on your back. Steve did not respond. I am approaching the clock. It says 32:52, 32:53... I was already satisfied with the race, and felt like just coasting to the finish, but somewhere deep inside me there came an urge to break 33:00. It worked against my will. I felt the finish line pulling me towards it, except my legs had to do the work to accomplish the pull. I leaned forward right as a crossed the finish line to make sure I would get every fraction of a second available to me. 32:59.6 official time, a 40 second PR for a non-aided course. 57.6 from 6 miles to the finish, that is a 67 second quarter speed! This is a 4 second PR for the 10 K kick! Last mile in 5:04, last 2 miles in 10:19, last 3 K in 9:34, and last 5 K in 16:15! PR for the last mile of a race 5 K or longer with the exception of Alta, PR for the last 5 K of a 10 K I think even if you count the last 5 K of Magna. And all of that from pretty much pure base! Steve had a great race as well finishing in 33:02.0 with a new 50 second non-aided course PR. Immediately after we finished we ran back to meet Benjamin and Jenny. Steve paced Benjamin while I paced Jenny. Benjamin finished in 45:38.8 with the splits of 22:27 - 23:11, 58th place out of 230 finishers, and earned a total of $21.80. Jenny finished in 53:06.4, 111th place, having chicked 67 out 141 men. I hope getting chicked by a 7 year old girl running her first 10 K would give them a reason to get on the Fast Running Blog and start training better. Jenny did a negative split of 26:50 - 26:16 with the last mile in 8:01. She earned $29.49. Note that Benjamin runs only 2 miles a day, while Jenny runs only 1.5. But they do it 6 days a week. No longer runs. Their longest training run is when our cars needs attention and we run 2.25 from or to the car shop. And this fortunately does not happen often enough to have any lasting training effect. Nevertheless, with this kind of training they are able to not just finish a 10 K but race it and hold their own in the closing miles. What this tells me is that the frequency of the runs plays a very important role in building endurance, and a decent level of endurance can be built when the frequency is good even if the length is lacking. FRB had a decent showing, with Adam Wende taking 5th place in 34:33.0, James Barnes 9th in 36:08.0, Terry Bean 11th overall and winning the masters in 37:46.4, and Tom Lee running not only a huge 10 K PR, but beating his possibly short course 5 K PR time from last summer doubled by 12 seconds with 38:39.7, 16th overall and 2nd master. A number of other runners set PRs and won or placed high their age divisions. P.M. Ran 11.7 miles in 1:27:35, met a runner named Austin, a BYU student, ran with him for a while. Also ran a mile with Julia in 11:18 later in the evening.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Got good sleep. Went to church. Went with missionaries to help translate for a couple of adopted teenage kids from the Ukraine. They spoke a dialect that was some mix of Russian and Ukrainian that I was able to understand without problems to my great surprise. They understood my Russian as well without problems. What I thought was interesting, though, is that apparently they were not able to speak real Russian. I have talked with Ukrainians before, and they have always spoken the cleanest Russian they knew, maybe with an accent, once they realized that was the only Slavic language I could speak. This was the first time I've ever spoken with a Slavic language speaker in the gift-of-tongues mode - I speak Russian, he does not know it, but understands it, he speaks whatever he speaks that is not Russian, but somehow I understand it as well. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.10 | 1.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.35 |
| A.M. Finally the roads are clear enough to go a more normal pace the entire way. Warm weather, around 32 degrees, ran in shorts. Ran 5 miles with Ted and Jeff at around 7:30 pace, dropped off Ted, then we ran a bit under 7:00 pace, then the devil entered into us and we ran a 6:10 mile. We decided to chase the 7:00 for 10 miles, and closed with a 5:49 mile. I continued for 5 more miles, ran some with Matt Anderson who I found on the trail, ended up with 1:43:54 for 15 miles. P.M. 1 mile with Benjamin and Jenny in 9:56, 0.35 with Julia in 3:36, then 4 alone in 29:45. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.50 |
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A.M. Easy 6 with Ted in 46:08, then about 1.5 with the missionaries. They are supposed to exercise 30 minutes a day 6 days a week according to the mission rules, but they have been slacking off. I had a scripture for them ready - Hebrews 5:8, and told them that this morning they were going to learn obedience by the things they suffer. Then ran 3 miles with Sarah, and 4.5 more by myself. Total time for 15 was 2:01:40. P.M. 3 miles cross-country skiing, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 14:23, 1 with Julia in 10:45. Had the missionaries over for dinner. They were taken to task for being out of shape by the mission president's wife as well. |
Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.33 | Total Sleep Time: 7.08 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.75 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 18.75 |
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A.M. Ran with Ted and James. Dropped Ted off at 6 miles. Total of 10 miles in 1:17:30. P.M. 1.5 with Jenny in 14:20, 1 with Julia in 11:18, 4 alone in 29:16, 2 with Benjamin in 16:33, and a small 0.25 mile errand. It snowed a bit, and it was windy, but I enjoyed good traction while I could. |
Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 23.07 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 23.07 |
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A.M. The morning was off to a bad start. I looked outside and the ground was covered with snow. Ted was running over 10 minutes late. This was very much unlike him - he is usually at least a couple of minutes early. I figured maybe he decided not to risk his knee this morning. I was not looking forward to running 15 miles all alone through several inches of snow. Then suddenly out of nowhere Adam showed up. We had barely run 0.05 out when we saw Ted's car. He lives further up the mountain and it took him a long time to dig himself out of the snow this morning. We turned around, and started the run again with Ted. Ted and Adam ran 6 miles with me. Then I decided to go for 10 more instead of 9 since I did not know where the 9 mile turnaround would be. The pace was very slow, I decided not to fight the snow and enjoy nature. Ended up with 2:14:47 for 16.1, 8:22.3 average, plus the initial 0.1, which makes it 16.2 for the run. P.M. Took Benjamin cross-country skiing at Soldier Hollow. Was pleasantly surprised that it takes only 40 minutes to drive there. Benjamin really enjoyed it, he stood on skis much better than the first time a year ago. This was his second time ever cross-country skiing. I ended up with 3.87 miles in 32:48, some of which included towing Benjamin with a harness. I went out and back to him the rest of the time. Soldier Hollow course was not as flat as I thought it would be. Going up by myself I slowed down to 10:00 in some places, then going down I went 6:15. On a short stretch that was truly flat I was able to go 7:30. Then ran with the kids later. 0.5 with Benjamin in 4:19, then Jenny joined us and ran 1.5 in 13:25, this gave us 17:44 for 2 miles. Then another mile with Julia in 11:48.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.50 | 1.00 | 0.75 | 0.25 | 20.50 |
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A.M. Discovered that Clyde was in town from his blog. Called him and invited him to run with us. He was without wheels so I picked him up at his hotel. We started early and ran 6 miles before meeting Ted and Jeff. The trail was mostly clear with occasional snow/ice patches. We started slow, 8:47 for the first mile. Then gradually sped up to 8:00. Half way through I realized we were not going to make it on time unless we sped up to 6:00 pace, so we did. Clyde was cold at first, then he got feisty, and hit a quarter in 1:23. That hurt. I missed the time on the next one, but it was probably just as fast. But it hurt less. On the last quarter before my house Clyde pushed the pace again, and we ran a quarter in 1:21 with three 90 degree turns, one on ice. That hurt as well.
We waited for Jeff then decided he was not going to make it and started without him. Clyde and Ted mostly chatted about wrestling, and I just listened. Which was just fine as the pace quickly progressed into the low 7:00 range. Even though I can race a marathon at 1:20 per mile faster than that on the same terrain, I do not enjoy conversations at 7:00 pace, I cannot maintain it without focus, and it is hard to focus on the pace and the conversation at the same time. Then about 2.5 miles away from my house I hit a VPB, and this gave Jeff a chance to catch up. Turned out he had a hard time clearing off his car windows. Dropped Ted off 12 miles into the run at his 6 mile mark. Went for another 4 with Clyde and Jeff. Clyde needed to be back by 8:00. So we gradually picked up the pace to around 6:20 range. It took just as much effort at 7:00 earlier - both felt hard. Then I noticed we were on track to catch the 7:00 guy for the whole run. With 0.25 to go I announced that we needed to close 9 seconds. I did not realize that Clyde was bad at math. All we needed to do was continue at 6:20 pace. Clyde picked it up to 5:20 instead. Then with 100 to go he shifted gears again. We ended up running the last 100 in 18 seconds, which included a 90 degree turn on ice. Our last quarter was 1:18.5, and we beat the 7:00 guy by 17 seconds. Our time for 16 miles was 1:51:43. P.M. 2 miles with Benjamin in 15:25, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:20, 1 with Julia to her friend's house via a scenic route in 11:01, 0.35 from the friend's house alone, back to the friends house later (0.25) to pick Julia up.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.00 | 10.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 25.00 |
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A.M. Long run. Cold morning. The temperature was 12F at the start at 6:00 AM. Wore racing flats for a change. My feel felt like they have missed the feel of the ground. Started with Ted, Jeff, and Tyler. Tyler's ankle started hurting, so he turned around after 0.2 to be safe. Talked about politics the first 6 miles. Averaged barely under 7:30 - 44:38. The road conditions were good - very little ice or snow, mostly dry ground. Dropped Ted off, continued with Jeff. We gradually progressed from 7:30 pace to sub-6:30. Passed a large group of runners. One of them acted liked he wanted to challenge us. I encouraged him, but he was only kidding. This got my adrenaline flowing a bit, and the pace dipped under 6:20. It felt good. We gradually closed on the 7:00 guy, and passed him about 11.52 into the run. Jeff pressed the pace a bit afterwards. I needed to go to the bathroom bad, but figured the quicker we ran the quicker I'd get there, so I just toughed it out. Our last two quarters were 1:29 and 1:25, the 6 mile stretch in 38:47, and 1:23:25 at 12 miles.
Dropped Jeff off, went to the bathroom, prayed with the family, talked to Logan on the phone, then went for the remaining 8 at a tempo pace. I figured with all the clothes, the cold, the bridges, and being at the end of a 20 mile run, anything under 6:00 would be good. Hard to get going after a stop. First two quarters in 1:33 and I felt like I was pushing it. Then I got into a groove and started hitting 1:27 - 1:28 quarters when the road was good. A few 1:30 - 1:33s with slippage, micro-hills, and sharp turns. A couple of 1:29s when I let my mind drift. Somehow a song from Кавказская Пленница movie came to mind: Где-то на белом свете, Там, где всегда мороз, Трутся спиной медведи О земную ось. "Somewhere in the world where it is always freezing the bears are rubbing their backs against the rotational axis of the earth." I felt I was in that place with the bears, and maybe even helping them rotate the axis with my legs. Ended up with 47:28 for the last 8 miles, 5:56 average. Total time for 20 miles was 2:10:53, 6:32.65 average. Felt strong but not fast at the end, probably due to the cold and the clothes. Interestingly enough, it took me almost 4 minutes less to run 20 today than it did to run 16.1 on Thursday. P.M. It was much warmer. I ran in shorts. 2 with Benjamin in 17:02, continued on to finish 5, threw in a couple of tempo pickups to test the nervous system. Ran 0.5 in 2:54 up 1% grade with a bit of a roll, and then 1 mile in 5:35 down 1% grade again with a roll. Total time for 5 was 36:47. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Went to church. In spite of a good night sleep, I managed to drift off during Sunday school. Got woken up by everybody laughing. I wondered if they were laughing because somebody asked me a question, but then I realized they were laughing about something else. Took a nice nap afterwards. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 10.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 21.40 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 21.40 |
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A.M. First 2 with Daniel, Ted, and Jeff. Daniel turned around. Dropped Ted off at 6. Dropped Jeff off at 10. Was planning on only 15, but ran into John Kotter from BYU, and decided to add a little extra with him. He told me a story about being chased by a pack of seven stray dogs in Moscow while on a run with a bunch of top Utah high school runners. He said it was somewhat similar to that joke about two runners and a bear: "You think you can out run a bear?" "No, but all I need to do is outrun you!" Ended up with 2:17:00 for about 18.4. P.M. 0.5 with Benjamin in 4:19, then Jenny joined us and we ran another 1.5 in 13:12, total of 17:31 for 2. Then 1 with Julia in 11:07. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.55 | 0.20 | 0.40 | 0.00 | 21.15 |
| A.M. 10.1 with Josse and Jeff in 1:16:04. I noticed Josse was
conversational at 7:20 pace, and suggested we test her fitness, to
which she agreed. We let her set the pace for 0.5, which we did in
3:10. Then I had a VPB, and did a bit of a tempo pick-up to catch up.
Afterwards, we paced Josse to a 6:23 mile, which would have been about
6:21 without an ice patch. Dropped Jeff and Josse off, and went for
another 5. Did a 300 meter pickup in 59 seconds to probe 15 K race pace. The
original plan was to do a mile time trial indoors. I was curious how
fast I could run a mile all out. But after some thought I decided it
would be a bad idea. I get injured on the track easily, and the dust,
the germs, and the stress of an all-out mile, all being something I
have not adapted to, could easily bring on a respiratory infection or
some other illness. So I decided I should be satisfied to know that I
can run a 5:04 at the end of a flat 10 K and leave it at that. P.M.
2 with Benjamin in 17:09, Jenny joined for the last 1.5 in 13:05. 1.05
with Julia in 11:42. 3 miles cross-country skiing in the Hobblecreek
Canyon.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 18.00 |
| A.M. Ran with Ted and Jeff. Dropped Ted off at 6 miles. Total of 10 miles in 1:13:17. P.M. It was warm. Around 35-40 F. Ran in shorts. Benjamin announced at the start of his run that it takes 220 muscles to take a step. Then he proceeded to use all of those very well to run 2 miles in 15:20 without too much of an effort. Pushed Jacob and Joseph in the double stroller for this portion. Then ran 3.5 alone in 24:17, 6:56.29 pace. Then 1 mile with Julia in 10:18, and 1.5 with Jenny in 13:02. Met Brad Skidmore on the trail. He is going to run with us tomorrow.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.29 | 0.00 | 0.81 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Brad in 1:22:42. The trail was slippery. You would not think it should be with so little snow, but it was. I could barely move. Dropped him off and decided to go the other way. It was a lot better. I decided to run a bit a race pace or close to feel it better, so hit 0.8125 in 4:26, this is 5:27.38 pace. Had a hard time getting going, but eventually eased into 5:20 pace. Total time for 15.1 was 1:57:16. For those who read my blog, but do not read the discussion board. We need a babysitter for this Saturday. Click here for details. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:11, then 3 alone in 20:53. Jenny and Julia did their usual runs with Sarah. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.20 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.20 |
| A.M 15.2 in 1:56:09. Had Brad and Adam with me in the early miles, and found Matt Anderson at the end. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:38, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:01, 0.5 alone in 3:31, and 1 with Julia in 10:41. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Race: |
SLC Track Club Winter Series 15 K (9.321 Miles) 00:50:43, Place overall: 3 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.60 | 0.20 | 9.00 | 0.32 | 22.12 |
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A.M. Raced in the SLC Track Club 15 K. Warmed up a bit over 3 miles at a Kenyan warm-up pace - around 8:30 at the start with the entire FRB team. Then it was time to race. My goal was to run under 50:00, which is slightly sub-5:22 pace. I figured we'd go out at 5:20 and just try to hold it. Maybe slip off in the middle, then gain back on the kick. BJ Christensen and Aleskander Thomas took off as I expected them to. Steve and I worked together trading leads. There was a slight head wind. Or so I thought. First mile in 5:18. It felt easy, but at the same time I got this feeling - I do not want to race even though the pace is easy, in fact I do not want to race at all. I've had it before. I think I know what it means - nervous system fatigue. That is bad news, I've had nervous system fatigue before. The pace feels aerobically easy, but at the same time with every exertion of effort I cannot break 5:40. I was expecting it today in some degree, though, as I have not been sleeping very well - waking up too early from excitement about life with everything that is going on. I tried to mitigate that as much as possible with naps, but apparently it did not work as much as I hoped. Nevertheless, I decided to cross my fingers and just hope for the best. 6:38 at 2 K, 8:17 at 2.5 K, 10:40 at the mile (5:22). Still alive. 4 K in 13:19, still alive. 3 miles in 16:08 (5:28), no worries, I'll blame it on the wind. 16:43 at the 5 K, 21:34 at 4 miles (5:26), seems like the wind picked up. Steve and I are still trading leads somewhat informally. Whoever is feeling the pace is getting too slow moves up front. 25:08 at the turnaround. 8 seconds off pace, but no worries, we'll get tail wind on the way back, and when we start racing each other hard with a couple of miles to go, we'll catch up. Or so I thought until we had completed the turnaround. What I thought was a headwind on the way out was actually a friendly cross-wind. I guess sometimes we mistake friends for enemies when they ruffle our feathers. So the turnaround made it an unfriendly cross wind. 27:01 at 5 miles (5:27), I move up and press the pace in hopes of getting back up to 5:20 or at least close, but all we could manage was 5:37 on the next mile with 32:38 split at 6. That's bad, the 5:30 guy is starting to close on us. I try to take it in stride.
32:38 at 6 miles (5:32). The good news is that we sped up. The bad news is that the 5:30 guy is closing, and is threatening to come close enough to make me not PR (50:57). And also I am literally falling asleep. Where is the pillow? I'd like to take a nap. The lips feel numb, the quads feel numb as well. Typical night or early morning relay leg feeling. I suppose good practice and confidence builder as well for next week. 33:48 at the 10 K. Last 5 K in 17:05, however, last 2.5 in 8:40, not good at all. If things go like that, the PR might not happen. 38:10 at 7 miles (5:32). We are perpetually stuck at that pace. Trying to pick it up, but not much is happening. 40:41 at 12 K. 10:20 for the last 3 K would not be good enough for a PR. The torch under my fanny is getting lit up. I am feeling good, perhaps even too good, but there seems to be nothing I can do about it. Just cannot get out of the rut. Unfortunately, Steve is the same way. I am starting to wish he would put the hammer down and try to lose me, but he is not feeling up to it either. 12.5 K in 42:24.
43:42 at 8 miles. Another 5:32! Third in a row. We are having a love affair with that pace, and we are in a serious need of repentance, or there might be no PR for me today. 45:27 with a mile to go, a sub-5:30 is good enough for a PR. Fortunately, Steve starts smelling the barn and picking up the pace. The last mile had quarter marks, thanks to the SLC Track Club. A quarter in 1:21, wow that hurt good enough for 1:19, followed by 1:22. sub-2:47 for the last half gives a PR. Steve picks up the pace even more. I breathe a sign of relief. The PR is happening. We pass mile 9, and now the race is for real. Steve picks it up, I respond, warm into the pace, then try to pass him, he speeds up, I tuck behind him. 49:42 with 0.214 to go. With about 0.1 to go I move out again and start gradually opening the throttle with the intent to reach the max RPMs and hold it to the finish. It is scary, but I know that the momentum will carry me through even if the anaerobic bear attacks me. Steve responds, I keep revving it up and manage to pull away. 50:43.0 for me, 50:43.9 for Steve. Last mile in 5:16, and a 14 second PR for a non-aided 15 K. Aleksander Thomas won with 48:37 and BJ was second with 48:49. Amazing times for them with the conditions, I was expecting to see them somewhere in the 49:30 - 49:50 range with the wind. But they must have gotten in better shape.
Ran a long cool down to make to the 20 miles for total. Paced Brent in the middle. He had a good kick - 1:36 on the last quarter. Towards the end, Steve started to push the pace, and we ran the last quarter in 1:29. With about 3 miles to go I felt hungry as a lion, and ate accordingly when we got back to Saltair. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:34.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Got good sleep. Went to church. Visited a family I home teach. Took a nap. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.60 |
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A.M. 4 with Ted and Hyrum in 34:39, another 2 with Ted in 16:02, then 10.1 by myself in 1:06:09. It was raining, and the rain was cold, and I was alone, so I picked up the pace to get warm, and then just could not slow down. Ran into Matt with 1.5 to go, and ran with him for a mile as well. Total time for 16.1 was 1:56:50. Hyrum did better than I thought he would after a break of over a year. Ted was alive as well, that is a good sign.
P.M 2 with Benjamin in 15:55, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:53, 1 with Julia in 11:13.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.70 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 20.20 |
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A.M. Started the run with Ted and Josse. Had 2 VPB stops, that gave me some pace at threshold catching up. Timed 700 meters of it - 2:23, almost 5:20 pace. Started out with a 1:03 300, and then eased into 5:20 pace for the remainder. Was happy to see that 5:20 pace came to the surface fairly quickly and painlessly at 6:00 AM in the dark on a somewhat slippery surface. Was originally planning on doing strides, but figured this was good enough - all strides combined into one segment. The pace eventually progressed to a bit faster than 8:00. Dropped Ted off at 6, Josse at 10. Eventually eased into sub-7:00 pace, which soon became 6:40. Then after another VPB the rhythm was broken and 6:50 was what felt natural. Ended up with 1:51:46 for 15 miles. Looking forward to Del Sol. No wrong turns this time, no more people getting sick or injured. Everybody wash your hands, stay away from sick people as much as you can, sleep well, and do not do anything stupid. I hope I can follow my own advice. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:45, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:46, 1 with Julia in 10:38.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.12 | Nap Time: 0.02 | Total Sleep Time: 0.15 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. 10.1 with newly married Jeff. Started out slow, took 3.5 miles to catch the 8:00 guy. Then woke up and went slightly sub-6:40 pace in the last 4 miles, last 0.5 in 3:02. Total time was 1:12:38. Jeff's car decided to give him a wedding present. Refused to go even after a jump start, so it is sitting in front of our house right now waiting to be taken to Computune.
P.M. Took Zhu to Jeff's house so he and his wife would have a car at least while we are gone. Brought Benjamin, Jacob, and the stroller with me. Ran 2.03 with Benjamin running, and Jacob in the stroller in 15:47. Then put Benjamin on a bike, and ran 5 miles in 37:10 pushing Jacob in the stroller with Benjamin on a bike. Then 1.5 with Jenny, no stroller, in 12:53, 0.5 alone in 3:29, and 1 with Julia in 10:29.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.11 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.11 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.03 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 10.53 |
| Traveling to Mesa for the Del Sol relay. 1 mile with Benjamin and Jenny in Kingman, AZ. Then 0.5 with Jenny in 4:21, followed by 1 mile with James W and Benjamin in 7:55. Then 7.03 with James with two 0.25 pickups at 5:10 pace. Felt good and ready to go. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Race: |
Del Sol Relay (181.7 Miles) 17:04:37, Place overall: 1 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 9.50 | 0.00 | 7.40 | 0.00 | 16.90 |
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A.M. Easy 6 with James W, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny, additional 0.5 with Benjamin, and 1 mile with Julia. P.M. Brief report, more details when I have time. Ran Leg 10 of Del Sol (7.4) in 42:20, average pace technically 5:43, but with adventures. Now details. Our team was as follows in leg order: Van 1 - Dave Holt, Logan Fielding, Nick McCombs, Clyde Behunin, and James Barnes with Steve Hooper driving. Van 2 - Adam Wende, Ted Leblow, Kory Wheatley, myself, Jeff Shadley, and Steve Ashbaker (the Air Darkhorse). Google was supposedly the team to beat, but after checking their performance history in other relays, I knew that they would not be breaking 6:00 average by much if at all. Barring an exceptionally catastrophic event, our team should not have had a problem outperforming this. I was more concerned about some Arizona running store bringing current and post-collegiate runners together. We did, however, consider putting http://google.com/search?q=fast+running+blog on our van to taunt our competition, but it was a last minute thought and we lacked the materials. Apparently, according to one of our team members who talked with Google, they indeed had done the above search and knew they were in trouble. I considered beating Google by a lot one of the main reasons for coming to the race. Why? There was a mission to accomplish. I want to see the US companies to start following the pattern of the Japanese corporations. I want to see strong corporate teams where winning a race is a matter of importance to a corporation enough to actually do something about nurturing the runners. From what I've observed about Google, of all the US companies they appear to be one of the most open to the idea of promoting the company by winning a race. Most corporations spend millions on maintaining their public image but are perfectly content to send a team that will not break 8:00 average pace. Google is different. They care. At least some people inside the company do. I wanted them to seriously ask this question - How in the world are these guys from Utah and Idaho manage to beat us so bad? What do we need to do to beat them next time? However, beating Google would not have quite done the job had we not won the race outright. After the first leg, we saw that this would not be easy. Although we had no problem separating ourselves from Google as I expected, The Running Shop team from Tuscan was strong. Their runner finished together with Dave. Logan opened a 1:30 gap on his leg, then Nick increased it to 3:42, and Clyde to 4:19. Walter increased it further to 4:27, and then James to over 5 minutes in spite of being sick. Van 2 took over. Adam ran strong ahead of his projection, Ted and Kory ran strong as well. We were not timing the gap any more as we could not afford to wait. My leg was interesting. I was projected to run 5:28 pace for 7.4 miles on rollers with a net elevation gain which I felt was a bit overoptimistic for a number of reasons. Nevertheless I should have been close. The leg started with 1.5 miles of 2% grade uphill and a steady headwind. I had forgotten by GPS at James and Lybi's house and borrowed one from Adam. Unfortunately, it did not start right away when I pressed the button. However, about a quarter into my leg I got it started for real. I was running a steady 5:50 pace in the initial section. Then I hit a 1:18 quarter on a short downhill, and settled into 1:22 - 1:24 quarters once there was no headwind. Had a hard time hitting my true threshold in the dark and at this late hour (11 pm). Had an adventure with about a mile to go. My flashlight fell off. It took me a few seconds to realize it was gone. I figured losing a few seconds by going back to get the light would be better than losing the light and possibly getting our team DQ'ed on top of it for running without the light. So I went back and got it. I do not know exactly how much I've lost on it, Adam probably could figure it out since it is on his GPS. My overall time was 42:20, 5:43 average assuming the leg was indeed 7.4. I do remember that the GPS had an auto-pause, and afterwards was showing 5:36 pace average for the timed portion of my run (7.15). So the leg could have been a bit longer than 7.4 as well. I ended up being 1:42 slower than the projection, and Jason from the Running Shop gained 2:35 on me. To add injury to insult, once I got in the van I realized that my cell phone was gone, and we could not possibly go back to get it. Fortunately, I knew that most likely it went down at the same place as the flash light, and we could figure out exactly where later from the GPS. Jeff and Steve ran very strong on their legs and more than made up for my adventures. We handed off to Van 1 with 7:48 gap on the Running Shop. .
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 4.00 | 0.00 | 9.40 | 0.00 | 13.40 |
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A.M. Brief report, details when I have time. Leg 22 of Del Sol in 17:30, GPS measured at 3.37, 5:11.57 avg. pace. Then later leg 34 (GPS measured 6.17) in 33:58, 5:30.31 avg, severe nervous system fatigue in the last 3 miles - no surprise, though, since I got zero sleep and the leg was at 9:45 AM. Our team won by almost 42 minutes though, with the average pace of 5:38.34, which would have been good enough to make top 5 in Hood to Coast. Now more details. Van 1 ran very well, featuring Logan's 4:55 average over 7 downhill miles which alone increased the gap by 4 minutes. Adam received the baton about 17:30 ahead of the Running Shop and attacked his leg with the typical Adam fury. Ted did very well on his leg, and handed to Kory, who ran ahead of schedule as well. Then it was my turn. I was angry for two reasons. I was upset about the mishaps on my first leg and wanted to redeem myself. And I knew that the only way I could run half way decent at 4:45 AM after not sleeping all night would be by getting productively angry. I have a hard time with that. I have no problem getting emotionally upset, but I do have a difficulty becoming upset in a way that gives me a sustained increase in muscular power output. So I tried to get as mad I as I could about what happened earlier in hopes of channeling the energy into running performance, and it did work to an extent. I ran 4:50 pace on the downhill portion (about 3%), and then once it flattened out I slowed down to around 5:20. 17:30 for the leg, gapped Jason by 10 seconds, was happy with the effort. Jeff ran strong on his leg, then handed off to Steve. Steve was running angry as well, and beat his predicted pace. We increased the gap to 21:56 before handing off to Van 2. By that time we had passed most of the teams that started earlier which I was happy about for two reasons. No traffic jam to worry about near Saguaro Lake, and the pristinely clean port-a-potties up ahead. Van 2 was mostly on schedule, although the fatigue began to take its toll on some runners, and they were a minute or two off on their legs, but I was expecting that. Paul's spreadsheet does not account for the sleep deprivation fatigue, so you should always add 10-20 seconds a mile on the third set of legs. Nick and Logan did not skip a beat though, and were right on schedule. I suppose some runners handle the relay sleep situation better than others, we need to make a note of that and give them longer legs at the end in the future.
Adam was wound up for his third leg. He ran great up the hill and was still ahead of schedule on the Ragnar of Del Sol in spite of being on the third leg. We asked Van 2 to stay around to time the gap, and I became very concerned when I saw them drive by 24 minutes into Adam's leg. Then I realized that due to the dynamics of the race, it was more likely that they just got tired of waiting and took off. Ted got a decent time on his leg, then Kory survived his. He was struggling with neural fatigue, but still ran decent, and handed off to me. My leg was a steady 1% grade downhill, 6.1 miles of it. The temperatures got up to over 70 F, but that was not a big problem. The heat did not bother me very much. I ran the first mile in 5:13, followed by 5:18. A bit slower than the projected 5:11 pace, but still acceptable. My teammates sang me BINGO, controlled the lights at the intersections, and handed me water. Sarah and Lybi came to cheer as well with all of the kids. The real trouble started on the third mile. The neural fatigue was reaching the levels above my ability to fight it. I ran a 5:32, followed by 5:38, and a 5:44. What a joke! This is on a downhill at near sea-level altitude. This reminded me of the important role that the nervous system plays at speeds 5:20 or faster. If it gives out, it does not matter how fit you are, you are going to be stuck around 5:40 pace. I mustered all of my strength and managed a 5:34 mile, plus a semblance of a kick for the remaining 0.17 to finish in 33:58, 46 seconds slower than Jason even though he had lost some time at a light. I am sure glad my teammates brought the baton far ahead enough to where this did not really matter. Jeff ran very well, and even had a little experience with a couple of dogs, then handed off to Steve. We did our best to control the lights and direct Steve to make sure he did not get lost, as his leg had a lot of turns, and was not properly marked in some places. At the end we all jumped out of the van and finished with Steve. In spite of our big lead he pressed hard to the very end and made all of us work to keep up. 17:04:37 at the finish, a win by 41:58 over the Running Shop, and 1:45:24 over Google. Immediately afterwards we all went to James and Lybi's house for lunch. We downloaded my route of leg 10 from Adam's GPS, researched it, identified the location where my cell phone was dropped, entered the coordinates into my GPS, got directions to it from Google maps (it was a 61 mile drive one way), and I went geo-caching. I had never geo-cached before like this - a night with no sleep, three legs of a relay in the meantime, no nap, and straight down to business to find something I actually needed very much as opposed to something useless in regular geo-caching. The treasure hunt was successful. My Garmin led me right to my cell phone. Wonders of technology!
P.M. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny, and 0.5 more with Jeff Shadley and Benjamin. Went to the awards ceremony. It was a bit of a bummer. The results got messed up, and we got nothing more than a set batons, while Google got a treadmill for winning the corporate division. Our 5:38 per mile average and an outright win by quite a margin unfortunately did not get a fair amount of attention in the announcements. At least we got some publicity from passing a multitude of teams and actively recruiting people for the blog at every opportunity. Google got to see the power of the Fast Running Blog in action. And I wonder what we would do with the treadmill if there was one for us anyway. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 1.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Sarah and I and the kids stayed overnight with James and Lybi. Went to church with them. Their ward has been promoting fitness goals, one of them being family weight loss. I suggested it would not be a good idea for us. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 10.50 |
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Travel home from Mesa. Left early and got in at 5pm, so I had time for a run. Decided to keep it short since I really did not have that much time to start with, and was still fatigued from the race and the travel. 2 with Benjamin in 16:49, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:59, 1 with Julia in 9:41, and then 6 more. Kept running into couples. First it was Jeff (different new Jeff) and Ann. They denied that they were on a date, although it did look like it. Turned out Jeff had served a mission in the Ukraine, so we chatted in Russian some. Then it was time for them to turn around, but shortly thereafter I ran into Jeff McClellan and his wife Kimia. She was following him on a bike. So we all went together from there.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.90 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 20.40 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Jeff and Josse in 1:16:30. Did 0.5 of tempo pickups after a VPB at 5:20 pace. P.M. 5.75 with Julia running one mile in 10:05, then riding in the stroller the rest of the way. We went to Reams Family Foods to get her a present for running under 10:00 in a training run on her own initiative. Then 1.5 with Jenny in 12:59, 1.05 by myself in 7:21, and 2 with Benjamin in 15:47. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.40 | 0.00 | 0.75 | 0.00 | 20.15 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Jeff in 1:09:09 at 5:10 AM. Started slow as usual, but quickly warmed into a good pace. Did a tempo pickup on the last quarter - 1:22. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:39, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:28, she closed with a 7:55 mile, 2 with Benjamin in 15:51, and then another 5.55 in 42:14 with 0.5 worth of tempo pickups. I have finally finished my Del Sol report. |
Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.05 | 0.00 | 0.80 | 0.30 | 20.15 |
| A.M. Really did not want to get out of bed this morning. It was so comfortable. Ran 15.1 in 1:43:31. First 10.1 with Jeff. Adam joined us for the first 3.5. Jeff and I had a need for VPB, and picked up the pace to get to a good spot before the need would strike in a crippling manner. We ran 600 in 2:01 (5:23 pace). Then another 700 in 2:16 (5:10 pace) to catch up. We got a bit carried away on this one. Adam told us we sounded like a herd of buffalo when we came up from behind. Ran into Matt again with about 1.5 to go. P.M. Took a nap. Had a dream about all of the girls on the blog running a relay race along the Black Sea. Jenny was running carrying Jacob instead of the baton for some reason. Our team van was actually a bus that looked like this: ![](http://gortransport.kharkov.ua/bus/ps/laz697/photo/kha_laz697__xa08342_200108_s1_m.jpg)
bonus challenge - identify the model. The bus was old and had a hard time going uphill. A leg was coming up that climbed 9%. I was getting concerned that the bus would not make it. Then I woke up. It took me a while to realize I did not need to worry about the bus making up the hill. Ran 2 miles with Benjamin in 16:32. He started out slow, and gradually increased the pace. At 1.5 mark after hearing his split he correctly stated that he was 2 seconds behind the 8:30 guy and, then said, direct quote: "At this rate of aggression I will have him completely destroyed by the finish!", which he proceeded to do. Jenny and Julia ran their usual distances with Sarah. I ran another 3.05 in 22:22, found Provo High team on the trail, ran with them a bit, did a couple of pickups.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 9.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.57 | 0.25 | 0.40 | 0.00 | 20.22 |
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A.M. 15.03 in 1:48:59. Jeff slept in, so I ran to his house (1.35), then 9 more with him. Counted the stride rate at 6:50 pace. It was 172-174. Decided to test it at a faster pace. Ran a quarter in 1:26, stride rate was 184. Ran into Tyler. he was doing a short tempo. Ran the last 0.4 with him, timed 600 of it, it was 1:59. Tried to count the stride rate, but at 5:20 pace it was too tedious. Then ran into Matt. He joined us. We dropped off Jeff, then dropped off Tyler, and then Matt and I went separate ways with 0.46 to go (for me). P.M. Did a kids relay of sorts from Canyon Glen Park to a little bit past Will's on 800 S in Orem. First, 1.42 with Julia in 14:12, then 1.74 with Jenny in 15:01, and 2.02 with Benjamin in 15:49. We did not make the kids stay up all night and then do it again two more times, though. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 9.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 24.60 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 25.10 |
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A.M. 20.1 in 2:30:49. The run started with Adam, Michelle, Jon Allen, Hyrum, and Tyler. Dropped Hyrum off after 2 miles. Dropped Tyler and Adam after 12. Michelle and Jon ran the entire way. Did 2 post-VPB tempo pickups, first was 0.5 in 2:37 (1:21 - 1:16) about 8 miles into the run, and the second was about 17 miles into the run, also 0.5 in 2:37 (1:19 - 1:18). Turnover was 178 at 8:15 pace, 172 at 7:30 pace, and 194 at 5:20 pace. The tempo pickups felt good, very sustainable, although I was breathing hard. It has been probably at least 6 years since I felt I could not go any faster because I was breathing too hard. It is usually something subtle, no major pain, muscles feel fine, breathing feels fine some kind of invisible wall stops me. Some days it is further out than others. I actually like it when I am able to breathe hard and still feel the pace is sustainable.
P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:32, then 3 alone in 22:25. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Typical Sunday. Got good sleep at night, went to church, took a nap later in the afternoon. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.70 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 20.20 |
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A.M. 15 miles in 1:47:50. First 2 with Ted and Hyrum, then 5 more with Ted, and the remaining 8 by myself. Had a fluke happen after dropping off Ted. The nervous system did something weird and I ended up with a 5:59 mile without actually trying to run in that range. The breathing and the muscle strain were within the easy pace range, so I did not feel anything. I figured I could not have become a 2:05 marathoner overnight, so there was no way that 6:00 pace would be a true easy especially at altitude. And as I paid closer attention to the body signals I could feel that the nervous system was working in the non-easy range. So I eased off consciously although without hitting the breaks and dragging on purpose, but was still in the wrong range - next two miles were 6:14 and 6:11. So I decided to reboot myself by doing strides. Did 8x100 in 17-18 seconds. That calmed me down and I was able to get back into the true easy pace for the rest of the run. However, this experience in combination with the pace fluctuations in Del Sol made me wonder if my muscles, and heart are already fit to run much faster, but the brain/nerves are lagging behind. P.M. 1.5 with Jenny in 13:20, 2 with Benjamin in 16:45, 0.7 alone in 4:33, 1 with Julia in 10:20.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.75 | 1.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.00 |
| A.M. 15 miles in 1:48:39. Started with Ted, Jeff, Josse, and Adam. Adam turned around after a mile, dropped Ted off at 6, dropped Jeff and Josse at 10. Picked up the pace a bit on the last 5, ran it in 32:52. Also, did 1.25 worth of catching up after bathroom stops at around 5:40 - 5:50 pace. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:52, then 3 more in 21:35. Pushed Jacob in the single stroller for the entire run. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.60 | 3.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Ted was not feeling good, did not make it. Jeff slept in. So I ran alone at 5:15 AM. Started out a bit quicker than normal - 7:21 in the first mile, after that a slight sub-6:40. Ran into Jeff at around 5.5 mark, and we ran together from there. 1:06:59 for 10.1. P.M. Sarah went to Wal-Mart and got me a pair of crocs for $5. I wanted to try them as a proof-of-concept for near barefoot running. At the very worst, I figured, they would make nice slippers for the summer. Did my entire evening run in crocs. First a mile with Julia in 10:47. Then 1.5 with Jenny in 13:45. Her ankle was hurting, so she did not have to catch the 9:00 girl today. Then 2 with Benjamin in 15:26. Then 5.5 more by myself. I was pressed for time, and needed to keep around 7:00 average to avoid being late. Started with a first quarter in 1:45, followed by 1:41. Then hit the mile in 6:38. Figured I'd just stay ahead of the 6:40 guy. Then I noticed that my split for the next 0.5 was 3:07. I recalculated it to be sure, it was right. The next one was 3:02. I figured, forget it, this is my second run, and I have only 3.5 left, and then a night of sleep, I am not going to hold back. If I feel like running 6:00 pace, I'll just go for it. After that it was unreal. I started running 5:40 pace without actually trying to run a tempo. The rhythm and the harmony of movement were so appealing that I did not notice the effort. The form felt great. I went by a couple of guys in their 40s going around 8:00 - 8:30 that looked like they were experienced runners. This must have been quite a sight for them - a runner in crocs passing them at 5:40 pace, I must have looked like a beach bum running away from a tidal wave. I slowed down to 5:50 under the bridges, and then was back up to 5:40 pace. Ended up catching the 6:00 guy for the whole run with 32:52 for 5.5. Last 3 miles in 17:07, 5:42.3 average. Checked for side efforts from crocs afterwards, there were none so far. Noticed that the shin muscles were working a lot better, and I felt like was getting more out of them than in regular shoes. It was also easier to take my foot off the ground, there did not seem to be as much of my usual lingering.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.00 | 5.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.00 |
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A.M. Finally I got around to doing a scheduled speed workout. It did help that Jeff wanted to do a tempo. I decided I was going to become a boltun, which is the masculine form of boltushka. Both words mean a talkative person in Russian. For me, being a boltun means I am not going to schedule any speed work unless somebody is doing it with me, and even then, go his pace even if he is slower. The rationale behind it is that even though my muscles and cardio can handle pushing the pace every other day fine, my nervous system subtly becomes worn out. The lack of muscular fatigue does not help, either, because it tricks me into thinking I am good to go for another workout too soon. With a partner, the nervous system will get taxed less. If he is slower, I can move up front and pull him and still be OK. If he is faster, I can draft - the muscles will work harder, but the brain will not. If he is an equal match, then we'll trade quarters, and the brain will be working half the time. After yesterday's experience I was confident the crocs were good enough for a 15 mile run. Jeff's first question when he saw them was if they stay on your feet. They actually do quite well. We warmed up a few miles, then started the Provo River 5 Mile Tempo. The plan was to run side by side for about 0.5, then I would move up front and pull Jeff at whatever pace he thought was right the rest of the way. Jeff is still not quite in his top shape after his injury, normally we just trade quarters. So we did the first two quarters in 1:24. After that I accelerated to move up, but forgot to ease off once I was there. So the next quarter was 1:20. Then I eased off to 1:24, 5:32 for the mile. Jeff seemed to be doing OK, so I ran the next mile in 5:30 at a steady pace hoping that maybe we could beat the 5:30 guy. But then Jeff started struggling and we backed off some. 13:51 at the turnaround, we lost quite a bit hitting both quarters before and after in 1:26. Doing a 180 in the dark over by that gate is a bit tricky. 16:40 at 3 miles. 22:17 at 4. Then Jeff struggled on the micro-hill - quarters of 1:27 and 1:26, then I told him we needed to run sub-5:40 to break 28:00, so he sped up a bit, and we closed with 1:24 and 1:23 to finish the 5 miles in 27:57. Ran back with Jeff to his house, then the additional distance to make the total of 15. More notes on the crocks - the pluses are that the form feels great, the foot comes off the ground quickly, the fatigue is less noticeable, the foot lands on the toe, and the shin muscles are working very well, better than in any other shoe I have ever worn. The minuses are that my big toes do not like the feeling of rubber pressing against them, The side of my foot hits the side attachment clip of the back strap on the sharp turns at fast speeds, and the extra rotation of my right foot causes it to rub against the top edge of the shoe which resulted in a minor blister. Plus their durability is not that great. After only 25 miles I am already seeing wear marks in the toe area. No wear marks on the heel, a very good sign. So far, I am encouraged to try Vibram Five Fingers, which should have all of the advantages of crocs but would hopefully address the disadvantages. Plus, being able to use the toes more freely should help. P.M. Crocs again. 1 with Julia in 10:27, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:10. She said: "There is no way I can catch the 9:00 girl" as she closed 10 seconds on her in a quarter. She repeated that half-way through the next quarter in which she closed the remaining 10, and added another 3 seconds on top of it. Afterwards, she was finally convinced that the 9:00 girl was not that hard to beat, and put another 17 seconds on her in the next quarter closing in 1:58. Sometimes our perception of reality is not correct. Another 2 with Benjamin in 17:39. He is racing on Saturday, and he said before the run that he did not want to run faster than 8:50 pace. He ended up being right on, which took a lot of self-restraint. Added another 0.5 by myself.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.30 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.30 |
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A.M. 15.1 in 1:46:50 in Crocs. 11.1 of it with Jeff. Ran 0.9 via a short cut to his house, then with him, then dropped him off and ran 3 more. I think I have the blistering issue resolved, possibly the Crocs stretched out. My lower calves felt a bit fatigued, though, so I think I'll give them a break tomorrow and run in my racing flats instead. Plus it would really be bad to end up with a broken Croc 8 miles away from the house while Benjamin needs to get to his race soon. The Crocs are still in good shape, the wear marks on the front did not get bigger, and no wear marks on the heel appeared. You can still read "Made in China" on the bottom of the sole, as well as No Boundaries TM. No, this is not a joke, an April Fool's day joke, although it does sound like one, I really have been running in a pair of $5 Crocs, Jeff being a witness. Here goes the shoe counter, let's have some fun: Crocs - 45.1 miles.
I am curious if they can handle 500. Already 9% there. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:39, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:30, 0.7 with no running partners in 4:58, and 2 with Benjamin in 18:32. Pushed Jacob and Joseph in the stroller for all segments except Benjamin's. Wore Crocs. Crocs - 50.3 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.10 | 11.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 25.20 |
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A.M. Steve Ashbaker the Air Dark Horse rescued me today from having to run 20 miles alone. Decided to take a break from Crocs today, and wore racing flats. I originally wanted to run to Bridal Veil and back, but it was cold enough already without the wind, so we agreed to do our 10.1 mile course twice. We were having fun in the first half. First, we caught the 7:00 guy at mile 3. Then there was a branch on the road. Steve being the Air Dark Horse flew right over it. I being the Low Flying Spy Plane ran into it and took a spill. Only a few scratches, got up and went on, no problems. Then it was time for Russian jokes. Here is the one for today. Gorbachev comes to the White House. Reagan seats him at the piano and says: "You can press any key except that red one". Gorbachev finally is overcome with curiosity and presses the forbidden red key. He gets splashed with ink, and plans a revenge. Now Reagan comes to the Kremlin. Gorbachev invites him to the piano and admonishes him not to press the forbidden black key. He finally gets too curious and presses it anyway. Nothing happens. He does it again. Still no result. He goes to Gorbachev to complain: "This is borning! Back in America...", to which Gorbachev replies: "There is no America." We were having so much fun that we forgot it was time to shift gears into the brisk easy zone - around 6:20 - 6:40, but we did remember around mile 6, and made it to 10.1 in 1:08:58. After that it was time for the tempo portion. I told Steve that a quarter under 1:30 was good, and over 1:30 was bad, otherwise, anything was acceptable, and we got going. At first we were going 5:50 pace, then we even picked it up to 5:44, but then Steve was not feeling good for some reason, so we eased off to 5:50, and then to 5:55 - 6:00 pace. We ended up running the last 10.1 in 59:48, 5:55.25 average. Total time for 20.2 was 2:08:46, 6:22.48 average. Immediately afterwards took Benjamin to the Rex Lee 5 K. Ted and I decided that since Ted was injured, it would be better for me to pace his son James, and for him to pace Benjamin. James ran a PR of 19:25, and Benjamin ran a PR as well, 22:02. I was impressed with his last 200 in 45 seconds. Ran some extra, ended up with 25.2 for the whole deal. James even gave me about a mile in my marathon pace zone.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| In spite of getting good night sleep I drifted off during the Sacrament meeting. Then Sarah handed me a kids book that talked about Lehi's dream. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.16 | 2.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.16 |
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A.M. Got a running book. This is a significant development for me. I am a firm believer that only few books are actually worth the money and the eye strain. The book is Brain Training for Runners by Matt Fitzgerald. I find that many of his ideas are very similar to what I discovered in my own running experience: - train six days a week, rest on the seventh
- it is the brain that initiates the fatigue shutdown, not the muscle
- excessive shoe cushioning overtime creates feet that are prone to injuries
- sitting on your bum all day long messes up your running form
- recovery is as important as stress - beds make champions, miles just help them get ready for bed
- drink by thirst, do not overhydrate
- low ground contact is a sign of an elite runner
- you slow down not because you are out of fuel, but because your brain thinks you are about to run out of it. You speed up not because you got more fuel, but because your brain thinks it is coming.
- Elite runner stride has a well-time sequence of power surges and relaxations. The primary active agent of the fatigue-induced slowdown is the disruptions of those timings.
- emotional stress is bad for your running performance, keep it down
I really liked his idea of visualizing that you are running on a non-motorized treadmill.
Another Crocs day. Ran 2 mile warm-up in 17:37 with Hyrum. Then figured the Uneventful-Half would bring me to the target mileage for the run. Ran by feel, focused on running on a non-motorized treadmill. The pace naturally got faster. After a while I decided to see what would happen if I did not monitor it for a while. I hit the 2 mile mark in 12:41 when I decided to stop checking the pace. Next time I checked my split was at 5.05, and it was 31:24, 6:08 average for the unmonitored section. Then I checked it again at 7.5, and it was 47:01, 6:07 average for the unmonitored section. Then I monitored it from then on, and tried not to let the observation influence the pace. It was a fairly steady 6:07 - 6:15 pace that appropriately reacted to the changes in the terrain, which told me I was truly running by effort. Around 9.3 into the Uneventful Half I ran into Matt and he joined me. He has an interesting quality - whenever you run with him, you always feel like he is pushing the pace. Ran at around the same pace uphill to a little bit past Macey's with him (9:10 for 1.5), and then on the way back we were aided by the downhill, and both of us kind of cranked up the effort. I am not sure if I was responding to his moves, or if I was just making my own, but the pace eventually progressed into the sub-5:40 range. The last mile was 5:33. Total time for 13.11 was 1:20:13 (6:07.11 average). I toyed with the idea of cranking it up and catching the 1:20 guy, but I figured I would have had to run sub-5:20s, and I was not in the mood. Total time for 15.11 was 1:37:50. Too fast for an aerobic run, perhaps, but I figured since I'd be running slow tomorrow, and I do not schedule hard speed workouts any more, and my body naturally wanted to run this fast, I'd let it. Crocs - 65.41 miles.
P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:05, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:52, 2.55 in 19:46 including 2.11 with Benjamin in 16:47. All in Crocs. Crocs - 70.46 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 8.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.30 | 0.60 | 1.20 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Crocs again. Started with Hyrum, Josse, and Jeff. Dropped Hyrum off at 2 miles. On his own initiative he ran his fastest post-comeback mile in 7:35 at the end. He'll be running with us all the way before too long. Then I needed to go to the bathroom. Jeff and Josse took off. I ran a brief warm-up 0.5 in 3:08, then cranked it up and hit a 0.5-1% downhill quarter in 1:19, eased off under the bridges and with turns on the next one to 1:25, then picked it back up to 1:20 on the following, and then caught Jeff and Josse about 50 meters later. Had a VPB around 8 miles into the run, caught up at around 5:30 pace, no splits. Dropped Jeff and Josse at 12.1, and ran 3 more by myself. Total time for 15.1 was 1:50:37. Crocs - 85.56 miles. P.M. Wore Crocs. 2 with Benjamin pushing Jacob in the single stroller in 16:52, then 3 not pushing anybody with Benjamin riding a bike in 19:43. Was running easy until the last 1000, then picked up the pace. All I wanted to do was catch the 6:40 guy for 3 miles, but once I pressed the gas pedal I was immediately at a slightly sub-6:00 pace. So I ended up with a 3:41 for the last 1 K. Crocs - 90.56 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.42 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.92 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.75 | 0.45 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.20 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff at 5:10 AM. Took a break from Crocs just in case, ran in racing flats. We started out with a 2:11 quarter (yes, that's right, 8:44 pace for 0.25, Kenyan warmup), 7:43 mile, then eased into a slightly sub-7:00 pace. After we crossed 9.6 mark I asked Jeff how he felt about catching the 1:10 guy, he said that would be fine. So we picked it up with around 0.45 to go, and ran the last two quarters in 1:28 and 1:22. I was surprised to see 1:22 on the last one as Jeff was telling me about the challenges of going to bed on time the entire time, and I was listening with more interest than I would normally have at 5:30 pace. Our time for 10.1 was 1:09:49, 6:54.75 average. P.M. Wore Crocs. 1 with Julia in 10:48, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:20, 5.6 by myself in 36:57, and 2 with Benjamin in 16:34. Crocs - 100.66 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.52 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.52 |
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A.M. Must have eaten something rotten last night. Was not feeling good this morning. Resting HR was 66 instead of the usual 48. Felt nauseous. Went for a run anyway, but kept it short. Ate an apple right before the run, that seemed to help a bit. Ran with Jeff. Hyrum did not make it. We ran the first quarter in 2:21, and I really did not feel like I could go any faster. We finally caught the 8:00 guy around 2.5. Then we hit some headwind, we turned around and it became tailwind. Around 5.5 into the run I thought of Jeremiah 4:19: My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace... There is a good one in Lamentations 1:20 as well, which I found while looking up the reference on the first one: Behold, O Lord; for I am in distress: my bowels are troubled... However, a mile later I started feeling better. We picked up the pace to sub-7:00. I ran to Jeff's house, dropped him off, then added the extra distance to make it 10.02. Thought of going a bit longer, but decided to err on the side of caution and finish the distance later tonight if I really felt better. Total time was 1:13:58. Crocs - 110.68 miles P.M. Stomach still feeling troubled. I set a dubious PR on this run for the number of different types of foul emissions from both ends of the digestive tract. Started with 0.5 in 3:44 to find Benjamin. Then 2 more with him in 16:14. Evaluated how I felt, and figured I should be able to handle another 4. Started with a 7:36 mile, feeling painful in the stomach, but nothing I cannot run through. Next mile in 7:05. Started feeling weak, like I wanted to walk home, or better, just lay down and not move at all. But the home is now 2 miles a way, so I'd better run, 2 miles of walking would be a long and painful walk with a sick stomach. Stopped for a VPB hoping it would make me feel better. Started running, still feeling weak, focused on a goal - keep it sub-8:00. After about half a mile I did not feel any better, but the pace got faster - started running 7:15 pace. Then about 3.35 into the run all of a sudden I started feeling extremely weak, I do not remember feeling that bad at the end of my worst marathon, and soon I found out why. A few seconds later I threw up, first time in 7 years. When I thought I was done, I started running, but was still feeling very weak, and for a good reason. I had more stuff to throw up. I stopped, finished the job, and all of a sudden felt almost normal. Finished the rest of the run at around 6:50 pace, 29:36 for 4 miles. I think this experience provides a good case for the brain-governed fatigue model. I did not have any less glycogen in my muscles in the moment of weakness right before throwing up when I probably would not have been able to sustain 8:30 pace than a couple minutes later when I was comfortably running 6:50s. So the most sensible explanation of what happened I can think of is that my brain sensed extreme stomach distress, and started shutting down the muscles in response to facilitate coping with it. When the distress was over, the muscles started receiving normal signal. Crocs - 117.18 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.83 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.83 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.18 | 0.00 | 5.00 | 0.00 | 20.18 |
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A.M. Ran with Tyler. My original plan was to pace him through a 5 mile tempo at 5:30 pace. With the stomach troubles of yesterday that plan was put into question. However, I decided to give it a try anyway. I told Tyler I would run 5:30s until I can't. I did take some measures to ease the impact of GI distress. There were two concerns. One, if there is something in the stomach that is not being digested, the nausea will come up. Two, with the lack of ability to digest food, low blood sugar, and glycogen depletion would cause problems. I had an interesting experience with a 5 mile tempo after a stomach flu about a year ago when I was able to run 5:30s in the first 2 miles, but then very quickly digressed to 5:55s for the rest of the run. To mitigate the impact of the illness, I ate my standard breakfast meal right before bed (uncooked rolled oats, dates, and peanuts mixed with soy mile) along with some Powerade, and added a large cup of Powerade in the morning as well. We warmed up 2.62 miles and started the tempo. First mile was 5:24 with perfectly even splits by quarter. I noticed Tyler was struggling a bit at 5:25, and eased off the pace to the 5:30 target. Next mile was 5:31. Around 2 miles my legs started feeling slightly toxic, and I was concerned. But I figured I'd keep the pace for as long as I can and not worry about it. If I have to stop, I have to stop. Then we did a half in 2:45, (13:40 at the turnaround), and the next half in 2:46, which gave us another 5:31 mile. We got into a nice 1:22 per quarter groove after that, and I now started feeling confident I'd be able to sustain it to the end. Tyler struggled a bit around 3.75, so I eased off to a 1:24 quarter, which gave us a 5:30 mile for the next split. The mini-break helped Tyler regain his strength, and he pushed the pace to a 1:23 quarter on the mini-uphill, followed by a 1:21 once it flattened out. With about 500 to go he started struggling again, and a gap began to open up, but I figured he would close it in the final kick especially if he had a moving target, so I just kept the pace. Which is pretty much what happened. I finished in 27:21.6, Tyler was withing 0.5 of a second, which gave him a PR for 5 miles, as well as 4 miles en-route. Last mile was 5:25. Incidentally, this is my 5 mile PR for wearing Crocs, and only 33 seconds slower than my fastest time on that course. Then we did a long cool down at around 8:00 pace to make the total of 15 miles. I felt like I do at the end of a marathon on the last mile due to the lack of nutrition the day before, but otherwise everything was fine, much better than yesterday. I still could not eat very much at breakfast, but was able to get in enough to make me feel decent. Crocs - 132.18 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:38, 0.15 to drop Julia off at the church and back, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:50, 2.53 with Benjamin to Jamba Juice in 21:55. Stomach still not good, dinner consisted of a small cup of Jamba Juice. Crocs - 137.36 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.11 | 7.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 25.11 |
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A.M. We had quite a group this morning. Josse, Tyler, Steve Ashbaker, Cody, and Jeff. We paced Josse to a 1:34:51 Uneventful Half for a warm-up. This is her fastest time of the year on the slowest course she's run so far (if we adjust her Painter's time for the shortness of the course). Then Josse and Tyler were done, Jeff was going 16, Cody, Steve and I went for 20. We ran a tempo for the last 7 miles. I set a conservative goal of 6:00 pace given my stomach troubles lately and expecting a bonk. I felt somewhat hungry in the morning before the run. That was a good sign. I ate a honey sandwich and drank a large cup of Powerade. I also drank a large cup of Powerade after we finished the warm-up.
Jeff was going to run 1.5 with us, then go back, Cody courageously decided to hang with us until death, then jog the rest of the distance. We ran the first mile of the tempo in 5:46, the pack was still intact. Jeff turned around at 1.5. We hit the next mile in 5:40 with some help from Steve's pace initiative. Then we noticed Cody was struggling, and eased off a bit to help him stay with us longer. He made it to about 2.75 mark. The next mile was 5:43. Steve moved upfront and pushed the pace, I just hung on for dear life. Next mile in 5:36 with a 180 in the middle. Steve was doing surges to 5:20 pace, then easing off. I started feeling a bit fuzzy in the head during the surges, and decided to just keep it steady and not respond. When I stopped responding to the surges, I felt a lot better, 1:23 quarters started feeling sustainable. 5:34 for the next mile in spite of a small net uphill. Steve's fervor died down a bit, he stopped surging. I enjoyed that, but not enough to move upfront and start pushing the pace. Our next mile was 5:37, and it was not a fast mile at all - net uphill, a couple of turns, sharp uphill curve coming from under the Geneva road bridge. On the last mile I finally felt like pushing the pace, so I moved upfront. We hit the next two nasty quarters (rolling net uphill, bridge tunnels) in 1:25 each. Then 1:24, and 1:21 on the last one with the help of a sprint in the last 60 meters, which gave us 5:35 for the last mile. Our total time for 7 miles was 39:31, 5:38.71 average. Total time for 20.11 was 2:14:22, 6:40.9 average. I suppose my body learned to burn fats better since I've been doing high mileage. I have no other explanation as to where I found the fuel to do two workouts like the one today and the one yesterday while struggling with a stomach flu and putting in the miles. P.M. Wore Crocs. 3 pushing Jacob in 22:24, then 2 with Benjamin (no Jacob) in 16:34. Still stomach flu issues, although better. Was able to eat my regular oats breakfast, and a large bowl of soy ice cream at night. Somehow managing to live off stored fat, I suppose. Crocs - 142.36 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Happy Easter. Took a 2 hour nap after church. Improvements on the stomach front. Was able to eat and digest the big turkey dinner Sarah made. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.90 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.40 |
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A.M. 2 with Hyrum in 16:22, 2.1 more with Sarah in 20:07, 11.1 more alone in 1:11:30. Picked it up on the last 0.5, ran a 1:30 quarter followed by 1:23. Stomach is feeling much better, pretty much normal, although I was not as hungry as I should have been. Wore Crocs. Crocs - 157.56 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:30, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:07, 2 with Benjamin in 16:44, and 0.7 alone in 4:33. Crocs - 162.76 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.40 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 20.40 |
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A.M. Stomach issues continued. Still not as hungry as I ought to be, not eating as much, plus the runs. But otherwise, surprisingly I am able to train. Started with 10.1 with Jeff, Josse, and Brad. They ran it in around 1:18, but thanks to 4 VPBs I ended up with 1:15:01 and about 1 mile worth of tempo running. Timed a 0.3125 segment at 1:40, exactly 5:20 pace. Then ran 2.1 with Sarah. Josse joined us for the first 2.1. The time was 21:05. Afterwards 3 more in 19:21, total time for 15.2 was 1:55:27. Crocs - 177.96 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:23, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:46, 2 with Benjamin in 16:01, and 0.7 alone in 4:50. Crocs - 183.16 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.17 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 8.67 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.60 | 0.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.20 |
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A.M. Took a break from Crocs. 10.1 in 1:10:12 with Jeff at 5:15 AM. Jeff's quads were tired from a bike ride on Monday. P.M. Wore Crocs again. 2 miles with Benjamin in 15:22. He started wearing Crocs as well. Yesterday he was getting used to them, today I think he caught on. His last mile was 7:19, and it came naturally with no encouragement on my end to catch any kind of guy. Then ran 8 more alone in 50:35. That makes it 1:05:57 for 10, 6:35.7 average, and 6:19.38 average for the last 8. A bit fast, but Crocs tend to put a bit of a devil in me, so it felt very good. Had a song in my head from one of the later sequels of Nu Pogodi where the savage cannibal rabbits are trying to eat the wolf, and it got me going. Saw Bill Cobler with Breanna on their bikes certifying the Provo City Half. Picked it up to slightly sub-6:00 pace with 0.6 to go. Crocs - 193.16 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.75 | 0.00 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 20.00 |
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A.M. Jeff was sick this morning with stomach problems, so he did not come. I suppose I passed the baton to him. Mine, on the other hand, was in super shape after taking some acidophilus. Yesterday it was anxious to digest everything in sight, and the trend continued today. Ran the first 8 miles with Brad. We started with a Kenyan warmup. First quarter in 2:19, first mile in 8:40. Then we sped up a bit, but did not catch the 8:00 guy until past 4 miles. After that we went faster, and ended up with 1:00:59 for the distance. Dropped Brad off and went for 7 more in 45:25, 6:29.29 average. Total time for 15 was 1:46:24, 7:05.6 average. Picked it up a bit on the last quarter, ran it in 1:22. It was windy, but not too bad. This run brought my Crocs over the 200 mile landmark. What is interesting that the amount of wear increased at a much smaller rate between 100 and 200 vs the first 100 miles.
Crocs - 208.16 miles. P.M. 1.5 with Jenny in 13:02, 1.5 alone in 10:27, 2 with Benjamin and pushing Joseph in the stroller in 15:22. Crocs - 213.16 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.50 | 0.00 | 5.00 | 0.00 | 19.50 |
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A.M. Tyler came to run with me this morning. Benjamin wanted to run part of our warm-up. He wore Crocs again. His first mile was 7:42. Afterwards, he hit two quarters in 1:46 each. I challenged him to break 7:00 on the last mile, and he took off as if his name was Haile or Kenenisa. It was not so much the speed as the long stride and the apparent ease with which it came. His next two quarters were both 1:41, which made it 6:54 for the mile, and 14:36 for 2 miles. Tyler and I ran another 1.38, and then started our 5 mile tempo. Our first two miles were 5:28 each, followed by 0.5 in 2:45 right before the turnaround. Tyler was hanging back a bit during the first 0.5, but as soon as we turned around he started pushing the pace. We ran the next 0.5 in 2:42, which gave us 5:27 for the third mile. We coasted through another 0.5 in 2:44, and then Tyler started pressing the pace again, and we did 2:40 for the next 0.5, 5:24 for the mile. This started to feel hard, but I thought I'd be able to run at least 5:20 for the last mile. Tyler pressed even harder and hit the uphill quarter in 1:19. I hung back a bit and did 1:20. After that Tyler started to slip away. I thought it was because he picked it up to 5:10 pace, but the split at the next quarter showed that he was just holding 5:20, and I was slowing down. My next quarter was 1:22. In the last half mile, Tyler held a steady pace and finished in 27:06. My legs started to give out, and I slowed down to a 1:24 quarter followed by 1:23 on the last one. 5:29 for the last mile, and 27:16.8 for 5 miles, 5:27.36 average. Last 0.5 felt like the last leg of Del Sol. Barely breathing, but cannot go any faster even for 50 meters for the life of me. Probably because I've been speeding on my easy runs lately. I am discovering that the nervous system is a funny animal. You cannot tell it is fatigued without trying to run at top end. And because of that, it is difficult to tell if you are wearing it out too much, especially in my case when the aerobic ability is high, the muscles are damage-resistant, but the neurological ability is low. I need to make sure I do not exceed 7:00 pace on my easy runs even if I feel like running 6:20s. Tyler, on the other hand, got a 5 mile PR, and a 4 mile PR en route as a bonus. His recent increase in mileage is starting to pay off. Ran some more with Tyler at 8:00 pace, dropped him off at 12 miles, then ran 3 more to make it 15. Crocs - 228.16 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:35, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:33, two more alone in 15:21. Crocs - 232.56 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 9.33 | Nap Time: 0.83 | Total Sleep Time: 10.17 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 22.85 | 0.00 | 2.00 | 0.25 | 25.10 |
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A.M. Long run with Jeff and Tyler. We ran very easy. Around 10 miles into the run a runner named Matt caught up to us, and we picked it up to his pace. Or maybe he slowed down to ours. We invited him to join the blog. I think he just did, but he has not yet posted the workout, or enough bio to be able to tell for sure. I did 2x200 accelerations each in 37 seconds involuntarily due to being over-hydrated. We dropped Tyler off at 15.1, my time was 1:54:05, Jeff and Tyler would have been a bit slower. Then we ran some more. Jeff turned around after a mile, and I went another mile with Matt, then another 0.5 and turned around. I debated whether I should run the last 2 fast. The benefits would have been getting home sooner, and practicing running fast at the end of a long run. The concern was that yesterday I was showing signs of neural fatigue, and those little pickups day after day may add up. Finally, the desire to be home and eating breakfast sooner prevailed over everything. I thought 5:40 pace would be good, given that there is a 40 feet of elevation gain in those 2 miles, lots of turns, and ups and downs when going under bridges. But it turned out that I had more juice than I thought. My splits by quarter were 1:23, 1:22, 1:23 (under a bridge, then sharp curve to do 270 turn), 1:21, 1:23 (3 underpasses), 1:23 (underpass, uphill), 1:21, and 1:19 for the total of 10:55 for 2 miles. There was an occasional tail wind around 5-7mph. This gave me 2:27:27 for 20.1. I was pleased to see that I felt very energized in the last 2 miles. My guess is that running at 7:30 pace with friends for me is more like a leisurely walk in the forest. It nurtures my nerves, and then I have the energy, even if it is a long run. Running 6:30 alone, on the other hand, may feel just as easy, but it slowly burns the nerves out. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:07, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:17, 2.5 with Benjamin in 21:27. Crocs - 237.56 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Went to church. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.22 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.22 |
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A.M. Woke up and saw ice on the road again. Bummer. Or maybe a blessing in disguise - it would be easy not to speed on base runs. Decided not to wear Crocs to keep the feet from getting too cold. Started with 4 with Hyrum and Daniel. It was cold, windy, and slippery. I saw a big traffic jam on I-15 as we went under it, and said to myself - I am glad I am not driving in this! Then I realized that the drivers who saw me would probably think - "I am glad I am not running in this!", but not after a few minutes of thinking. We ended up with 36:55 for 4 miles, but it was about 40 seconds faster for me due to a VPB. Ran another mile with Daniel in 8:43. Then 10.1 by myself in 1:18:02 slipping, getting blown off by the wind at times, and admiring the scenery. Saw a few birds. Too bad I did not have Karl Jarvis with me. I could only identify the ducks. P.M. 0.5 with Julia in 5:37, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:17, 2x100 with Joseph in 43 and 41, Joseph got a PR in 100 today. Then 2 with Benjamin in 16:12, and 1 alone in 7:49. Crocs - 242.68 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.47 | 0.00 | 0.63 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. We had quite a group this morning. Jeff, Josse, Brad, and Daniel. It eventually dwindled to just Jeff and Josse. I did 2 post-VPB pickups, first time 0.375 in 2:05, and then 0.25 in 1:20. Then we found Adam on the trail. Dropped off Josse, ran some more with Jeff and Adam. Dropped off Jeff, finished the run with Adam. Total of 15.1 in 1:58:40. It got colder - 20 F, but no snow on the ground. Just wrote a comment on Lybi's blog that physical youth should continue until 45 under, and remembered that SelectMed (former IHC) decided to give me a birthday present in the form of raising our rate from $268/month to $337. The reason being that I turn 35 on April 21. This makes me furious, and I choose to not restrain the fury. I can mingle with high schoolers and they will not have a clue I am not one of them unless I open my mouth and reveal my ignorance of whatever matters are considered important in their circles, or unless we run a marathon, in which case they would finish far behind. Neither one of those differences should be considered a reason for a higher health insurance rate. This is more than a matter of paying extra $69 a month. This is about having to deal with a system that suffers from people making unhealthy lifestyle choices, knows very well that it does, but at the same time is sufficiently inept to fail to reward those who earnestly and passionately strive to be in good health.
I am looking for a health insurance provider that can give our family catastrophic health insurance for less. And particularly for somebody who would honor a healthy lifestyle. If anybody has suggestions, feel free to share. I think we should have a law that requires a health insurance provider to use biological rather than chronological age for calculating premiums. Otherwise, health insurance companies just get lazy and follow the path of the least resistance. P.M. 0.5 with Julia in 5:37, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:36, 2 with Benjamin in 15:15, and 1 alone in 7:31. Crocs - 262.78 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.13 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.13 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Jeff in 1:17:43. Discussed the effect of high mileage on all out speed and high school performances. Supposedly science says that if you do high mileage, the midgrade fibers become more slow-twitch oriented, and that kills your explosive power. If that is true, I must not have any of those because I've never gained all out speed by reducing mileage, or lost it by increasing it. Nor have I ever seen a reasonably well documented case when this has actually happened to somebody. If anybody has one, feel free to share. Crocs - 272.88 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:41, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:41, 5.53 alone in 41:33, and 2 with Benjamin in 15:30. Crocs - 282.91 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.97 | 0.00 | 2.00 | 1.00 | 20.97 |
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A.M. Tempo run with Jeff. Jeff wanted to do something shorter and faster, and I was not opposed. So we decided to do 3 miles starting at Geneva road, 1.5 out, 1.5 back. The plan was to go 5:30 pace. We stuck to the plan through the first 0.5. Then I led a quarter in 1:20, and Jeff did his in 1:19. This gave us 5:24 at the mile. We were both feeling good so far. Then a devil got into me and I did the next two quarters in 1:17 and 1:18, which gave us 7:59 at 1.5. After that I realized I did not want to run my race today, and told Jeff I did not want to go that fast. He took us through the next quarter in 1:24, which felt great, expect it was too slow. I thought I'd recover from the earlier adventure, and now would want to pick it up, but I did not - next quarter in 1:23, 10:46 at 2 miles followed by a 1:24 up the mini-hill. Jeff had had it, and took the next quarter in 1:21. I took over and eased off to 1:24 without trying. I suppose that is what happens when you focus on not breathing too hard. Then Jeff put the hammer down and hit 1:18 on the last quarter. I reluctantly followed, very reluctantly, but at least I could do it. I ended up with 16:13.8 on my watch. Ran a long cool down, part of it with Jeff, part with Derek Davis on his way to work. Total of 15.6 for the run. Not sure what to think of this workout. It was definitely odd with 5:24.6 average, a mid-mile in 5:14, and a 5:21 mile pieced together of the 4 fastest quarters. Wanting to run 5:10 pace after the first mile is good. Slowing down to 5:36 pace to recover from it, and feeling the effects for so long is bad. I am wondering if I am ready to start racing a half at 5:10 pace in some ways, but some glue is lacking to make it happen. And if so, the following training might supply the glue - run 5:10 pace until I can't hold it without a heroic effort or at all. Stop, jog 200 meters. Try again. Repeat until I have 5 miles total in at 5:10 pace. Any thoughts? Crocs - 298.51 miles. P.M. Ran the Costco Relay with my kids. We start at our house, and each kid does his run as Sarah drops them off/picks them up on the way. First 1.06 with Julia in 11:30. Then 1.54 with Jenny in 13:03. Then Benjamin being full of energy ran 21:07 for 2.77 with 100 feet of elevation gain which is 7:38 average. This put my Crocs over 300 miles. Still no holes, but one place in the forefoot wore out to about maybe a half of the original width on both feet. I have run a marathon with a holey shoe before (Moab 2005). The hole was not big at the start, and I thought the race would be all on asphalt, so I would be OK. Then we hit a dirt road around mile 21, and a rock made its way through it which expanded the hole. To make things worse, it started raining too. Then when I got to the finish, the chute was not set up. So I timed myself, and went to work with one other helper to set up the chute and the computers before the second place finisher would make it. My hands were too cold, and not moving very fast, so even though there was a 15 minute gap, we had to time the second finisher manually, as well as third, and forth. After that, everything was smooth. Something interesting always happens at the Moab Marathon. In 2006 I had to crawl under a barbed wire to get to the finish because of getting on the wrong side of it in the last quarter mile. It was on April Fool's Day, but it was no April Fool's Day joke.
Crocs - 303.88 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Hibernated my way through 15.1 in 1:55:48, 11.1 of it with Jeff. My body thought 7:40 was a good pace, 7:45 even better. This is a good sign. I noticed that when my body wants to hibernate before a race, I often have good races. Crocs - 318.98 miles. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:30, then later 2 with Lybi and James in 18:48, and 1 more with James in 9:02. Crocs - 323.98 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Race: |
Provo City Half Marathon (13.11 Miles) 01:13:19, Place overall: 2 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.10 | 0.00 | 13.11 | 0.00 | 24.21 |
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A.M. Brief report. Provo City Half, 1:13:19, 2nd pace after Shin Nozaki, a Japanese runner living in Orem who ran 1:11:20, great time for that course on a windy day. We ran together up to about 5.2, then he made a strong move and dropped me, then kept increasing the gap throughout the race. Full report to follow. Drove up to the start with James, Lybi, and Adam. Warmed up around 2 miles with Adam. The race started 20 minutes late due to the chip pickup problem. I wonder why they were not handing the chips at the packet pickup. Talk to Shin at the start. Checked out the crowd. Did not identify any trouble otherwise, but was aware that some may still be lurking. In the report, I did not use a GPS, and am giving the splits from my $9 Walmart watch by the mile markers painted on the road (as opposed to the race signs. You should ALWAYS go by what is painted on the road on a certified course), and the elevations are from the official race course profile at MapMyRun.Com. BYU ROTC cadets fired the gun. I somewhat embarrassingly nearly missed the turn on 2nd West. The pace felt slow, and I was already upfront. Shin was right with me. There was a headwind, or possibly just a cross-wind on 2nd West. I saw Ted on his bike up ahead, and figured I'd just pull up and get right behind him. So I did make a bit of a surge and caught up at around 0.5 mark. Shin fell back a bit, but then caught up once I had eased off the pace. We already had nobody with us. Made a turn on 800 North and headed towards the Provo River Trail. The head wind picked up, I think now this was a true headwind. We went through the first mile in 5:24, which had a net elevation gain of 43 feet. Good, hope not too good. After about half a mile we finally got off 800 North on the Provo River Trail, finally no headwind. Ted on his bike, I am right on his back wheel, and Shin right on my heels. Second mile in 5:23, net elevation drop of 30 feet. The third mile almost entirely overlapped the course I run almost every day. Lots of turns and going under bridges, ups and downs. Knowing that we were approaching a nasty headwind section I made a couple of moves on the under the bridge micro-downhills to gap Shin, but he would always close. That is one difference between an American and Japanese runner I noticed. The American will do everything he can to not reveal any signs of weakness until he just cannot hide it anymore. The Japanese runners I've raced completely ignored my moves, let me gap them, and then gradually closed the gap. They also make a lot of noises that may trick you into thinking they are struggling a lot when in fact they may still have a lot of juice left. We got off the trail and turned on Geneva Road heading north. Our third mile had a net drop of 16 feet, and we did it in 5:21. 16:08 at 3 miles, 16:43 at the 5 K. We turned on the Boat Harbor Drive. Now the fun starts. We are directly against the headwind. Missed mile marker 4. 27:24 at 5 miles, 2 miles in 11:36, 5:38 average. Net elevation drop of 43 feet over those 2 miles. A very nice gradual drop. Too bad we could not make good use of it. More headwind fun after that for about another quarter mile. It seemed like it gradually picked up as we got closer to the Utah Lake. I am starting to not feel super-snappy. I can tell Shin is getting a bit antsy to go, but waiting for the headwind to be over. We turn off the Boat Harbor Drive on the Provo River Trail, and Shin quickly shifts gears and picks it up to about 5:15 pace. No response from me, I just do not have it after over 2 miles of fighting the headwind. He is gapping me as if I were standing still. Ted went with him for a while, then figured that since he already had a guy on a scooter with him, he could wait for me to catch up and start yelling at me. I am now getting a lecture from Ted on mental toughness. I've heard those lectures before, but they were directed at his son James while we were pacing him. And now I am getting the grown-up male version of it as well. Clean language, but tough words. At first I just wanted to ignore it but after a couple of minutes I realized that I could either ignore it and run 20-30 seconds slower, or I could obey everything he tells me to do and run 20-30 seconds faster. So I decided to do the latter. 6 miles in 33:04, ouch, 5:40 mile. Elevation gain of 13 feet. While we ran into a headwind on an open section, now that we had the tailwind the Murphy's Law made it so that we had a tree cover. So we were not getting very much of it, and to make things worse, with the trail being windy we were getting a mild cross-wind on some sections. At 6.8 the course overlapped a bit with the earlier section around mile 4, and it just happened that James and Lybi reached that particular point at the same time I did. So I got some cheering from them. Missed mile marker 7. Watching Shin gradually open the gap. Getting a continuous pep-talk from Ted, and trying to respond to it. We got off the trail and headed south on Geneva road. Soon mile marker 8 came, 44:24, 11:20 for the last 2 miles, net elevation gain of 15 feet in 2 miles. With some friendly cross wind and tail wind, a slight downhill, and some strong encouragement from Ted, was able to regroup on the next mile and hit it in 5:27, 49:51 at 9 miles, 21 seconds behind the 5:30 guy. The mile had 15 feet of elevation loss. Mile 10 had some cross-wind and a net drop of 2 feet, but it first dropped 10 feet, and then gained 8. I did miss the mark though. Mile 11 was similar to mile 10 wind-wise, but had a net elevation gain of 5 feet with the initial climb of 10 feet, followed by a drop of 5 feet. 1:01:05 at 11 miles, 11:14 for the next 2, 5:30 guy now has 35 seconds. Mile 12 was the toughest mile of the race. What made it tough was running into a headwind on University Avenue up the railroad overpass. The elevation data from MapMyRun.Com shows a gain of 30 feet, but looking at the actual location of mile 12, it was right on top of the bridge, while MapMyRun.Com shows further climb after mile 12. And the whole length of the course comes out to 13.24. So I assume MapMyRun data is about 0.1 off the certification. This would make the elevation gain to be 40 feet. I ran that mile in 5:59 and was glad it was over when we started going down the bridge. Mile 13 had a lot of turns, headwind for about 0.5, and net gain of about 23 feet in spite of the quick drop of 10 feet in the first 0.1. Caught a split at the 20 K - 1:09:29. That would make it 52:46 for the 15 K from 5 K to 20 K, acceptable for the conditions and the course. I managed a 5:42 for mile 13, 1:12:46 at 13 miles. Tried to pick it up on the last 0.11, but did not have much of a kick due to fatigue and the last of competition nearby - 32 seconds. Got 1:13:18 on my watch, 1:13:19 officially. Afterwards, Ted gave me the greatest compliment - "1:13 is not that bad for that wind!". That was exactly what I needed to hear. It means something to me because I know that Ted does not tell you you did a good job when you did not. He'll say: "What happened, were you sick, did you have a cold, did you have a stomach flu, or are you overtrained?" when you do not run the time that he expected you to run. Since James could run with Lybi only part way due to his recent knee issues, we had planned the operation "Lybi relay". Adam paced her for the first 3 miles, then ran his regular pace the rest of the way passing people and advertising for the blog. James paced her to 8 miles from there, then drove to meet me on Center street as I ran in his direction after the race, picked me up, and took me to a little bit past mile 9 from where I paced Lybi to the finish. I had several concerns for her - slowing down to slower than 12:00 half way through the race due to a severe fuel crash, muscle fatigue, or injury, and how she was going to handle mile 12 with the overpass and the headwind. She performed in the top 20% of the expectation range of what might possibly happen. Her slowest mile was 10:46 (the notorious mile 12), last 5 K in 30:49, 9:54 average, and total time was 2:03:17, very good result for the first half marathon on a tough course on a windy day and with the lack of training recently.
P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:15, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:02, and 2 with Benjamin in 15:24. Crocs - 328.98 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Good sleep. Listened to General Conference. Went on a walk with the kids. Took a nap. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.50 | 0.00 | 0.60 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Started with 4 with Hyrum in 35:33. He needs volunteers for the Utah Valley Marathon on April 12th. Call him 472-7866 if you would like to help. Then continued with 11.1 more at around 7:30 pace until it started hailing. Then picked it up to 5:30 for a quarter (1:22). It stopped hailing. I backed down to 7:30. Then it started hailing again. I began to wish I had not backed down, I would have already been home. Picked it up, ran the last 0.35 at 5:20 pace, timed the last quarter in 1:20. 1:56:56 for 15.1. Crocs - 344.08 miles. P.M. 2 miles with Benjamin in 16:14, then 3 more pushing Joseph in the stroller to Albertsons, and then a long detour back home to make the distance goal. Crocs - 349.09 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.36 | 0.00 | 0.75 | 0.00 | 20.11 |
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A.M. 15.11 in 1:56:34. First 12.11 with Jeff and Josse. Did my standard post-VPB speedwork. 0.25 in 1:23, 0.1875 in 59, and 0.3125 in 1:40, total of 0.75 of unplanned tempo running. Crocs - 364.20 miles. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 14:22. A devil got into him, and he made me run my fastest continuous mile of the day in 6:56. Ran 3 more in 22:21. Crocs - 369.20 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 8.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.90 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.20 | 20.10 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Jeff in 1:19:55 at 5:10 AM. Aerobic hibernation. The Crocs have made past the 50 additional miles demise point predicted by Josse on Sunday. Still no hole. And they weigh only 3.9 ounces. Vibram Five Fingers weigh 6.2!
Crocs - 379.3 miles. P.M. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 12:56, 0.5 more with Benjamin in 3:42 (16:38 at 2 miles), 1 with Julia in 10:40, and 7 mostly alone (a couple of miles with Derek who I found on the trail running home from work) in 50:56. Did a couple of pickups. Crocs - 389.3 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.35 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.75 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Brad. We did our regular hibernation run, except Jeff wanted to shake his legs at 5 K race pace since we are running one this Saturday (Utah Valley). Well, we got carried away on those. I think Jeff just wanted to burn a hole in my Crocs. Our first quarter was 69 instead of planned 75. Our second was 67. On the third one a devil got into Jeff and he hit the first 200 in 31. As if that was not fast enough, he sped up and dropped me. I caught a split of 46 at 300 and complacently eased off to finish in 64. Jeff ended up with 59! Dropped Jeff off at 10.1, dropped Brad off at 12.1. Ran another 3 miles. Total time for 15.1 was 1:56:48. Crocs - 404.3 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:20, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:20, 0.5 more with Benjamin in 3:36, and 2 more alone in 15:22. Crocs - 409.3 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Jeff was sick this morning with a cold. So I ran alone. Took it easy. Ran about 7:20 - 7:30 pace for 12.5 miles. Then a biker with a dog was catching up to me, and I began to wonder how fast I would have to run for them not to pass me. Turned out that about 6:50 pace was enough to hold them off, and then they stopped anyway. But I was already in gear, and figured since I had only 2 miles left, I'd be OK. So I just ran that pace to the end. 1:49:58 for 15.1. The Crocs are on the verge of developing a hole, there is a small crack on the right one, but I cannot yet feel the asphalt.
Crocs - 424.4 miles. P.M. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:16. 3.5 with Jeff later in 27:40. Crocs - 429.4 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Race: |
Utah Valley 5 K (3.107 Miles) 00:16:20, Place overall: 2 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.79 | 3.00 | 0.00 | 3.11 | 20.90 |
| A.M. Woke up this morning at 3:00 AM to go to the bathroom and then could not fall asleep. Oddly enough was worried about Steve getting lost on the course again and getting a bummer instead of $1000. After about an hour of wondering I finally decided to call Hyrum (figuring he was up setting up the course anyway) and make sure everything is OK. Hyrum reassured me everything was fine, but by then I was wound up enough that I could not fall back asleep. Had a bit of an adventure at the start with Jeff not realizing the race was chip-timed and not bringing the chip. We finally got his chip, but that gave us only 0.5 warmup in 27 F weather. With me not getting enough sleep, Jeff fighting the cold, and neither one of us getting a good warmup for such a short race it was lame racing the lame. So we did our best under the circumstances. Traded leads every minute through the first mile, then I took my lead and Jeff fell back. Caught 4:39 split at 24 mile marker of the marathon, which is 5:14 pace. Got 9:55 at mile 25 marker, 5:16. With about 0.5 to go Jeff made a strong move, and caught, and passed me. I latched on to him, but then he started the kick and gapped me. 15:14 at mile marker 26, 5:19. I closed a bit half way through, but not enough, and then he opened up what I closed again. We ended up 1-2, Jeff 16:19.7, me 16:20.9. The course was flat, the last 5 K of the marathon. I would say the time was acceptable for the lack of sleep, the cold weather, and the lack of warm-up. Paced Benjamin. He ended up with 21:32.2 running in Crocs, a PR by 28 seconds. Then drove to around mile 18 and paced Steve from there. Steve won with 2:37:08 with a gap of over 19 minutes in spite of having a cold. Then paced Andy, he got a decent time for a training run - 3:02. Then paced Josse, and watched her move into the lead on the last mile performing the proverbial lamb sacrifice as she moved into big money and left her opponent with none. Then ran some more with Jeff back to where we left our cars. Ended up with about 18.4 miles total. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:20, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:04. Crocs - 432.9 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 5.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 5.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Made up on lost sleep. We had a Stake Conference. A couple of interesting moments. First, there is a Latino brother on our High Council whose first name is Angel, and whose middle name in Moroni. So while they were sustaining the officers, they went through the entire High Council, and finally got to him. Every member of the High Council stood up as his name was being announced. Finally they got to Angel Moroni, and to make things more interesting, for one reason or another he could not be there, so his seat was empty. Then there was a talk on the Articles of Faith. A story was mentioned (probably from around 40 years ago) of how a man was traveling on a bus from New York to San Francisco, and in Salt Lake City a little girl sat right next to him. He saw a sign on the highway that said "Visit the Mormon Sunday School", and asked the girl to tell her what Mormons believed. She recited all 13 articles of faith, and discussed each one. The man was impressed, and looked up the missionaries at his first opportunity. He ended up getting baptized. I thought about how the times have changed. The girl reminded me of my daughter Jenny. First, I would not trust Jenny to go alone on a bus even for a short trip, and, unfortunately, if for some reason she had to and there was no other alternative, I would definitely tell her not to talk to any men. Second, when I drove on I-80 from SLC to San Francisco a couple of years ago I do not recall seeing signs inviting you to visit the Mormon Sunday School. Instead, there are plenty of signs inviting you to gamble in Wendover, followed by several signs later on once you pass Wendover telling you not to pick up hitchhikers because you are near a correctional facility. Ironically, the correctional facility is located in a place called Independence Valley. Later in the evening we went to Jeff and Kimia's house for dinner. After dinner we found some good use for his wedding present - Cooties, which is a game for children ages 3-6 where you have to assemble strange insect-looking six-legged creatures. I thought this would be a great manual dexterity/eye-hand coordination test. So we tested everybody on the task of attaching all 6 legs. Results: Jeff - 9.96 seconds - tried many times, most of the time was around 11 seconds.
Kimia - 12.1 on the second try
Sarah - 14.? on the first and only try
me - 14.65 on my best attempt. I've tried many times, and most of the time got 18. Benjamin - 15.2 in his best attempt. In all others he got too nervous and was taking longer than 20 seconds.
I would be interested to see what others can do.
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Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 11.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.80 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 20.30 |
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A.M. 15.1 alone in 1:48:03. Did 8x100 strides, and a pickup for a mile in 5:53. I did the strides because I remembered it would be a good idea. The mile pickup was accidental. I saw a lady riding a bike in front of me, and decided I wanted to pass her. Then I did not want her to pass me back, so I sped up. Then I decided to hold the pace for the whole mile. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:28, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:24, 2 with Benjamin in 17:21, and 0.7 alone in 5:15. Pushed Jacob in the single stroller when I ran with Jenny and Benjamin. Crocs - 453.2 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.20 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.45 |
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A.M. Ran 15 in 1:57:56. First 8 with Brad and Josse. Did 0.25 in 1:27 on a post-VPB chase. The right Croc now officially has a hole. About 2mm wide. Still in runnable condition, though. Crocs - 468.2 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:56, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:16, 2 with Benjamin in 15:23, 0.7 alone in 4:49, and also ran to the ESL class at the church and back because it was cold. Saw a small leaf-burning fire on the other side of the Provo River that apparently got out of control. They had to call the firefighters. Crocs - 473.65 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.30 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 15.30 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Jeff and Josse in 1:22:57. Had some interesting conversations. Discussed potty training since Joseph started his yesterday and was very successful. Then discussed the importance of mothers. A home without a mother is like an ice hockey team without a goalee. Then discussed when it is appropriate to do speed work. I told Josse she should not do any until she breaks 1:26 in a non-aided half in Utah, and that Michelle should not do any until she breaks 1:20. The logic is that both have plenty of natural speed to do it, and if they are not doing it they are being held back by the lack of aerobic endurance rather than the lack of speed. Crocs - 483.75 miles. The hole on the right shoe is up to about 4mm. It is about under the attachment point of the big toe. Still runnable, I could not even tell there was a hole. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:08, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:15, 2 with Benjamin and Jared in 17:12, 0.7 alone in 4:48. Crocs - 488.95 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Ran the first 2 with Ted and Jeff. Then 6 more with Jeff. Decided to freshen up my sense of pace for the race on Saturday. Ran a mile at a conservative marathon pace in 5:42. Earlier Jeff and I were talking about the lazy girls on his brother's cross-country team that go out for 0.5 until they are out of sight of the coach, and then sit in the bushes for the remainder of the run. No wonder high-school coaches overdo on speedwork. They are probably afraid there students would do nothing otherwise. So I was feeling just like those girls at the start of the tempo mile and we ran the first 200 of it at 6:00 pace. Then we got into a good rhythm, but it still felt easier than I expected for the conditions - it was about 27 degrees and I was wearing pants and a jacket. Total time for 8 miles was 1:01:02. Crocs - 496.95 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:42, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:36, and 2.5 alone in 18:30. Crocs - 501.95 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 5.80 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 5.80 |
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A.M. 1 with Julia in 9:41, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:07. She PR'ed on the last mile of it with the time of 7:30. Then 2 with Benjamin in 15:26. SLC marathon tomorrow.
Crocs - 506.45 miles. P.M. Jogged from the car to the SLC marathon expo, back to re-park it, an back from re-parking it. It was windy. Crocs - 507.75 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Race: |
Salt Lake Marathon (26.22 Miles) 02:34:07, Place overall: 6 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 4.80 | 26.22 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 31.02 |
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A.M. Executive summary: Salt Lake Marathon, 2:34:07, 6th pace. Windy day, slow times. Overloaded field, got outclassed into the no money land. On the positive site, collected nice LDR circuit points for being first in the circuit, and for the first time in my life (out of 43 marathons) ran a negative split on a non-St. George course. Talk about being a slow learner. Details: Stayed with Adam and his family the night before. That made it very nice for getting to the start as he lives right next to it. Met up with Kory, and Dave Holt at the start. A pack of Kenyans/Ethiopians at the start, Shin Nozaki, Alexander Thomas, Matt Harmer. Trouble, but hopefully there will be enough Kenyan DNF's / jog-ins to make top 5. In all truth, though, I need to work on being fit to race those guys honestly, being able to beat them in the half marathon to begin with, rather than counting them at the start and hoping enough are going to have a bad day. Adam made a nice map of the Salt Lake City Marathon on the Course Tool, so when I say the mile was supposed to be X it means based on 2:30 pace projection and the elevation profile the Course Tool thought this how fast I was supposed to run it. We started with the Star Spangled Banner. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave? You bet, it was waving quite a bit today in the wind, you could see it all over. I wish they had sung the second verse as well, it would have been even better: What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Half and full marathon started together, so that was nice. Relaxed through the downhill first mile with mild headwind in 5:49 (target 5:31). Perhaps too much relaxation. Adam and Kory fell back a bit. I motioned to them to catch up, but they thought the pace was too fast. So I made a move and caught up to the Kenyans accompanied by some half-marathon runners. Next mile was 5:39, it was into a more significant headwind, but not a complete killer (target 5:44) . On the third mile the Kenyans were done with the warmup. Nate Hornok, who was running the half at first went with them, the later came back to me. The headwind was the same as in mile 2. Got 5:49, target 6:02. Good, lets hope not too good. On the fourth mile we turned on 21st south and headed down a nice 4-5% grade. I passed Nate and did not care. Finally no headwind, but not for long. So I figured I'd make up some time. Got 5:04, target 5:11. Eased off on the next mile, Nate caught up to me, we chatted a bit, I sat on him for a quarter or so. Then at around 4.6 it was time to say goodbye, it was half-marathon turnaround point. So I was left alone. Could see Alexander Thomas up ahead. A little further Shin and a Kenyan that fell off the lead pack. That is a good sign for me. Kenyans, the type that come to the caliber of Salt Lake Marathon races usually hang on with the leaders until they literally cannot go any further at that pace. Next mile in 5:31, projected 5:22. Why so slow? But the split at 5 was 27:53, only a second slower than 2:30:00 projection.
Hit the Sugarhouse loop. This has been one of my least favorite parts of the course. Today it ended up being my favorite part of the stretch between 5 and 13 miles. Next favorite was the climb on Keller Lane between miles 8 and 9. The reason being not that all of a sudden I've become a terrific hill runner. Rather, those were the only sections on that stretch that did not have headwind today. Mile 6 in 6:01, target 6:05. Encouraging. And then the wind got stronger. Do not remember my splits on the next few miles, but I got to 9 in 52:24, losing to 25 seconds to 2:30 projection. I believe I gained a couple of seconds on the Keller Lane mile (from 8 to 9). Mile 10 was supposed to be 5:37. Good luck with that headwind, only 5:57, 58:21 at 10 miles, last 5 in 30:28. Followed by a 5:59 for mile 11 that was supposed to be 5:25! Either the headwind picked up on that mile or I wore myself out trying too hard on mile 10. No worries, though. I had already realized that 2:30 ideal conditions effort today would not result in a 2:30 time today, and not just for me, but for everybody else as well, and I was going by effort while making a mental note of what kind of split that effort produced rather than stressing out about not hitting a target split. Mile 12 was 6:01 vs target of 5:49. Mile 13 6:25 vs target of 6:08. That is where we got the full gamut of adversity - headwind + uphill. 1:16:46 at 13 miles, 1:17:25 at half-way. The 2:30 guy put a good 1:34 on me on that stretch between 5 miles and the half. No more headwind, tailwind all the way back, or at least so I thought. On mile 14 just a cross-wind, but it feels so nice to be running downhill and with no headwind. 5:42 on the next mile, target 5:36. Not bad considering I had to shift gears from 6:25 pace earlier. Next mile in 5:36, target 5:25, followed by 5:34 right on target. I think the tailwind helped on this one finally. The weather started getting uncomfortably warmer. Mile 17 was 5:49, target 5:33. I think that is where the subtle fatigue of battling the wind in the earlier miles started to catch up to me in combination with a temperature that was not that warm (maybe 65 degrees), but being not used to it from the winter training took its toll. Do not recall my splits in the next 3 miles, but I got to 20 in 1:56:41, 2:15 behind the 2:30 guy. Passed a Kenyan, and then Alexander Thomas. Discovered a new way of fighting the fatigue. Loud grunts. Found them to be very effective. Ran the next 5 K in 18:43, and incidentally the last one in 18:43 as well. Worked my way through a crowd of half-marathoners. Saw Ryan Gurr. He told me I was in 7th place, and gave me the update on who was ahead and how they were doing. Not much hope. However, I anticipated that the weakest Kenyan/Ethiopian in that pack will either DNF or jog in, but only one. And sure enough, with about 1.5 to go I see him walking. Suzanna Thomas was there on a bike and yelled that I am now 6th or maybe 5th. So this Kenyan (his name is Festus Kioko), heard that, caught up to me and then pulled ahead. I got right on his tail, and I got really mad. I decided I'd sit on him, and then we'd duke it out in the kick, and he would have to work to beat me. Shortly afterwards he either remembered that there were 5 guys already ahead or for some other reason decided the fight was not worth it, and went back to the jog-in/walk-in mode. 2:34:07 at the finish, 1:17:25 first half, 1:16:42. Genna Tufa won in a very close race in 2:23:10. Race results are available at http://racecenter.com/. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:57, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:13, then 1 more with Benjamin in 7:43, which gave him 20:56 for 2.5. Toyed with the idea of running another 4 to repeat Clyde's feat of running the same number of miles as the same number of years I was going to turn on Monday, but my body told me 31 miles for the day would be plenty, and I decided that being more fit for Ogden and other races was more important than hitting a magic number in training. So we can say that I made it to 31 with 26 at marathon pace, and then my age got to me :-) |
Night Sleep Time: 7.83 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.83 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
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Had to pick up my mom at the airport very late at night, so did not get a lot of sleep. My mom will be with us for the next month. She brought my training logs from 1986-87, I was 12 at the start and 14 at the end. They are all in Russian. I noticed a pattern. Good runs and races are recorded in very neat penmanship, while the entries for the bad ones look like chicken paw or physician's writing. I will enter the info a bit at a time in the next few months. Conversation in the Primary after they announced Cub Scout Olympics. Scott (Benjamin's friend): Last year I won. Benjamin: That's because I was not there to beat you! Scott: I challenge you to a 50 yard dash! Benjamin: I challenge you to a 10 K! |
Night Sleep Time: 5.75 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.10 |
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A.M. Started from my house with Daniel and Adam. Picked up Jeff at his house. Then ran on the trail. Daniel turned around half-way through, then Adam a couple of miles later. Jeff and I ran to the end of the trail and then back to my house. Then Jeff ran some more, I was done. 11.6 in 1:33:11. Got beat by the 8:00 guy, but I could not care less. Nice recovery run, had a good chat. P.M. 1 mile with Julia in 10:28, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:24, 2 with Benjamin in 15:50.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.60 |
| A.M. 12.1 with Jeff and Josse in 1:34:57. Chatted the whole way and did not particularly care about the pace. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.00 | 0.60 | 0.00 | 0.20 | 15.80 |
| A.M. 10.1 alone at 5:10 AM in 1:13:23. Started out slow, did not feel like breaking 8:00 by much for a while. Then sped up to around 7:20, with three miles to go to 6:40, and to 5:50 on the last 0.6. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:23. He had an assignment not to break 17:00 today and he somewhat reluctantly complied. Then did some bounds and sprints while my mom and the kids took pictures. I'll post those in a bit. Then 1 with Julia in 11:16, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:28 pushing Jacob (she closed with a 7:56 mile on a whim), and another mile on my own with Jacob in the stroller. Did a 100 meter bound, covered it in 44 steps. |
Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.88 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.38 | 15.26 |
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A.M. Eventful run. Started out with Hyrum and Daniel. Ran to Jeff's house. Ran back to my house to drop Hyrum off. Saw cops on the trail, police car driving on the trail as well. Saw a truck parked on the 820 N bridge. Something was going on. Then ran with Jeff and Daniel to BYU Smith's Fieldhouse to do a leg extension test. I did 200 on the left leg and 180 on the right. Jeff did 160 on the right and 180 on the left. Then we ran back in the direction of my house, dropped Daniel off and did 4x100 on the trail with full jogging rest. I wanted to do this workout because I noticed that I am able to push my top end speed a lot more when following somebody. So my reasoning was - whatever it is that keeps me from running fast is partially overcome when I follow somebody running fast. Not sure why, but it works, so I should try it. On the first one I got 15.3 (standing start, 0.5-1% downhill grade), then another 15.3 from a standing start slightly rolling and into a mild headwind. Then 14.7 jogging start, rolling and into a slight headwind. The last one was 14.3 from a jogging start, slightly rolling and with a slight tailwind. Jeff put about a second on me on the last one in the last 50 meters or so. After doing this I think I've figured out what is going on and I am very excited about it. Suppose I am following somebody at 5:00 pace until I can't. Well, I can run with bad form and by the time I know it I am too tired to do anything about it. I just cannot hold the pace anymore. I can even do the same all the way up to 4:00 pace. But if you make me go 3:50 pace, I can do it for a little bit, but not unless I fix the form. If I am running with bad form, I know immediately because I start falling behind. This critical training speed needs to be fast enough that it is impossible to run with bad form but slow enough that I can do it within my ability to auto-correct. The only way I can keep up the pace at all at that speed is by running with a better form. I do not need to know what it is that I am doing wrong as in not lifting up knee, not extending the leg, running too tight, etc. Nor do I need to worry about it. The desperation of being left behind and the lightening fast immediate feedback makes me intuitively find it and fix it. A bird decided to make our run more eventful and did number two on Jeff. I asked him if he knew if birds did number one as well. He said yes, and he happened to know it from personal experience as well. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:49, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:16, 2 with Benjamin in 16:00 with 2x100 in the middle, first in 19.4, second in 17.8. This was Benjamin's PR in 100 meters. He also decided to run the last quarter fast, we did it in 1:33.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 21.75 | 0.20 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 21.95 |
| A.M. Easy run, started out with Hyrum, ran to Jeff's house, then we all ran together to my house and dropped Hyrum off. Then ran 7.5 more with Jeff and finished the last half mile by myself. A devil got into me with a quarter to go and I picked up the pace, the last quarter was 1:25, total time for 10.3 was 1:19;58. P.M. Drove to St. George to go to Zion's Park. Stayed with Steve and Kendra. Did my second run there. 1.1 with Julia in 11:57, Isabel joined us for the second 0.55, Julia was a great pacer: "Come on you can do it. Just say I think I can I think I can like the little engine. If you get a side ache hit yourself on the side and breathe in deep and out." Then 1.65 with Jenny and Steve in 13:02, and 2.2 with Benjamin in 15:43. Then 6.7 with Steve in 52:00.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.60 | 4.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 22.60 |
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A.M. Had an interesting dream. Was racing Dave Holt in a marathon. We got to mile 18. I wanted to drop him. Decided the only way I'll be able to push myself to achieve this would be if I started screaming. So I started screaming, in the dream and in real life as well. This woke Sarah up, she punched me and told me to be quiet. Ran 20.1 with the St. George Running Club in 2:13:38. Started at the St. George Running Center. Crew: Steve Hooper, Wild Bull, Dustin, and Ken Carlson. Clyde was not there to push the pace, but Wild Bull did it for him instead. So the whole run was somewhat of a fartlek. Wild Bull pulls away, then Steve tells me where the next turn is, I catch Wild Bull to make sure he does not get lost. Add a post VPB catch-up to it as well. Then around 10.6 or so Steve started to push the pace. We moved into sub-6:00 zone, eased off out of it, then moved in it again. Then we saw a sign "reduced speed ahead", and I asked Steve if he wanted me to take the wind. He said sure, so I did. Instead of reducing the speed with the help of some downhill we increased it first to 5:30, then 5:20, and then 5:00. Hoped to find a bathroom at the Hamblin's house during Steve/Ken's water break, but it was locked. Decided to go another mile and a half. At that point Steve stayed behind, and I ran with Ken. Then it was Ken's turn to push the pace and he briefly went into sub-6:00 zone, but then eased off. After my bathroom stop which this time provided some real rather than virtual privacy, Steve caught up to us and we ran together again. Then we saw Marcie. Ken and I just gave her a Brezhnev's wave (this reveals my age, I remember seeing it on TV quite a bit), while Steve stopped to talk. With about 1.5 to go I challenged Ken to pick up to sub-6:00 and he did, and was able to hold it until we got to Steve's hill where he slowed down to around 6:15-6:20, but effort-wise it was probably worth 5:50. Finished at the St. George Running Center. Went to Zion's afterwards. P.M. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:08, then another mile with Benjamin in 8:04. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.33 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.33 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Made up on the sleep. Heard a good talk in church. One brother was speaking about his ancestors. Some did interesting things like riding in two truck next to each other and reaching out from one to the other with a metal pole. They learned you get nice electric shock this way. But on the more serious side, he had a good story about his great grandfather. His family came to America on a boat. He was a baby. On the ship he contracted plague and they thought he had died. The rule on the ship was they had to bury the dead in the sea. The mother refused to bury the baby in the sea and hid him in a trunk. Right when they were about to get off the ship they heard crying from the trunk. The baby was alive. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.59 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.81 | 20.40 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff. We did 8x100 in the middle of an easy run. Missed the split on the first one. 15.6 on the second, then 15.1, 14.7, 15.1, 14.9. Then we did a 100 meter bound test. I covered it in 42 steps, Jeff did it in 45. Then I wanted to see what Jeff could run all out. He did not have his watch, so I gave him mine. To make things interesting he gave me an early start and chased me down. However on the first try he timed himself at the wrong mark - too early. So we did it again, but did not give him enough rest - only 100 meter jog back. The second time around he ran 13.6. Dropped Jeff off and ran some more - total of 15.2 for the run. P.M. 1 mile with Julia in 11:38. Then 1.5 with Jenny in 13:09, and 0.7 alone in 5:08. Then 2 with Benjamin in 16:53 with a 200 meter time trial in the middle on the trail done twice. The first one was on a slight uphill and we had to go around a dog - Benjamin went all the way to the grass, he is afraid of dogs. He still got a PR of 40.6. Second time around we ran on a slight downhill and he ran faster - 38.6.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.83 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.83 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.15 | 1.20 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.35 |
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A.M. We had quite a company for 5:30 AM - Jeff, Hyrum, Josse, Michelle, and Brad. Michelle and Josse were running the Uneventful Half. Brad and I started with Hyrum at a slower pace, hit the first mile in 8:21, then Hyrum turned around at the mile as planned, we shifted gears and caught Michelle, Josse and Jeff right before 2 miles. We were going a bit under 6:00 at first, then sped up to around 5:40. Our mile split was 5:58 but that included easing off to around 7:00 once we caught up. Then I had a VPB a bit after 3 miles, and caught up in about 0.4 miles. Timed 500 of it in 2:06, a bit under 5:40. We cruised along at a bit sub-7:00 pace after that until Josse started struggling. Brad and I stayed with her while Jeff and Michelle went ahead. Then Brad had a VPB, and never caught up. Josse and I continued. She had a small mental lapse right before the 10 mile mark, but then recovered and was able to finish strong - 6:59 on the last mile, and 1:34:07 for the whole distance - new PR for a loop course. Afterwards jogged about a quarter with Michelle and Sarah, then went for another 2 miles and found Josse's gloves on the trail. Total time for 15.35 was 1:51:46 minus VPB time. This was actually a brisk pace. Jeff and I have been really enjoying nature and conversation lately running as slow as 8:00 on some runs. Our near all out sprints did help in that cause though - you do not feel like going much faster than 8:00 for a while after sprinting and you need to jog very slowly so you could sprint well again. P.M. 1 mile with Julia in 10:56 pushing Joseph in the single stroller with Jenny riding a bike. 1.5 with Jenny running, Julia and Joseph in the double stroller, in 13:02. Saw Ben Crozier on the trail with a girl, it is about time, he is 31 years old, 4 years past the menace to society age supposedly defined by Brigham Young. Stopped to talk to them. He said he would run with us Friday morning. Added another mile in 9:29 with Benjamin and Jacob in the double stroller. Benjamin was not feeling well, which why we ran less and slower than normal. Then another 1.5 in 11:47 pushing Jacob in the double stroller.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.00 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 20.00 |
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A.M. Did not get good sleep. Had odd stomach issues in the middle of the night. Ran a total of 10 miles, 2 of it with Hyrum, most of it with Jeff. Easy pace, around 8:00 average. Jeff and I did a standing broad jump test on the sidewalk by my house. There was some headwind which skewed the results but it was probably equal for both us, and all we cared to know was the comparison anyway. He jumped 7 feet and 5 inches, I did 6 feet and 7 inches. In summary, our differences in power exercise measurements with Jeff - leg extension - I am 10% stronger in raw power, but 4% weaker relative to body weight. All out speed - we have not done a good measurement yet, but comparing 100 meter PRs (12.6 vs 13.9), which appears to be consistent with the differences we get during our sprints as well, Jeff is 10% faster. 100 meter bound (cover the distance bounding in the smallest possible number of steps) - my average stride is 7.1% longer and I also move faster. Height difference - I am 3.6% taller. Standing broad jump - Jeff jumps 12% further. P.M. Windy and rather cold. 2 with Benjamin in 16:31. He felt significantly better. 1.5 with Jenny in 13:12, and 1 with Julia in 10:58. Then 5.5 alone in 38:14 with one event. I saw two girls on roller skates shortly before my turnaround. After jogging a bit my "impress the ladies" instinct woke up. After being married for over 11 years I still have it. I still could not see them, but I figured if I go about 5:40 pace I'd catch them pretty fast. So I ran a 5:32 mile passing them about half way, then eased off back to 7:20 or so.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.00 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.80 | 0.00 | 2.00 | 0.50 | 20.30 |
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A.M. 2 miles with Hyrum. Dropped him off then ran with Jeff. Originally thought of doing a 5 mile tempo at 5:30 pace, but Jeff had some fatigue and tenderness in the legs, so we decided to do a 2 mile shakeout instead at 5:30 pace along the course of our standard 5 mile tempo. Turned out that Jeff was feeling better than he thought, so 5:30 quickly became 5:20 and then 5:15. Jeff was itching to go when I was doing my quarters. We ended up doing 2 miles in 10:39 with the splits of 5:24 and 5:15. Got some moderate cross-wind. 5:15 felt good behind Jeff, but not so good otherwise. On the way back we did 0.5 to feel the 5 K pace in 2:32 (1:17, 1:15) into a rather strong headwind with Jeff leading the way. The pace was not even as Jeff was trying to adjust for the effects of the headwind so we would still hit 5:00 pace in spite of it. Last 200 in 36 into a headwind felt too fast, but no surprise. Dropped Jeff off and ran some more. Total of 15.1 in 1:58:40. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:38, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:12, 0.7 alone in 5:04, and 2 with Benjamin in 15:37. Benjamin appears to be back to full health - running strong and volunteering sub-8:00 pace. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.28 | 0.00 | 0.15 | 0.50 | 19.93 |
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A.M. Started out with Jeff and Hyrum. We ran 2 miles in 16:31 with a pickup at the end at about 5:20 pace for 0.15. I wanted to see how much juice Hyrum had left, and challenged him to pick up the pace. He did quite well. Then Jeff and I ran another 2 miles and ended up back at my house again. We were supposed to meet Ben Crozier but he never showed up. We looped around the block for 1.75 miles waiting, finally decided to go. Then Jeff noticed that he had only 30 minutes left, so we picked up the pace to about 7:00 so we'd make it back in time. We did 0.5 pickup on the trail to feel the 5 K pace. The target was 2:30. Jeff took off pretty quick and I felt it immediately. No wonder, 17 seconds for the first 100 meters. So we eased off but not much. Hit the quarter in 73, and then did one more in 73 to finish in 2:26. This pace hurt, definitely not sustainable for the entire 5 K (it would be nice if it was, that would give me 15:10), but I felt could finish OK if I started this fast. Dropped Jeff off at 10 miles, went for 5 more. Saw Sarah on the trail, ran about 0.8 with her. Then added some more to finish 15. Jeff and I are racing in the Law Day 5 K on Chad's firm's team. Whenever a corporation gets interested in competitive running, I am always willing to do something to support it. Who knows, one step at a time maybe one day we will have something similar to the Japanese corporate running program or maybe even better. I have never heard of a Japanese runner going under 27:30 in a 10 K, but they have had 11 guys go under 2:08, with 3 of them going under 2:07 in the marathon. The population of Japan is 127 million. In the US we have had 7 people run 27:30 or faster in a 10 K, and only 2 go under 2:08 in the marathon, one of them being Khalid Khannouchi and the other Ryan Hall. The population of the US is 301 million. Clearly the Japanese are doing a lot better in the area of carrying the 10 K speed to the marathon, and I believe having a corporate level running program is an important part of their success.
A.M 2 - Ted told me about a race at the Rock Canyon Elementary that Jared was going to run in. I figured Benjamin would like to participate somehow especially since Jared was involved, and asked if they would let Benjamin run. Ted did not think they would, but he thought they might let him just run along and pace Jared. However, when we got there, we were told Benjamin could be officially in the race. So we signed him up. I was not sure which grade Benjamin would be in, and under the stress I completely forgot the correspondence between ages and grades in the US school system. Not that I remember it very well when I am not under stress to begin with as we home school our kids and let them progress at whatever rate they are ready for. Which happens to be quite a bit faster than their public school peers. So figuring that Jared and Benjamin would be in the same grade, I asked Ted which grade Jared was in. He said 4th. So I wrote 4th grade on Benjamin's tag. Later it turned out that Jared was actually in the 3rd grade, but it ended up not mattering for two reasons - a) Benjamin beat everybody except one 6th grader, and b) since Benjamin was not enrolled in the Rock Canyon Elementary they were not going to give him an award. Being a mature 9 year old and knowing that it would be just a medal or a ribbon he was not particularly disappointed, though, especially after I told him he was going to get a carob bar at Good Earth for his performance. How about this: Awards provided by AskSasha.Com/FastRunningBlog.Com? The race was advertised as 2.5 miles, but ended up being 2.33 miles long according to Ted's GPS. The participants were kids from 6th grade down. The course was not fast at all - first 0.6 and last 0.2 on grass, the rest on asphalt with some serious uphill and then downhill to come back. Everybody started out very fast as expected, so Benjamin worked his way through the crowd in the first quarter mile of the race. Finally he passed Spencer Jarvis paced by his uncle Karl, a serious challenger his age to watch out for, and moved up on Joe Rowberry, the 6th grader that eventually would beat him. Joe had a quote from Prefontaine on the back of his shirt - "Most people run a race to see who is fastest. I run a race to see who has the most guts." And he raced accordingly - very competitive. Joe pulled away from Benjamin on the uphill around 0.7 into the race. Then Benjamin started to close on the downhill, and eventually closed the gap to 7 seconds with about 0.7 to go. Then Joe looked back, got concerned, and found some juice to start pulling away. He ended up beating Benjamin by about 20 seconds. Benjamin finished second in 16:22, which is 7:01.46 average. Spencer was third about 20 seconds behind. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:38, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:18. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Race: |
Law Day 5 K (3.107 Miles) 00:17:09, Place overall: 5 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.19 | 3.00 | 0.00 | 3.11 | 22.30 |
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A.M. Law Day 5 K 17:09.4, officially 4th, fitness wise 4th as well, 5th if you use a non-chip way of determining who cross the finish line first. Details below. Jeff and I volunteered to run for Chad's law firm's (Manning Curtis Bradshaw & Bednar) team. Let me use this chance to put a plug for them. Aside from my own AskSasha.Com one man show that has been sponsoring the Fast Running Blog and my 120 mile weeks and a few small business owners that have donated to the Fast Running Blog I have never dealt a non-running business that was so supportive of competitive running. If you are in need of legal services (I understand they specialize in business law and commercial litigation), I would recommend visiting their website. My impression of them is that they are the type of people that care to excel and are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Chad took us for a tour of the course. for a warm up. It was well marked except one spot. And that was the very spot when I would get lost later. Our team consisted of Jeff, Josh Steffen, his wife Megan Call, and Johanna Nielson in addition to myself. We were racing BJ Christensen, Grant Rotunda (Westminister College), BJ's brother Ed, and two women I do not remember the names of. The course was a beast - uphill for the first 1.7 miles, some of it very steep, lots of turns, which really hurt once you got going downhill as you could not use that speed very well. Also the downhill was in short bursts. Knowing Jeff's increased level of fitness we had hopes that he'd be able to neutralize BJ's advantage if not beat him outright. Jeff and I took it fairly easy early on to keep him from starting out too fast. About half mile into the race we used a flatter section to come up on Josh, Grant, and Ed. We hit the 1 K mark in 3:24. Not bad for the uphill. Shortly before the mile mark there was a short downhill section. I felt good, so I moved up and pushed the pace to give Jeff a break and get him going at the same time before the major uphill. First mile was 5:26. Ed and Grant dropped back, Jeff and Josh pulled ahead. I tried to take it easy on the uphill, but still managed to get myself into some serious leg fatigue. Jeff dropped Josh but could not quite close on BJ. Josh had a 7 second gap on me around 3 K mark. 2 K in 7:00, 3 K in 10:29. I guess there was more uphill there than I realized. We started going downhill shortly before 3 K, but I had a hard time shifting gears, and the turns were really messing with my rhythm. 3 miles in 11:16. I started screaming like a wild animal to get myself going. Interesting that I could and actually found it helpful. It tells me that it was not the breathing that was limiting my speed. I think the 4th kilometer was too long, and I do have an idea why. Up to that point it followed the certified route. Then it could not follow the certified route any longer because of construction on the U of U campus. I hit the 4 K mark in 13:54. This gives me 3:25 for a downhill kilometer. I'd be willing to believe to a point it except the next one with about the same amount of downhill was 3:15 including the additional 10 seconds from getting lost, so really more like 3:05, and I am quite certain it was not that much faster. I would guess we added about 10 seconds going around the construction. Shortly after the 4 K mark I approached a confusing spot. Because of fatigue and the high speed I did not see the chalk-written arrow on the road showing which way to go, and also due to fatigue I was disoriented and did not remember which way the course was supposed to go. I eased off trying to figure out what to do, then headed the wrong way, then saw no cones or anything and stopped. Then the volunteers yelled at me and showed me the way, and during that time Grant passed me and gapped me by a couple of seconds. I closed the gap in about 0.2 or so, and then passed him. I think I was able to gap him by another second or so right before the final turn. Then I said I am not going to give him even one tenth of a second on the kick and just floored it. But he kicked as well and edged me out at the finish line. However, my leg with the chip crossed the line 0.1 of a second before his did. So he outleaned me but I outchipped him. Since there was no difference between 4th and 5th, and for the team purposes we had won either way, it did not matter. We got $20 gift certificates to the Salt Lake Running Company for our team win. Went for some more miles with the team, and then later on with just Jeff and Chad. We ran to Liberty Park and did a 3 mile tempo in 17:28 with the splits of 6:00 - 5:51 - 5:37 by Chad's Garmin. Ran back, total of 17.5 for the run. P.M. 2.15 with Benjamin in 17:27, about 1 mile with Julia by time (11:00), 1.65 with Jenny in 14:21.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| No running, day of rest. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.80 | 0.50 | 2.00 | 0.00 | 20.30 |
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A.M. Started the run with Jeff and Daniel. Daniel went to 3.5 then turned around. After a while I started messing around with landing technique trying to see what happens if I consciously tried to power the muscles harder in the early ground contact phase. The result was that we started running the easy not easy 6:40 pace. The breathing was not affected due to the slowness of the pace, but I could definitely tell I had to focus more - surprise, surprise. I was fed up with that and decided to test this at a faster pace to see what differences I would observe. So we ran a 600 in 2:01 (5:23 pace). Legs felt stale from the 5 K on Saturday, otherwise the pace felt good. At a faster pace I felt I could push in the early ground phase any harder that my natural push at that pace. So I would have to say the experiments were inconclusive. Dropped Jeff off at 10.1, and ran back to meet Sarah on the trail. Figured that since I'd be running slower with her it would be OK to run fast until I meet her, and that way I would get to meet her sooner as well. This time I felt different, I really liked the feeling in my feet. The strike felt lighter. I think there is a bit of a paradox. The harder you push into the ground right away the lighter it is going to feel because it reduces the time on the ground and there is not enough time for the mind to register the full burden of body weight on the foot and the leg. So maybe my experiments did produce some results after all. I did not know how far I was going, but I figured I'd meet Sarah around 2 miles into the tempo. Ran the first 0.5 evenly in 2:50 (5:40 pace), then hit a 1:19 quarter on the downhill on the trail, slowed down to 1:23 with turns and bridges (5:32 at the mile), then ran the next mile in 5:26, 10:58 for 2 miles. Felt staleness in the legs, but surprisingly was holding pace OK without too much struggle. Saw Sarah about 100 meters before the 2 mile mark, so I had to do a 200 meter pickup on the way back to catch her after jogging a bit. Ran home with her, then added another mile. Total time for 15.1 was 1:54:46. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:16, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:19, she closed with a 7:50 mile, 2 with Benjamin in 14:58, last mile in 7:08, got chased by a small dog at the end, 0.7 alone in 4:46.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.28 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.28 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Josse, and Daniel. We paced Josse through the 5 mile tempo in 34:10. She was holding almost 6:40 pace through the first 2.5 (6:43 - 6:39 - 3:23), then faded a bit and did 1:44 quarters (6:56 pace) until 1 mile to go, and then the uphill did her in, but she still survived the last mile in 7:04. Total time of 34:10, 6:50 pace. Daniel ran back to his house, the rest of us finished 10 miles. Dropped Josse off, she said: "Thanks for torturing me, I really enjoyed it." Ran some more with Jeff, then he turned around, I continued. Met Sarah, about 500 meters away from the 2.5 turnaround, decided to go all the way to the turnaround and then catch her. Ran 5:42 mile, caught her right by the swing. So we stopped and had a little swinging date. I figured Benjamin would be interested in knowing how long the swing rope was, so I measured the period of swing oscillation, which was 4.7 seconds. Benjamin later calculated that the length of the swing rope was 5.48 meters long using the formula L = (T/(2*pi))^2*g where T is the oscillation period in seconds, and g is the acceleration of gravity in meters per square second. Finished the run with Sarah, total of 15.08 in 1:56:13. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:31, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:14, 2 with Benjamin in 16:28, and 0.7 alone in 5:00. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.75 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.25 |
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A.M. Started with 6.25 with Jeff, then Hyrum joined us for 3, then we finished with 1 more mile. Did a short pickup with Hyrum at 5:40 pace. Total time for 10.25 was 1:21:32. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:39, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:58. Then 5.5 alone in 36:35. Was plodding along and then decided to catch Josse's tempo run time for 5 miles (34:10) 1.5 into the run. Figured it would not wear me out too much, the faster pace distance being only 4 miles. I started out 50 seconds behind, and at first all I wanted to do was catch the proverbial 7:00 guy. But then I saw that he was coming to me pretty quick, so I decided to set a more ambitious goal. Passed Josse's schedule shortly before 4 miles, and I got to 5 miles in 33:40, 30 seconds ahead of target. Then I saw that the 6:40 guy was only 20 seconds ahead, and 6:00 pace over the last 0.5 would catch him. At first the voice of reason spoke to me and said relax. Then a devil entered into me and said, this is only 6:00 pace, you can do it. So I fell for the temptation and ran 5:50 pace for the last 0.4. Added another 2 with Benjamin in 14:38 afterwards. He was having devil problems as well.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.45 | 0.60 | 0.00 | 0.25 | 20.30 |
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A.M. Started with Jeff and Daniel. Ran 2 times around the block waiting for Hyrum (0.7) then took off. Daniel turned around 3.2 into the run. Jeff and I ran to the end of the trail and back. Did some sprints on the way back with full rest. 2x100 15.2, 15.5 and then a 200 in 30.5. All with a slow running start. Jeff did 14.2, 14.7, and 29.8. Dropped Jeff off, ran back to meet Sarah. Found her hiding under the railroad bridge. Turned out she did not want to step into a large puddle of water in the tunnel and took a very round about route. Ran back with her, then added another 3 to make it 15.1 for the run. A small devil got into me with 0.6 to go and I sped up to 5:50 pace. Most of the run was done at around 8:00 pace, though. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:46, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:20, 2 with Benjamin in 17:09, 0.7 alone pushing Jacob in the single stroller in 5:08.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 10.00 | Total Sleep Time: 17.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.60 | 2.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 22.60 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Daniel. It was an eventful run with live entertainment. Yesterday I found out that Jeff and his whole family are very good singers and love to do it. This morning I began to realize the implications of having a training partner that can sing. So I challenged Jeff to sing the Star Spangled Banner at 5:30 pace. We picked up after a bit over a mile warm-up, waited for 100 meters so that Jeff would have a chance to get into a 5:30 breathing rhythm, and then he started. We ended up doing 600 in 2:03 (5:28 pace), and Jeff got a 5 (with 10 being good stationary singing) for his performance from Daniel. According to Daniel he hit about 80% of the notes on key. Jeff thought his singing at 5:30 pace did not sound that good. To help him feel the magnitude of his accomplishment I sang the same song at 8:00 pace. Daniel gave me a 2. I kept changing keys as I went along, something I do even when I am stationary. Then Jeff sang at 8:00 pace. Daniel gave him 7.5. Reasons for not 10 - some notes slightly flat, and struggles with breathing. Daniel turned around at 4 miles. Jeff and I went to the end of the trail and then turned around. Then at 7 mile mark Jeff began to be concerned about making it to class on time. So we picked up the pace, went through a few gears and eventually ended up running 6:00 pace. I became curious about how well Jeff could sing at that pace and challenged him to do it. He gave himself 6.5 on Daniel's scale as we did a quarter in 1:29. Then I tried it. Our quarter time was 1:32. We saw Sarah right as I was finishing "o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave". She gave us an interesting look. Jeff said it sounded worse than 8:00 pace singing as I was changing keys more often, but not much. I asked him if that was because it just could not get much worse, he said no, even at 6:08 pace I was still singing better than one of his mission companions. As Jeff was analyzing my performance, we slowed down to a 1:34 quarter. Once we were done with the analysis, we picked up again and ran the last 1 K in 3:28 (5:33 pace). Dropped Jeff off, ran back to Sarah, ran some with her, then we saw Iain Hunter on the trail. Sarah suggested I should join him, so I ran 5:20 pace for 0.5 while catching up to him and then ran with him some more. Total of 18.1 in 2:16:28. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:13, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:39, 2 with Benjamin in 14:30, and 100 with Joseph in 43. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 9.10 | 13.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 22.70 |
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A.M. Long run. First 10.1 with Tyler, the rest alone. During the easy part did a pickup for 0.5 in 2:49 to show Tyler the breathing at marathon pace. Jogged and chatted otherwise up to 7.1 into the run. After that picked it up. First 2 miles at 5:48 pace. Lost focus some on the next mile which was uphill and went through tunnels, got 5:58. Dropped Tyler off without stopping with a 180 at my house and continued the tempo. Had a hard time getting into a good pace, the legs were feeling stale. Not a surprise given the end of a high mileage week and 18 + 4.5 yesterday. Started moaning, that helped me speed up. Eventually settled into a 5:42 rhythm. Figured would do it while I can. Hit the next 5.05 in 29:03. Moaned every 10-30 seconds. Lots of runners on the trail, every one I passed that was going in my direction inevitably had a startled look when they heard the moan. Probably wondering why I just would not slow down and run quietly. On the way back was going a fairly steady 5:45 - 5:48 pace, again moaning. Kept waiting to hit the wall, but it never happened, I just happily moaned along. Last mile, same one with the tunnels and uphill was 5:46, last two quarters 1:25 and 1:23. Last 5.05 was 29:11. Total time for 13.1 was 1:15:49, 5:47.25 average, total time for 20.2 was 2:09:21. Was happy to break 1:16 on a half with a net elevation gain at the end of a 20 miler and a high mileage week. This gives me confidence that on a good day I can run 1:14:30 second half in Ogden or maybe even faster if I improve my moaning. I have to say that moaning does wonders. Not quite sure why, maybe when you start acting like you are in pain your body becomes willing to bring itself to that level of pain. Benjamin did the Cub Scout Olympics today. 7.7 in the 50 yard dash, fastest time of all the kids, including the 10 year olds. 47 feet softball throw, average. 24 push-ups in 1 minute, average. 41 sit-ups in 1 minute, highest of all the kids. 59 inches standing broad jump, second longest among the kids his age, short of the longest by 2 inches. P.M. Ran in the Hobble Creek Canyon downhill with Benjamin and Jenny. First 1.5 in 11:49, then Sarah picked up Jenny and we ran 6:34 mile with Benjamin.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.67 | Total Sleep Time: 8.42 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Took it very easy today. Tried to move as slow as possible and do as little as possible. Stayed awake in church, enjoyed the talks and the lessons in Sunday school. Took a nap in the afternoon. Went from 143 lb at the end of my run yesterday to 152 lb at night, and my stomach did not feel exceptionally full. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 10.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.70 | 0.00 | 0.30 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. 10 miles in 1:15:55 with Jeff. Hyrum joined us for the first 3 in 24:39. Actually my time was a bit faster as I did a VPB and did not stop my watch at around 2.5. After two more VPBs and some minor sweating my weight went down to 146 lb at the end of my run from 152 lb last night. It was rather wet and chilly this morning. The positive way to interpret the weight change is that I do not need a fuel belt. Finally taper time, and I am looking forward to it but not too much anticipation, which is a good sign. I suspect one week is the optimum taper length for me. We'll find out in Ogden. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:23, 2 with Benjamin in 16:51, Jenny joined us for the first 1.5 in 13:09.
T4 Racer - 37.7 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 9.85 | 0.00 | 0.40 | 0.00 | 10.25 |
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A.M. Ran with Hyrum, Jeff, and Josse. Hyrum turned around after 1.5. Paced Josse through a 2 mile tempo in 12:53. My time was actually faster as I had a VPB stop. Took me about 0.4 to catch up, timed 600 meters in 1:59. Total time for 7 miles was 55:27 minus Tvpb . P.M-1. Did some tests at BYU with Jeff with the help of Iain Hunter on the force plates. Still analyzing the results. Ran 0.75 from the car to the lab and back. P.M-2. 1 mile with Julia in 10:25, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 12:37. Joseph set a 100 meter PR of 34.7. T4 Racer - 47.95 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.75 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 9.00 |
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A.M. 6 miles with Jeff in 47:55 - Tvpb, Hyrum joined us for the first 3 in 24:17 with the last mile in 7:07, his mile PR since he started running again. T4 Racer - 53.95 miles. P.M. It was the afternoon of PRs for the girls. On Saturday I bought some honey sticks at Good Earth. Over the week I've been marketing them to Jenny and Julia explaining that they could be had if they ran fast. For Julia the standard was a mile under 9:00 and for Jenny under 8:00. Those times were slower than their PRs but I figured they needed some motivated practice in pushing themselves. Benjamin does it naturally, I actually have to hold him back a lot. Finally Jenny succumbed to my marketing efforts and decided that today was going to be a prize run. We warmed up the first 0.5 in 4:27, then she went to the bathroom at the park and we started the fast portion. I did not expect her to break the record, but she ran the first quarter on pace - 1:51. I told her she could get the record and and that there will be additional bonuses. So she ran the next quarter in 1:48 followed by 1:53 and 1:47 for the total of 7:19 - a PR by 11 seconds. Julia heard about Jenny's rewards and wanted some as well. Knowing the rules she asked if she could do a prize run too. She started out very fast - 26 at 100, 54 at 200, 1:24 at 300 and 1:55 at the quarter. I was holding her back figuring let her run fast while she is motivated as she might have a fit later on. Sure enough she did. When Benjamin was her age he understood math very well, he knew what the splits meant, if he was on pace or not, etc. Julia is a bit behind the Pachev curve in this area. At 5 years and 7 months her reading is at the level of Bob Books and her math is at the level of adding numbers less than 20. Benjamin and Jenny could read anything on their own at that age, although Jenny's math was at about Julia's level. However, Julia is a very emotional creature and can get upset a lot more easily. So she did not understand that we were going to the second four-triangle mark before the turnaround. She thought we were going to turn around at the first and when we did not she went into utter panic. It took me about a quarter mile to convince her that if she just coasted she could still get her record along with the prize, during which we slowed down to 2:18, which gave us 4:13 at the turnaround. To Julia's credit, very few 5 year olds would be running 9:12 pace in her emotional state at the time. She calmed down and finally believed me that she could still get the record. Her next quarter was 2:10, and her last one was 2:06. Her mile time was 8:29, a new record by 12 seconds. Fitness wise she did have a sub-8:00 in her. She could talk on the second half, asked me several times if we were on pace, and made a comment about people walking on the trail. The first thing she wanted to do afterwards is draw a picture of us running on the trail, which she did while we were driving back. Benjamin ran with Jenny, and then finished the last 0.5 of his run with me in 3:13, which gave him 15:00 for 2 miles. My Five Fingers have arrived (St. George Running Center now has them), and I did the run in them. I like them very much. Five Fingers - 3 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 9.00 |
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A.M. I greeted Jeff with: "Hi, I am Sasha the Duck" this morning as I came out the door wearing my Five Fingers. 3 with Jeff and Hyrum in 25:37, then dropped Hyrum off and finished 6 in 45:44, last mile at marathon pace trying to be honest in 5:40. One challenge with Five Fingers is getting each toe in its own compartment. But I suppose eventually this becomes natural. I really like having the toes like that when running. And unlike Crocs there is no cushioning in the heel at all, so you have to do a better job of finding inner sources of cushioning. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:49. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:00, another 0.5 with Benjamin to finish 2 in 16:58. Went to Sarah's ultrasound for the baby. It is a boy. Sarah is due on October 24th. We are going to name the boy William (Bill, Willie Billie Boy).
Five Fingers - 9 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 7.63 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 7.63 |
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A.M. Hyrum did not make it this morning. He called later and I gave him a motivational talk over the phone. Let's hope it results in a run later today. He said I should be coaching cross-country. I'd be glad to if I could do it with no red tape. Good luck :-) Just the thought of having to deal with a school district makes me quake and tremble. I have very little tolerance for paper work. One time I told a potential client that was going to pay very well I would have nothing to do with them because they sent me 6 documents to sign. They cut it down to 3 which put it at the boundary of the barely acceptable. When I was interviewing for my first job at Novell they had me talk with five people, one at a time. I already had two offers. After five interviews there was no offer, no idea what kind of offer it was going to be if I was going to get one, and they handed me a four page application form. I started filling it out, but after a couple of minutes just said forget it, put it in the trash and took another offer. Maybe if some coach wanted an informal assistant, I could help. Ran 3 miles with Jeff and Benjamin in 25:13, then 3.13 more with Jeff. Total time was 49:12. P.M. 1 with Jenny and Julia. Julia finished in 9:43, Jenny was around 9:30 as she pulled ahead. Then another 0.5 in 4:12 with Jenny. Drove to Ogden, picked up the packet, went to the party at Logan's house. We discussed the plan, then drove to Michelle's in-laws house in Perry and stayed with them. Five Fingers - 16.63 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.67 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.67 |
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| Race: |
Ogden Marathon (26.22 Miles) 02:32:28, Place overall: 2 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 4.00 | 26.22 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 30.22 |
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A.M. Ogden Marathon, 2:32:28, 2nd place. Fast Running Blog sweep of 8 places in the top 10 in the men's plus 2nd place in the women's (Michelle). Not perfect score but getting there. Did some FRB recruiting to fix that. Stay tuned for updates... The morning started at 4:00 AM with a short scripture study, then I followed Michelle in my car to the bus pick-up. On the bus sat next to an older runner named Ryan. We had a good talk. The temperatures were quite comfortable at the start, which was a bad sign of things to come as that meant it would be too warm later on. It was nice seeing a crowd of uniformed bloggers. I took advantage of every opportunity that turned up to promote the blog. When none turned up I would create one. "Hey guy, how are you? Do you want to get faster? Go to our site - FastRunningBlog.Com!" Examined the competition, found Ken Pliska and Seth Wold, invited them to run with us. Pretty soon Seth, Logan, Clyde, and I separated from everybody else. During the first mile we had a guy with us whose name I forgot, I think it was Ken, (I hope he finds this post and reminds me) that was targeting 2:40. After we found out his background and his goal we recommended to him to ease off and join the 2:40 pace group (Ogden Marathon race directors did not know that they had one, courtesy of the Fast Running Blog :-)). I love those first couple of miles of a marathon. Time for introductions and chit-chat. But it ended too soon. Clyde and Logan were a bit edgy, and Seth was playing along. As it would turn out that pace was just right for him. I noticed Clyde was struggling and suggested this could possibly be a bad sign that our pace is too fast. My thinking was that a pace that is too fast for either myself, Logan, or Clyde could easily be too fast for all three, except the other two might feel too excited to notice it. Clyde said he was OK. I said : "OK for the half, OK for 15, OK for 20, or OK for 26?". Clyde said: "we will see at the end".
In the beginning we agreed that we may try a joint effort for Paul's course record (2:26:24) as there were rumors about a possible bonus, and if we were going to do it, the honest way is that all three of us try. Otherwise, the one that does not will have an unfair advantage at the end. So even though the pace started feeling too fast, I decided to go along with it for a couple of miles. At around 4 it really started not feeling right. I wish I could have sat down right there with Clyde and Logan and presented my reasoning for backing off, and to convince them to back off with me, but I did not have the time. I just said that it was too fast and I needed to ease off. The mile markers were messed up in the early miles due to the last minute course adjustments, but I think by 5 miles they were correct. My 5 mile split was 27:41, with Clyde, Logan, and Seth a bit a head. When I eased off, I think they did as well after a while, and also with them being ahead I felt some pressure to keep a faster pace as I did not want to lose contact in case we started getting gusts of head wind. Finally Clyde came to grips with the idea that the pace was too fast and let Seth and Logan go. That was nice because now I could work with him better. At first I tried to do trading leads, but it did not work. Clyde's mind works better when he is up front. This was fine with me, I like drafting. One we turned into the valley, on the 9th mile all of a sudden 6:00 pace became a chore. Then I knew it was getting warm enough to make a difference. This was going to be a survival race. Those are both good and bad for me. The splits are depressing, and the projected finish time is disappointing. I do not like slow pace when racing, well, who does? On the positive side, however, I am very good at survival games, this gives me an edge over the competition. 56:03 at 10 miles, 1:14:45 at the half. I started moaning to keep the momentum and just because it felt right. Sorry Clyde. Learn to moan with those that moan :-) We did a 6:10 mile from 12 to 13 and it felt too good all of a sudden. So I figured it was time to put the pedal down. With a few moans I was able to accelerate and thought I was going at least 5:45. Good luck, 5:53 on a mildly downhill mile. OK, it must be hot. Clyde is falling back pretty quick, and nobody is coming up from behind or is even close. Moaned my way up the hill, tried to get into a good rhythm afterwards, but still cannot break 5:50. That's OK, just focus on good rhythm, good form, glide along, stay in the money position, don't try too hard to upgrade it, let it come naturally if it is supposed to happen today. 1:26:34 at 15 miles. Got past the dam, still feeling strong, but it is not showing in the mile splits. But at least they are all under 6:00, and I am even hitting 5:40s on some downhill miles. Passing half-marathoners and scaring them with my moaning. 1:55:45 at 20 miles. Getting different reports on the gap with the leaders, figuring it is 2-3 minutes. Not much additional info. I want to know if it is 2 or 3. Finally at 24 Josh Steffen, who was on the course, yells at me that Logan is only 30 seconds ahead. I caught up to him in what seemed like forever, and asked him what was wrong. He felt good enough to run with me and answer that his legs were cramped up, but then had to stop and massage them. This happened to me in my first marathon. Having moved into 2nd cheered my spirits, but I still did not feel secure. Based on how well Logan ran when he was actually running, he could possibly find an extra gear that would allow him to block the pain signals and start running sub-6:00 pace. And somebody like Ken Pliska or one of the bloggers having a miracle race could all of a sudden come from behind. I was able to keep my miles under 6:00 until 24, then had a 6:04, and a 6:10 in spite of trying to pick it up. I did not feel bad but I guess being out in the open sun on the last mile did not help. Kicked in 1:15 for the last 385 yards, and ended up with 2:32:28 in second place behind Seth Wold who finished in 2:27:43 in his first marathon. Logan came in third holding off Clyde who was 4th. Then Jeff Shadley, Chad, Kory, then Ben VanBeekam created a hole in the blogger dominance which we hope to fix soon, rumor has it that he has been learning and has entered the "almost thou persuadest me" state, after that Cody, Walter, Jon and the Lost Sheep Bill Cobler, a picture with him holding a Lost Sheep sign is on its way. After the finish three ladies one at a time insisted on giving me the finisher medal. I said, no thanks, I think I had to do it three times for each of the ladies. They could not understand why I did not want a finisher medal. I hope some of the readers will. Suppose you could sing well enough to be paid to do it. How would you like to get a medal every time you sang on key? While singing on key is a feat for a lot of people, myself very particularly included as those who have heard me sing would testify, and the ability to do so is a gift from God which should not be taken for granted, nevertheless for a decent singer this is a basic element of performance, not a stellar accomplishment. For a number of obvious reasons he would not want to pile up token awards of this kind and put them up on display for his friends to see.
So it is with finishing a marathon. To get a finisher medal all you need to do is get to the finish under 6 hours. In some marathons you can be even slower. For some people such a goal is not trivial. It takes a lot of preparation and focus. Others would be able to do it with ease and with no prior preparation. I believe that if you would able to run a sub-6:00 marathon comfortably even you did not train at all or very sporadically you should not take a finisher medal. God gave you a gift and He expects you to do more with it than just finish a marathon. At least that is what I decided to do for myself. For as long as my health makes it so that just to finish before the course closes is not a challenge I will not be taking finisher medals anymore. As far as the reward for running a race is concerned when the budget of the race does not permit the race director to reward my performance with cash, a mention of my time in the race results means more to me than any kind of a trophy or a medal. In the context of the competition it speaks for itself, and does justice to what I've done that day. That is all I need as far as recognition is concerned.
T4 Racer - 81.17 miles.
P.M. 3 miles with the kids. 1 with Jenny and Julia in 10:10. Jenny pulled ahead a bit - her time was 10:05. Then 0.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 4:09. This gave Jenny 14:14 for 1.5. Then 1.5 more with Benjamin to finish his 2 miles in 15:56. Five Fingers - 19.63 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 6.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Good sleep. Went to church. Struggled to stay awake, but making comments in class helped. The afternoon nap was short due to the need to do home teaching. I felt tempted to complain in my mind, but restrained myself by remembering what others had to do to accomplish what the Lord had asked them in the history of our church. Legs felt stale but not sore. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 9.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.50 | 0.00 | 0.70 | 0.00 | 15.20 |
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A.M. Ran 3 with Hyrum, Jeff and Daniel in 26:13 - tvpb. Then another 2.5 more with Jeff and Daniel, then Daniel turned around, and I finished the rest of the run - last 0.46 with Jeff as he headed home at that point. Total time for 10 was 1:19:59 - tvpb. Two VPBs was the reason for tempo running today. Timed a quarter in 1:23, and 600 in 2:04. The tempo pick ups felt as good as around mile 5 in the race on Saturday. I think I am still not acclimated to the heat. I could really feel a difference between around 50 this morning and 65 in the race. If anybody wants to read my thoughts on the finisher medals and other token awards, I have added them to my race report from Saturday. P.M. Benjamin and Jenny made me work tonight. Did all of the kids runs with a double stroller loaded with Joseph and Jacob. 1 mile with Julia in 10:47, then 1.5 with Jenny in 12:05, but she closed with a 7:26 mile, and 2 with Benjamin in 14:40 with the last mile in 6:55. Then a nice and leisurely 0.7 in 5:10 without the stroller.
Five Fingers - 34.83 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.95 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 15.20 |
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A.M. 10 in 1:19:41 - tvpb. First 7 with Jeff and Josse. Jeff's leg was bothering him a bit, he stopped at 7 just ot be sure. Caught up to Sarah with 0.1 to go and finished with her. Just checked our web stats on Quantcast.Com. Record page impressions and uniques yesterday - 9K+ impressions and 450+ uniques. AdSense revenues on running pages are terrible compared to what the Loan Interest Calculator is making. AdSense says you are not allowed to reveal how much you are making, but I think I would still be within the terms of the agreement if I said that if all of my running pages produced as much revenue per impression as the loan interest calculator, I would be able to work on the blog full time. P.M Kids took it easy on me, which was nice since I pushed the double stroller with Jacob and Joseph the entire time. 1 with Julia in 11:19, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:20, 2 with Benjamin in 17:28, and 0.7 alone in 5:18. Five Fingers - 50.03 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.25 | 0.00 | 2.00 | 1.75 | 15.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Hyrum, Jeff, and Daniel. Actually did most of the run with them in the vicinity but not with me since I was doing a different workout. First the philosophy behind it. I noticed from the force plate test that my form is very efficient at a slower than marathon race pace. You can see from the force graph that on landing my foot is already going backwards. In the half-marathon and marathon pictures I am often caught in a position that looks like I am about to do a serious overstriding action, but I know I don't - it would have been awfully difficult to run in Crocs, and particularly Five Fingers like that. I think what happens is that I swing my foot forward and then backward right before landing, which is very good - this gives you a forward momentum to start with. The fast speed test was botched, but after some thought I decided to go off with the assumption that the form at faster speeds is not as efficient as it is at slower speeds. I am going off the intuitive assumption that a serious quality breakdown takes place somewhere around 5:10-5:20 pace. Reasons - up to 5:20 I feel I can hold that pace forever. 5:10 is very miserable, I can barely hold it for a 5 K on a good day. Also, intuitively it feels like at slower speeds I have enough time to do my forward-back foot swing, but onces we are sub-5:20, there seems to be not enough time for it. So I want to do an experiment. Can I train myself to do the magic forward-backward swing efficiently enough to stay aerobic at 5:00 - 5:10 pace? Today the experiment started. I did a 30x200 fartlek with the goal of running at around that speed, but the focus being not so much on maintaining the speed, as on maintaining good form. Wearing Five Fingers was a lot of help. I discovered that at those speeds they are different even from Crocs. They put a cap on how hard you can pound the pavement. Crocs do to a certain extent, but not nearly as much as Five Fingers. So you cannot run faster by just hammering harder, which is what I would have done even in Crocs, and especially in racing flats. You have to land a certain way that reduces the breaking and loads the ankle well at the same time, and then time your ankle extension properly and do it very vigorously. If you do it right, you can relax quite a bit more than normal while airborne. I think today I got a glimpse of understanding of how Kenyans and Ethiopians develop a form that helps them go under 27:00 in a 10 K.
The pace varied from 5:00 on the fastest to 5:20 on the slowest. Last night it was windy, and the wind knocked down a lot of branches and twigs. The pace greatly varied with the number of twigs I had to step on. The amount of rest varied a lot as well, but was 100 meters on average. Sometimes I would take a longer break to get to a better section on the trail, and a few times I just ran a full quarter. Total time for 10 miles was 1:16:20. P.M. Had the double stroller with Jacob and Joseph for the entire run except the part with Benjamin. 1 with Julia in 9:58, 0.18 more to drop her off at the church (she got 1.18), picked up Jenny, 1.62 with her in 14:26, dropped her off at the church, 0.18 home. Then 2 with Benjamin in 17:24. Five Fingers - 65.02 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.45 | 0.15 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 14.60 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Jeff in 1:19:12. Had a VPB, caught up, thus 0.15 at marathon pace, took me a while to get up to speed. Hyrum joined us for the first mile in 9:28 or so, Daniel joined us for the first 4. We were all asleep, took forever to get going, were getting beat not only by the 8:00 guy but also by the 8:30 boltushka . But then we woke up and ran around 7:10 pace. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:55, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:22. Julia ran the first 0.18 with Jenny to play with her friend. Then 2 more with Benjamin in 17:14. His friend Stephen joined us for the first and the last quarter. Five Fingers - 79.53 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 15.00 |
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A.M. 10 miles in 1:18:26. Ran with Hyrum, Jeff, and Daniel. Hyrum set a post-break PR of 32:21 in 4 miles with the last 3 in 23:14. And this week he had 80% attendance, which is a record as well. I keep telling him he has a 2:30 marathon in him, but he still does not quite believe me. But we are working on it. Today was a day of singing again. First I sang Come Come Ye Saints at a slightly sub-8:00 pace and then Jeff sang the same song. I got a 2 from Daniel, Jeff got a 7 with 10 being good singing while stationary. Daniel went another 2, then turned around. Jeff ran with me the whole 10. A funny story about Jeff. In his class at BYU they had an assignment to estimate their maximum heart rate. The formula included measurements of weight, height, resting heart rate, and a heart rate at a pace that one thought he could sustain for 30 minutes. It gave Jeff some odd results. He took it to his professor, who said it was not meant to work on somebody who could sustain 5:25 pace for half an hour. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:58, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:21, 2.5 by myself with 2x400 first down 1% grade, second up, both in 1:17 to feel the 5 K pace for Magna. Five Fingers - 94.53 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Race: |
Magna Classic 5 K (3.107 Miles) 00:15:25, Place overall: 8 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.44 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 3.11 | 20.55 |
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A.M. Magna Classic 5 K 15:25, 8th place, new course PR.
The course in my opinion is equivalent to Carlsbad - aided but at an elevation. You can see the course map and profile at Magna 5K link. At least Dennis Simonaitis ran 14:47 in Carlsbad and 15:00 today, and 14:55 last year in Carlsbad and 15:12 in Magna. Adjusting for putting in less effort in a lower-key race we get the times that are about equivalent. The Course Tool says we are getting about 13 seconds a mile speed up, which would give us a good 40 seconds, which would be 20 seconds more than an NCAA altitude adjustment. In practice, though, I am seeing people run 30 seconds faster at sea-level so I wonder if the adjustment is tailored to make sure that the best altitude runner does not get too much. Also RunWorks.Com calculator says Magna should only be 32 seconds faster than a flat course at the same elevation.
Drove up with Jeff, his wife Kimia, Tyler, and Steve Ashbaker the Air Dark Horse. Warmed up 2 miles, and got ready.
Trouble at the start: in addition to what I've brought in my car, Teren, Seth, Mike Vick, Dennis, Josh Steffen, and Adam Wende. Turned out there was even more trouble - John Cole, a high school runner that has been putting in the miles. Lots of lions going after $275 worth of antelope meat.
The gun went off and the lions said: "Grrrr" Went through the first mile in 4:34. Course Tools says it should have been 4:45 for an even effort for this time. It felt hard. We had some sort of a pack. Teren and Seth way ahead, then Mike Vick a little closer, then Dennis, Jeff, Josh, Tyler, John, and myself.
In the second mile Dennis made a move. Josh tried to follow. Tyler fell back. Jeff fell back but then passed me and pulled away. 9:26 at 2 miles, 4:52. Course Tool even pace projection was 4:55. I was very happy with that 4:52 mile. Last year my first mile was 4:36, and second mile was 4:59.
I expected some difficulty in the last mile given my lack of 5 K training combined with the fast start. But there was not as much difficulty as I expected. We had some tailwind or maybe friendly cross-wind in the first 1.7 miles. However once we turned we had either a headwind or an unfriendly cross-wind. I was drafting behind John, and actually started feeling somewhat good after a moaning stretch, but I did not want to take over as he was going fast enough. I passed him once we turned the corner off 2700 South (around 0.4 to go), then he passed me back with about 0.25 to go, I stayed with him until about 0.1 to go, then he had a kick and I did not. So I ended up in 8th place with 15:23 on my watch, 15:25 officially. This is 19 seconds faster than last year, and a course PR by 6 seconds.
Other finishers: Teren 14:12, Seth 14:48, Mike Vick 14:51, Dennis 15:00 (masters course record), Jeff 15:08 (got a $20 piece of antelope meat, last lion that got to eat today), Josh Steffen 15:16, John Cole 15:23, Tyler 15:28 (9th), Steve Ashbaker 16:06 (10th), Adam Wende 16:09 (11th). Zuzana Thomas won the womens in 16:51 (if I remember right), then Carre Joyce 17:02, and Carol Cabanillas 17:08.
Ran a moderate length cool down with Jeff, Tyler, Steve, Seth, Adam, and Mike.
At home ran 1 with Julia in 9:30 (Benjamin joined us but ran ahead later and finished in 9:04), and then 1.5 with Jenny in 13:23.
P.M. 8.05 in 56:43. First 1.05 with Joseph and Jacob in the stroller.
T4 Racer - 90.76 miles
Five Fingers - 104.96 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
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Got good sleep. Went to church. We had a good lesson on Mosian 18-20. The people of Limhi were outnumbered by a large group of the Lamanites that had enslaved them. They were originally conquered by the Lamanites when they fell into sin under king Noah which resulted in a loss of morale of their army, weakening it to the point where they could not defend themselves. Three times they tried to free themselves with their own strength without relying on God, and three times they were severely defeated. Finally they decided to humble themselves, repent of their sins, and come before God in prayer and fasting.
When they did God showed them a solution, which was to escape and head towards a larger group of the Nephites while the guards of the Lamanites were drunk.
I thought the story was very instructive. It is important to humble ourselves before God. Christ taught that whoseover exalteth himself shall be humbled and whosover humbleth himself shall be exalted. I have pondered last night what it means exactly to be humble, and especially as it applies to running a marathon. Suppose you are fit to run 2:40. If you apply the virtue of humility you go through the first half in 1:20. 1:15 errs on the side of overconfidence, while 1:25 errs on the side of self-deprecation. Both are not an expression of true humility. I would define humily as being in tune with the truth and acting accordingly. The ability to be humble in this sense is key to success in a distanace race, especially the marathon.
Another thing that impressed me was that when the people of Limhi were out of tune with the truth they attempted a brainless impluslive brute force solution which did not work. Three times! When they humbled themselves, they were finally ready for the solution that would work. Earlier they were too proud to even think about it. I saw a lot of parallels with my own life experiences in that story. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 9.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.20 | 0.50 | 0.30 | 0.00 | 20.00 |
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A.M. Started the morning with 8 in 1:03:27 with Daniel, and Jeff. Hyrum joined us for the first 2, Tyler stayed with us for the first 3.5, then his ankle started hurting and he turned around. Did 500 in 2:03 to catch up after a VPB.
Afterwards drove to American Fork to pace the kids in the Harrington Memorial race. Jeff came along with us to help with the pacing job. First I paced Jenny through a 7:09 mile, a new PR by 10 seconds. Jeff paced Julia through a 9:23 mile. Julia decided to take it easy today, was chatting as she went along. She is still little, once in a while she gets goofy. Josh McAdams won the mile in 4:12.
As soon as we finished, I dashed back to the 5 K start to try to catch as much distance with Benjamin as possible. I only missed about the first quarter or so. Benjamin ran great, kidded a lot of adults, was untouchable by anybody his age, taught the hill by the cemetery a lesson, that same hill that humbled him two years ago. His first mile (downhill) was 6:33, then 7:19 uphill, and third downhill mile in 6:41. He finished in 21:12, a new PR by 20 seconds. He almost outkicked a high-school age teenager on the last quarter with his Lasse Viren style kick. The only problem was that his legs are not yet quite Lasse Viren's length. But still, 21:12 is very decent for a 9 year old kid.
Ran some more miles with Jeff afterwards. Seth Wold ran 15:29 for second, with Dustin Bybee a few seconds ahead. P.M. 3.5 pushing Julia in the stroller in 27:52.
Five Fingers -124.96 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.12 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.37 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Josse, and Daniel. Matt joined us on the trail later. Dropped Josse and Daniel off at 8. Dropped Matt off at 10, and Jeff at 12. Ran some more. Ended up with 15.17 in 1:53:31. P.M. Had Jacob and Joseph in the stroller the entire run. Took Julia for a mile in 9:58, then did the swing run. Benjamin ran 2 in 15:41 while Jenny rode a long, then we played at the swing, and Jenny 1.5 in 13:16 while Benjamin rode along. A funny thing happened. A procession of a dad in Five Fingers pushing two kids in a very beat up stroller accompanied by a 9 year old boy on an old undersized bike and a 7 year old girl in Crocs was advancing at about 8:45 pace along the trail. We passed a young running couple. Both looked fit. He says, "what, you are passing us with two kids?", and then he sees that there a little girl passing them as well and she is on foot! Added 0.7 untimed afterwards. Five Fingers - 145.33 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.30 | 5.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.30 |
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A.M. Started with Hyrum, Jeff, and Daniel. Hyrum ran the warm-up with us then ran back to the house. Paced Daniel through a 5 mile tempo. The plan was to see if he could handle 6:00 pace, and then see how easy it was by picking up at the end. Mile splits were 6:00, 5:58, then we had 14:57 at the turnaround, third mile was 5:57, then 5:51, and 5:47 on the last mile which had some uphill. Total time 29:33, last 2.5 in 14:36. Very decent, he is starting to get in shape. Makes Daniel a good substitute for the Wasatch Back in case we need one except his wife is due on June 16th. Matt was out on the trail and joined us for some sections of the tempo. Dropped Daniel off at 9, ran another 1.05 with Jeff, and then finished 15 alone. P.M. 0.7 alone, 1 with Julia in 9:47, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:19, 2.1 with Benjamin in 17:24. Five Fingers - 165.63 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.40 | 0.40 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.80 |
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A.M. 15.6 in 2:06:43. Started with Jeff and Daniel. Matt joined us in the middle. Dropped each training partner off eventually, then ran a bit by myself, and then found Derek Davis and ran with him a bit, then more alone. Miscalculated the turnaround and ended up with extra distance. The subject of discussion today was Quality X. We concluded that a good portion of it is built during the time in the womb and early childhood. P.M. 0.7 alone in 5:46, then 1 with Julia in 10:00, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:21, and 2 with Benjamin in 15:27. Went to a missionary training meeting. Half of the audience was Caucasian, but it was conducted in Spanish. Five Fingers - 186.43 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.80 | 0.40 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.20 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Daniel, and Matt. Jeff ran 10, Daniel 8, Matt ran 10 as well but he started from his house and we found him later. So I ran the last 5 miles alone. Total time was 1:54:31. Matt at one point wondered if VPB was a special running term he did not know and he even Googled it. He thought maybe it was some kind of a speed workout. It sure is if your training partners do not wait for you. So I did my VPB speed workout today, about 0.4 at 5:40 pace. Interestingly enough, a search for VPB on Google finds my blog, but does not find the definition. So maybe if I define it again we could improve the relevancy of the search and help those who are confused. Definition: VPB = Virtual Private Bathroom, or in other words a bush. It does not stand for Virtual Potty Break, the break is very real, it is the privacy that is virtual. P.M. 1 mile with Julia in 9:46, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:17, 2 with Benjamin in 16:35, 0.7 alone. Five Fingers - 206.63 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Race: |
Bridal Veil 10 K (6.214 Miles) 00:34:25, Place overall: 2 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.54 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 6.46 | 21.00 |
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A.M. Ran the Bridal Veil 10 K, 2nd place in 34:25. Jeff and I were timing the race, so we ran it as well as part of our Saturday workout. We warmed up a bit over 4 miles. It was windy, the wind was blowing out of the Provo Canyon, which meant head wind for the first 3+ miles. We did a couple of strides to gage the wind. On the first one we ran 43 seconds for 200 uphill into a headwind. On the second one we ran 37 downhill with a tailwind. Got to the start, found some competition. Bryan Summers, a coach at West Jordan High, 4:35 miler, winner of the Salt Lake 5 K this year (16:31), one of the 4 runners who saved the male field from being chicked by Emily Jameson. He was wearing the Wasatch Running Center uniform, my former sponsor, to make things more interesting. To better deal with the wind Jeff and I decided to stick together in the first 3 miles trading leads at 1 minute intervals or more often if necessary. So I would push the top end of how fast I was willing to start, while he would push the bottom end of how slow. This meant that I was having a bad day, Jeff could end up 10 seconds slower that he should have from starting too slow, and if Jeff was having a good day I would end up 10 seconds slower from starting too fast. But that was OK, since this was a low profile race with no prize money. And in any case, the cooperation against the wind would wipe out the losses anyway, so it was all good.
We did everything according to the plan. Official mile markers were not exceptionally accurate, but not too bad either. I ran that race a year ago, and it came out 6.21 on my GPS as well as on Ted's. I did not wear a GPS this time, and was going off the official mile markers as well as the triangles on the trail to double check on occasion. First mile was officially 5:41, second 5:59. Brian was still with us. He sat behind the first 1.8 miles, and then moved up. That was good, I did not have to take my turn, nor did Jeff. At around 2.2 Bryan was done leading, and Jeff moved up, but the wind was so strong he asked me to help. So I moved up, did what I could, then Jeff took over again. As Jeff turned up the heat, I started moaning, and we dropped Bryan. The wind died down a bit, so Jeff was OK putting more fuel into the fire while running up front. Our third mile was 6:13, but it was probably long. We did hit bad gusts, but they were not any worse than in the second mile, and the climb was about the same level of steepness. Shortly after 3 we hit the turnaround. I moved up for a little bit, but then Jeff took over again and now was going full steam. Things started getting miserable for me, but I wanted to be with Jeff for as long as possible, because I knew that once I was left alone I would not have the drive to push. We hit the next "mile" in 4:51, which was definitely short, probably by the same amount as the third mile was long. Shortly after 4 I lost concentration and Jeff was gone. From then on I ran in survival mode, but it was still decent. Next mile was 5:18, which was probably right (and it agreed with the triangles), followed by 5:23 that was long, and 1:00 to the finish, which was definitely short as I was not kicking that hard. I ended up beating my last year time by 1:10, which I was pleased with. Some of it came from working with Jeff, but I think some of it came from being in better shape. Jeff won with 33:46, Bryan was third with 36:28. We timed the race, and then went to run the rest of the miles. Ran another 7.6, found Bryan shortly after we started, and he joined us. We did a fair share of FRB propaganda on him, hopefully it will bear fruit. Total of 18 miles for the run. P.M. 1 with Julia in regular walking shoes in 9:32, then 2 with Benjamin in Five Fingers in 17:18 with Jenny doing the first 1.5 with us in 13:15. T4 Racer - 108.76 miles Five Fingers - 209.63 miles
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| A day of rest. Went to church. Stayed awake. Having to teach in the Elders Quorum helped. This also helped me remember a mission experience. My companion and I sat on the stand during a sacrament meeting rather tired as I hoped that we would have a dynamic speaker that day. Falling asleep on the stand would be rather embarrassing. Then I remembered that I was the speaker. But still I managed to fall asleep during my companion's talk. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 10.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.60 | 0.75 | 0.75 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. 15.1 in 1:57:32. Started with Jeff and Hyrum. Then Matt joined us briefly. Dropped Hyrum off at 4. He did have quite a pick up on the last quarter, it was 1:32 with the last 100 in 18. He made a resolution that he would not eat on a training day (Mon-Sat) until he ran. With as much as he likes to eat, this would hopefully get him to run more regularly. After than ran with Jeff and he realized he needed to get his car back to his wife so she'd make it to work on time. So we picked up the pace. We figured we needed to run 6:40 for 4.5 miles. That sounded tedious. We were going 6:20, then 6:10 at first. Then I figured if we just hammer a mile and a half, we can relax at the end. So we gradually picked up to a little under 6:00. Saw the new blogger Luz on the trail. Then we picked it up even more, ran 0.5 in 2:51 followed by 2:45, 5:36 for the mile. It hurt more than it should have. Some of it could be the fatigue from the 10 K, but some is probably just because it is hard to run fast in Five Fingers because you cannot pound the ground as hard. But that is OK, good practice running fast without pounding the ground. Dropped Jeff off at 10, he moved his car and rejoined me for another 2 miles at 11.5. Then I finished the run alone. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:36, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:21, 2 with Benjamin in 16:40, and 0.5 alone. Five Fingers - 229.73 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.60 | 3.25 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Ran with Daniel, Jeff, Michelle, and Josse. We warmed up and then did the tempo. Josse and Daniel just did a brisk mile, Daniel stayed with us, Josse fell back a bit. Jeff and I paced Michelle at 6:00 pace on the Provo River 5 Mile Tempo until she could not go anymore. She hoped to make it to 3, I had suspicions that she could go longer than that and told her we would try to make it to 5 miles. She laughed at me as if she had been 90 years old and had just been told she could have a child. After 2.62 of warmup we started the tempo. Knowing the importance of proper pacing to maximize the distance that Michelle could hold the pace for I checked the splits nearly every 1/16th of a mile to make sure we were hitting them as close as possible. First mile was 5:58 followed by a 5:59. No "give me five" were necessary to keep Michelle on pace until we've done a 180 and had to get back to speed. 18:00 at 3 miles, 6:03 with a 180. She did the next quarter in 1:29, and after that mentally lost some steam because in her mind she was done. I tried to convince her to go longer but she was too stubborn, and we did not have $100 per quarter on pace in the FRB budget to keep her going. Not yet, at least. She stopped at 3.625 mark slowing down to 1:35 quarter followed by a 1/8 in 48. Finished 13 with Jeff and Michelle, then added another 2.1. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:40, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:10, 2.5 by myself in 19:26. Pushed Jacob the entire run. Five Fingers - 249.83 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.85 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Jeff early in the morning in 1:19:32. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:51, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:13, 2 with Benjamin in 16:35, 5.5 alone in 40:59. Five Fingers - 269.92 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.90 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.60 | 20.50 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Daniel. Did a 200 meter time trial on the BYU track in the middle of a 16 mile run. It was not the best day for a sprint time trial - the track was wet and there was an odd wind blowing on the curve. And we had been doing distance on top of everything with very little sprinting. But it was OK, since all three of us had to deal with the same issues, and I just wanted to know the differences in all out speed rather off distance training than a true all out speed potential. Did 4x100 for a warm-up, missed the first, second in 16.6, then 15.3 and 15.6. Then ran a 200 racing each other with a jogging start. Jeff got 27.1, I got 30.0, Daniel was right there with me. Decided to see if we'd be faster the second time around. Jeff did 28.0, me 30.4, Daniel 30.5. Then did a control 100 meters staying together on purpose to see the differences in self-timing. I got 17.6, Jeff got 17.3 even though we ran together. T4 Racer - 124.78 miles
P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:09, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:23, 2 with Benjamin in 17:45. Five Fingers - 274.42 miles
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.67 | Total Sleep Time: 8.42 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.70 | 1.30 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.00 |
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A.M. 15 miles. Total time 1:58:36. Started with Daniel and Jeff. Matt joined us. Did some VPB pickups, thus 1.3 miles of marathon pace. Dropped Jeff and Daniel at 10.1. Ran a lap around the block with Sarah. Her legs were hurting, so she cut her run short. Went for some more afterwards. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:59, 1.6 with Jenny to the church picnic in 14:13 pushing Jacob and Joseph, then back the scenic way 2.4 still pushing Jacob and Joseph total time for 4 miles was 33:31.
Five Fingers - 294.42 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.67 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.67 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.45 | 4.00 | 8.60 | 0.00 | 24.05 |
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A.M. Did a DesNews specific workout with Jeff. Since he is not running DesNews marathon and is more injury prone than me, we modified his workout a bit to eliminate Squaw Peak decent for him. So he warmed up two miles then met me at my house. We did a leisurely warm-up at around 7:30-7:40 pace to the base of the Squaw Peak road which turned out to be 8.3 miles. The we ran a tempo up Squaw Peak Stairway to Glory. According to the Course Tool, it gains 1694 feet over 4.25 miles, which turns out to be 7.6% grade on average. So basically paved Ragnar leg about 2000 feet lower. My GPS measured 4.29 on the way up and 4.35 on the way down. There were painted marks on the road and the GPS was measuring less than the painted marks on the way up at 4 miles. I imagine we did better tangents that whoever painted the marks. But who cares about the exact distance anyway on a grade that steep - the times and paces are meaningless unless you have a comparison context. Jeff was having a fun time - had to ease off for me a couple of times to keep the gap smaller, his wife Kimia called him on the phone a couple of times and he talked to her without too much trouble. She was supposed to pick him up at the top and drive him down. So she just wanted to make sure she was going the right way. I was working pretty hard and still could not keep up with Jeff. We were beating the 7:30 guy up to 3 miles, and then the grade got steeper and the elevation increased as well. So we slowed down to 8:00 pace. The last quarter was miserable - the grade is the steepest there. I ran it in 2:16, Jeff already had a gap on me, and he increased it some but not much. My time was 32:37, which is a 20 second PR. Last time I ran it was 2006, and I did get my old PR of 32:57 then. I rested for a couple of minutes at the top, then Kimia took Jeff down, and I ran another tempo in the opposite direction. The road was wet, and it did matter at faster speeds. Additionally I was not used to the grade of this steepness, had not had enough practice lately. Plus the fatigue of having run 12 miles already was starting to affect me. So 5:00 pace was about all I could do. Was not breathing very hard. Ran the decent in 21:44. In the past with more downhill practice and doing it earlier in the run I've been able to do it a good minute faster. When I did that in the past I was breathing like a mad man and my HR was around 163. On the ascent I could only get 160 until the steep section, and then it got into 162-163 area. Today I did not have an HRM with me, but based on how I felt I would guess by HR was around 163 on the ascent and 155 on the decent. Met Jeff at the bottom, we jogged to the Provo River trail (about 0.1) and started another tempo. Ran 4 miles down about a 1% grade to Wills Pit Stop where Kimia picked us up. Our time was 23:19 with the last mile in 5:31. That last tempo was hard, my head was fuzzy and the legs did not want to respond, I felt very unmotivated to be sub-6:00 but pushed past the barrier out of a sense of duty. Jeff started turning up the heat on the last mile, and I did not think I had much juice in me, but I was able to zone out, ignore the fatigue and stay with him. The feeling is not a surprise as I was between miles 17 and 21 for the whole run. Good preparation for DesNews. T4 Racer - 145.83 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:50, 1.5 with Benjamin, Jenny, and Jared. Benjamin went ahead and ran 12:40, Jenny got 12:42, I stayed with Jared and we did 12:55. I pushed Jacob in the single stroller. Then ran another 0.5 with Jared in 4:28, Benjamin ran ahead and did 3:55, total of 16:35 for 2 miles for Benjamin. Five Fingers - 297.42 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Eventful Sunday. Sore quads from yesterday, but that was to be expected. In fact, the level of soreness exactly according to the plan. Still makes chasing kids difficult. Jacob was being fussy in the sacrament meeting, so Sarah told me to take him out. He calmed down while I was carrying him, so I just sat down on a back row. I tried to pay attention to the talks, they were good, but I missed the second talk almost entirely due to a special spiritual experience with the code name of Lehi's dream. The problem is that I cannot sleep past 6 AM any more. But I do very well later in the morning :-) Taught a class in Sunday school, and then Sarah reminded me that Benjamin had a talk in Primary, and we totally spaced it out, and he was not prepared. So I went to fix that. His talk went OK aside from the fact that he did not think so and hid behind a chair after he finished it. Some interesting behavior from a guy that can average 6:50 pace in a 5 K. He also can boast being spoon fed at breakfast the day after he broke the 8:00 mile (he was a month away from his 6th birthday then). I suppose we all progress at different rates in different areas.
Got a good nap in the afternoon.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Quads still sore. Worse than after any marathon except DesNews. Which was exactly the purpose of the workout on Saturday, so no complaints about that. Ran 8 with Jeff and Daniel. Matt joined us en route for a portion. Then did 2.1 around the block with Jeff, and 5 more alone. Total time was 1:56:45. A little faster at the end than normal, last 5 miles in 36:33. I think I am getting used to Five Fingers, faster pace is not as painful on the feet as it used to be (which was the reason for running 8:00 pace on most of the runs in the last three weeks). I am excited about this. I figured running in the Five Fingers will either injure something or correct something. I was not sure which direction it was going for a while, as the right foot sometimes would hurt, but it never got worse, and I could not feel anything in racing flats, so I figured keep trying. I think the right foot is starting to straighten out. Measured the sizes of various parts of the leg with Jeff. Measurements in inches. Lower shin, thinnest part - Jeff 7.5, me 8.375. Calf, the widest part, flexed - both 14.5 inches. Quad, widest part, flexed - me 21 inches, Jeff - 20 inches. Wrist - both 6.5 inches.
P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:58. Then pushed Jacob in the single stroller for the rest of the run. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 12:59, then another 0.5 with Benjamin in 3:58, and 2 with no running kids in 15:43. Five Fingers - 312.52 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.33 | Total Sleep Time: 8.33 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.40 | 0.00 | 0.70 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Josse, and Matt. Total distance was 15.1 in 1:55:57. Did a VPB pickup - 0.5 in 2:41. It felt easier than it ever has in Five Fingers. I also noticed that the balls of my feet are developing pretty thick callouses. Some natural padding. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:48. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 12:50, then 0.5 with Benjamin in 3:36, then pushed Jacob and Joseph in the double stroller for two miles - 15:43. Five Fingers - 332.62 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.05 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.60 | 20.15 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Matt. We did some sprints. 2x100 15.3, 15.2. Then 200 in 31.3, and 2x100 14.6, 15.3. Because we jogged so slowly in between, and because of how much we got into a conversation, our time at 10.1 was 1:24:08, I think we earned the title of boltuny, which would be the masculine plural of boltushka. Then I ran 5.05 alone in 34:47 with a 0.5 pickup in the middle at 5:20 pace. The magic mark 0.5 into the pickup was erased, but I hit the first quarter in 1:21, and was 2:20 with 1/16th to go. It felt very good. The reason I did this pickup was that for some reason 7:00 pace felt hard. I wanted to see if there was a real problem or if I was just being lazy. 5:20 felt nice and relaxed, I felt like I could hold it forever. T4 Racer - 160.98 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:56, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 11:57, 0.5 more with Benjamin in 3:48, 2 alone in 13:43. Five Fingers - 337.62 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.95 | 6.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.20 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Tyler. Jeff was running easy because is running in Sound to Narrows and wants to be reasonably fresh. Tyler and I did a tempo run. The plan was to measure how long Tyler can handle 5:40 pace going up to 7.5 miles but no more. I wore Five Fingers, which made 5:40 pace a challenge for me as well. We warmed up 3.88. The warmup was brisk. We put over a minute on the 8:00 guy. This is brisk by our new boltun standards. I think Tyler was the pace pushing element. If you leave Jeff and me alone, and we are talking, the pace can be easily slower than 8:00 until we realize we need to get home in time. Went through the first 200 in 43, it felt brisk, and I said to myself - done with 1/60th of the run. Then after a quarter I said, done with 1/30th, and that felt better. First mile in 5:38, then 5:39. Felt hard. Lost concentration before the turnaround, and lost all of the lead on the 5:40 guy. 14:10 at 2.5. OK, done with 1/3, that sounds a lot better. Pushed the gas pedal to get back on pace, overdid it a bit, started hitting 1:23 quarters. Tyler seemed to be OK, so I figured we'd just keep the pace. 16:58 at 3 miles (5:41), 22:31 at 4 (5:33). Wow, almost done, and I am feeling stronger than I was earlier. I think the increasing proximity of the finish was progressively cheering me up. Noticed that if I tense the ankle and the glut I get a very good push off without making the feet hurt. At 4.5 Tyler started feeling tired and said he only wanted to do 5. I said more. He said 6. I said 6.25. He said OK. We hit 5 in 28:13 (5:42), then did a 180 and were 33:57 at 6 (5:44), and finished 6.25 in 35:22, that would be 35:09 for the 10 K, which is a PR for Tyler. I set all kinds of Five Finger PRs as well - I think all distances 1 mile through 10 K. Found Jeff on the trail afterwards, cooled down together. Dropped Tyler off 12.75 into the run, he threw up shortly after stopping, first time he threw up after a run. He is now a proud member of the elite Clyde/Logan vomit on the run club. Jeff and I ran loops around the block to add extra distance. I ended up with 15.2 for the run. P.M - 1 with Julia in 9:52, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 12:54, 2.5 alone in 18:39. Five Fingers - 357.47 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.02 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.02 |
| A.M. 15.02 in 1:50:56, first three with Tyler, the rest alone. Jeff is flying to Washington to see his family and to run Sound to Narrows 12 K. P. M. 5 in 40:59, including first 1.32 to the library with Benjamin, Jenny, Julia, and Jared. Jared is not our kid, he is Ted's son, he is with us for a sleepover. Ran into Daniel and ran with him some as well. Five Fingers - 377.49 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Race: |
Heart of Holladay 5 K (3.107 Miles) 00:16:38, Place overall: 9 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 3.11 | 20.11 |
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A.M. Ran Heart of Holladay 5 K in 16:38, 9th place. The race was very competitive as expected. The whole family came. It does not happen very often anymore due to the difficulty of bringing everybody at an early hour. But Benjamin and Jenny were racing, and Sarah wanted to go to a special discount grocery store (NPS) in Salt Lake, so we all came. Warmed up 2 miles. The gun went off, and I really did not like being in a 5 K. I wanted it to be a 10 K. But you cannot place high in the circuit without running 5 Ks, and we were also doing a campaign for Kim to get into St. George, so I was there. Plus a little push and a kick in the pants a hard 5 K gives you is good once in a while. A fairly sizeable pack pulled away. I considered going with them, but then I saw that Nate Hornok and Matt Harmer were going out a little slower, and I fell for the temptation to run with them. The slow start was right for them but wrong for me. They would later be strong on the uphill if they started slow, but I would run it at the same pace regardless of how I started. I knew that, but I erred on the side of laziness anyway. First mile in 5:14 instead of a more appropriate 5:08 on a slight rolling uphill. The second mile starts with a slight up, then goes down, and flattens out. Matt dropped back a bit, we passed James Moore (Fiddy), Nate pulled me up closer to Steve Ashbaker, John Coles, and Dave Spence. Josh Steffen was a bit ahead of them, then Dennis Simonaitis and Alexander Thomas together, and Teren Jameson ahead of everyone. I caught a 3 K split - 9:41. By that time Nate was starting to press the pace, and I was barely hanging on. The feeling was odd, though previously experienced and expected. I felt like if I eased off by as little as 5 seconds a mile I could race a 15 K or maybe even a half. But I could not find 5 seconds a mile within me to run one more mile 5 seconds faster. In theory you should be able to address that with speed work. In practice, what has happened in the past is that speed work does help me keep the gap between the half and the 5 K pace bigger, but mostly because the half is slower. I gain 10-15 seconds in a 5 K and lose a minute in the half compared to high mileage, and no speed work other than occasional tempos and races. 2 miles in 10:25 (5:11). That is encouraging. Not 10:25, but 5:11 after 5:14. Maybe the momentum would help be get up the hill at a good pace. Well, we hit the uphill. I did not feel too miserable. But I could not go any faster. Nate pulled away like there was no tomorrow. But that time I had passed Steve, but everybody else was still ahead. Matt Harmer went by, and I could not latch on him. I closed the gap on John Cole a bit. Once it flattened out I pulled up to him, he pressed harder and dropped me, I pulled up again, he pressed again and dropped me, I reeled him in, 3 miles in 16:04 (uphill mile in 5:39, unspectacular but not exceptionally horrible). I was about to pass him, and thought for a moment the deal was done and was planning a forward lean at the finish line, but then he found another gear and beat me by a second. My time on the watch was 16:36, officially 16:38. Others: Teren 15:18, Dennis 15:44, Alexander 15:56, Nate 16:02 (his last 1.1 split was 5:38, same as Teren's), Josh 16:07, Dave 16:19, Matt 16:25, John 16:37, Steve 16:48, James 16:52. Went back to pace Benjamin (9 years old). His back and muscles all over the body have been hurting lately (growth pains?) so I was not expecting much. He toughed it out and finished in 22:09, 2nd place in his age division (1-11) after Alexander Berry who got 21:23. Jenny goofed off today. I think she is still too little to run well without a pacer. When I found her, she was jogging along (without much effort) with a 6 year old girl at around 8:30 pace. I suppose Jenny was feeling overwhelmed by the adult crowd and decided to just run alongside a little kid. I told her to speed up, which she did, but not enough to drop her. They both started flying by the adult crowd. Jenny's 6 year old competitor was quite a speedy girl. At the end Jenny pulled ahead of her competitor, which gave her third place in her age division (1-11) and 26:19 for the time, which is quite a bit slower than what she was capable of. We'll try again in another race, this time I'll be there start to finish. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that even with this level of effort Jenny (7 years old) would have gotten an age division award in a number of non-master adult age divisions.
On the positive side, our blogger Kim Lee who we put on the forms got into St. George. This is good not only for Kim but also for the blog. Will make it easier to convince race directors to advertise their races with us.
Passed out the FRB/St. George Running Center cards. Benjamin, Jenny, and especially Julia helped. Then ran a short cool down. Will run more tonight. T4 Racer - 168.59 miles. P.M. 1.1 with Julia in 11:14, then 11.5 with Daniel in 1:19:32. We kept it brisker than normal, but still within an acceptable range. The temperatures were in the 80s. The asphalt was warm and soft and I could feel it in Five Fingers. So sub-7:00 happened more naturally than it normally does when it is only 50-60 degrees and the asphalt is hard. Interestingly enough, I was not the only creature that liked warm asphalt today. We saw a short green snake warming itself on the trail and I jumped over it. Ran at 5:30 pm, had no food or drink since about 1:30 pm, but I was not feeling either hungry or thirsty, so I decided to see how well I will do in the heat off blood volume. Did OK, could not feel the heat very much. Five Fingers - 390.19 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.05 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.05 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff. First 10.1 in 1:09:09. Then ran 0.35 with Sarah and the rest alone. Saw that I was behind the 7:00 guy by 25 seconds with 2 mile to go and decided to beat him with the minimal casualties. Ran a mile in 5:56 to make him give up, then jogged the rest of the way. 1:44:42 for 15 miles. Did some more limb measurements with Jeff. Was about an inch longer than him in the thigh length as well as the shin length. In the earlier measurements my quad was an inch bigger in circumference in the widest part. We measured the narrowest part near the knee. I was 15.5 inches, he had only 13.5. I think we finally got to the reason why my quads look so big. They are actually rather normal width for the length of the thigh, but unusually wide in the lower thigh by the knee. My vastus medialis looks a lot bigger than Jeff's. P.M. 1.2 with Julia to the park in 12:00 with Benjamin and Jenny following on their bikes. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny running in 12:58. Then 2.35 in 17:41 with Benjamin and Jenny on their bikes in the last 1.2. Five Fingers - 410.24 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.93 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.12 | 20.05 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Josse. Jeff and I did an interesting workout. The target was to go 73 seconds per quarter until I could not hold the pace, then once the failure became obvious finish at the closest quarter mark. The first quarter was right on target - 73. On the second one Jeff put a bit too much pepper on my plate - 70. No wonder it felt so hard - I began to think wow, my anaerobic capabilities are so bad that I can barely make it to 0.5 doing 73s? Hit the 0.625 mark (a bit over 1 K) in 3:00, that was good. Then 3:37 at 0.75 (74). Around that point I started falling apart. No heavy legs, just all of a sudden cannot go, and do not understand why. That was not good. Next quarter was 78, stopped at the mile in 4:55. What was interesting about the experience is that the boundary between, well, I can do this for a while and no this is not sustainable for more than another quarter was very thin. Which is expected when you do purely aerobic training, and is actually good in the marathon because the moment you start running too fast it hurts enough to alert you to the problem. With some anaerobic training I could of course train myself to sustain 73s for longer. But that would do me no good in the marathon. I want to be more aerobic at that pace, and sufficiently aerobic at 5:00 pace to make it through the 5 mile tempo. How do we do that? Big mystery, exciting mystery.
Here is an idea - find out a way to shut down the anaerobic gear without shutting the nervous system down with it, and do some high volume speed work as fast as the aerobic gear will let you. For the rest of the run we ran easy with Josse and had her do 2x100. She did the first in 16.4, and the second in 16.6. Dropped Josse off, went around the block twice while Jeff went to the bathroom, then ran another 4.25 with Jeff. Total of 15.05. T4 Racer- 183.64 miles. P.M.1 with Julia in 9:55, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 12:55, 2.5 alone in18:29. Five Fingers - 415.29 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.67 | Total Sleep Time: 7.92 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.80 | 0.80 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.60 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Daniel. Daniel went 10.1, Jeff ran 14.1. I added another mile. Total of 1:55:55 for 15.1. 0.8 of marathon pace is due to VPB intervals. Jeff has been officially appointed as the chorister and the lead singer in Van1 for the performance of Bingo on my legs. We practiced a bit today trying to figure out the appropriate beat frequency. P.M. Errand jogging - 0.5 miles. 2.5 alone in 18:25, 1 with Julia in 10:49, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 12:57.
Five Fingers - 435.39 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.40 | 0.00 | 0.60 | 0.00 | 14.00 |
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A.M. Started with Daniel. About 3.7 into the run we caught up to Luz and invited her to join us. Paced her through a mile in 8:02. Then she did not slow down much after that, so we just stayed with her for the whole 8. She ran with us all the way to my house, which gave Sarah a training partner to run as well afterwards. Total time for 8 was 1:06:18. A bit later a mile with Julia in 8:46. P.M. 2.5 alone in 18:07, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 12:53. Five Fingers - 447.39 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.25 |
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| Race: |
Wasatch Back Relay (180.5 Miles) 17:54:16, Place overall: 2 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 7.00 | 0.00 | 7.40 | 0.00 | 14.40 |
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A.M. 2.5 in 17:29 by myself, 1 with Julia in 9:46, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:07. Five Fingers - 452.39 miles.
P.M. Ran leg 5 in 47:59. Details to follow. Now the details. BYU finally put together a real team. Good for us. Will hopefully teach us to be humble, and will hopefully help us get a better appreciation for Quality X and the importance of developing it if we want to run in the OTQ range. Before the race James and Cody entered some data into Paul's spreadsheet. Whatever came out was called the original projection. I adjusted the flat places, made a few adjustments to the calculations and then went through it leg by leg and manually adjusted the predictions that I felt were still way off to more reasonable values. The new projections were called Sasha Science projections. Interestingly enough, the original projection said we would finish in 17:39:35, while Sasha Science said 17:39:38 - essentially the same end result, but lots of leg time variations. Both ended up quite a bit off, although for different reasons.
First leg. Jeff McClellan on the White Team, Mitch Zundell on the Blue Team, Kyle Perry on the BYU team, and Mike Vick from Runner's Corner. 90-95 degrees at the start. To add a little bit of drama - Jeff ran for BYU before his mission as a walk-on, then after his mission got cut. So he had something to prove. He hit his first mile in 5:05 (uphill), followed by 5:18, 5:27, 5:53 (uphill), 5:53 (uphill). He finished his leg in 28:28 which was 5.14 miles, 5:32 average. Not bad for uphill (0.2 grade, 132 feet of loss, 192 feet of gain) and 90 degrees. 26:32 for Kyle, 27:42 for Mike. His Sasha Science projection was 29:08. The original projection was 31:00. Mitch finished in 29:40, very good for being out of shape. Another reminder of the importance of Quality X.
Second leg. Hayden Hawks on our team against Nate Ogden (BYU) and Jared Kelly (Runner's Corner). Hayden struggled with the heat but still managed 39:44 for 6.73 miles, 5:54 average. Not bad for 90 degrees and 0.7% net uphill grade with 292 feet of gain and 192 feet of loss. His Sasha Science projection was 39:30, his original projection was 41:19. Jared ran very well and gapped Hayden by a couple of minutes. Probably about the same gap for Nate. So we were about 4 minutes behind BYU at this point. Third leg. 5.65 miles. 0.3% uphill, 42 feet of loss, 275 feet of gain. Iain Hunter for BYU, a girl for Runner's Corner (UVU runner, I think), and Tyler for us. Tyler started out as expected, first two miles at 5:45 pace. Passed the Runner's Corner girl, after that we never saw Runner's Corner. Then a 5:57, and then something really odd happened. 6:24, and 6:45. This should not have happened even in 90 degrees and dehydrated. Maybe 6:10 and 6:20 at the very worst. I told him he needs to eat like a heart patient, lots of fiber, very minimal to no cholesterol. Something somewhere is wrong. Tyler toughed it out and finished in 34:42, 6:08 average. His Sasha Science projection was 33:30, his original projection was 34:43. After he was done he headed straight for the Honey Bucket. I got into one right next to him to address my own needs, and we had a lovely discussion of his leg. On the positive side, he made the first road kill, or in other words, passed a team that started earlier. I thought a fluke, somebody must have gotten a wrong start time, but then there was more road kill on the legs to follow.
Forth leg. 5.09 miles. 0.6% uphill. 315 feet gain, 152 feet loss. Walter Brown on our team against Aaron Robison (BYU). Walter got 31:27, 6:10 pace, Sasha Science projection was 31:37, original was 31:20. Splits: 5:21, 5:45, 6:00, 6:10, 6:22. Cody ran 31:48 last year. Who knows how far behind BYU. Fifth leg was mine. Avon Pass. 7.41 miles. 2.9% uphill. 1210 feet gain, 54 feet loss. I enjoyed every one of those 54 feet. Ran against Jon Kotter. He showed me what Quality X was all about with a 43:44 against mine 47:59. Sasha Science projection 48:40, original 49:30. Splits - 5:56, 6:13, 6:35, 6:21, 6:33, 6:58, 7:22, next quarter in 1:37 (6:28 pace), last 405 feet in 0:27, 5:56 pace. The leg showed as 7.33 on the GPS. Possibly because of the GPS error, or possibly because I did my tangents very well. 6:33 pace if the GPS was right, 6:29 if the 7.41 distance was right. Paul ran 46:17 last year. There were some interesting things on that leg. There was a farmer, had a dog, and BINGO was his name, and he was roaming along the road without a leash or an owner in sight. I was in racing mode, and it was a small dog, so I figured if it attacked me I'd give it some James MonaFlash treatment. Passed it without an incident. More road kill than I expected. Interesting team vehicle - a pickup truck. Actually not a bad idea, makes sleeping easier. Jeff McClellan demonstrated his singing ability while running at a pace that would make most people throw up. Talents are meant to be shared, and I've been making him practice, so cannot let that go to waste. He sang BINGO to me as he handed me a large bottle of Powerade and ran with me as I took a few sips so he could take it back. Overall I felt strong, got into good rhythm, used the measly 54 feet of drop very well, the gear box worked when I had to shift. Leg 6, Jeff Shadley on our team against Tyrell Jensen. 6.92 miles. 3.0 % grade net drop. 277 feet of gain, and 1396 feet of drop. We made a mistake on this leg assignment underestimating the pounding effect of that downhill. It is very nasty - dirt, lots of turns, and a three mile stretch of 8% downhill. More quad-trashing that we realized. Jeff damaged his quads on this leg, and it hurt him for the rest of the relay and threw him off his projections. He ran 39:04, 5:39 pace. Sasha Science projected 37:21, and the original projection was 37:09. Splits: 6:22 (uphill), 6:04 (uphill then start of smoking down), 4:46 (steep downhill on gravel), 4:46 (still steep ), 5:31 (leveling off), 6:01 (flat ), 0.93M-5:33 Error analysis: we should have put Clyde on leg 5, me on leg 6, and Jeff on leg 12. Iain Hunter told me the gap now was 12:44. I thought it was a compliment to our team that they bothered to time the gap.
T4 Racer - 193.04 miles
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Race: |
Wasatch Back Relay (180.5 Miles) 17:54:16, Place overall: 2 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 7.37 | 0.00 | 10.10 | 0.00 | 17.47 |
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A.M. Wasatch Back continues. Leg 17 in 36:43, and Leg 29 in 20:18. Details to follow. The end of the first shift of Van 1 was followed by a logistical mistake. Instead of getting our rear ends into Kimball's Expedition and hurrying over to the next exchange to sleep we lounged around, and then followed Van 1 of the Blue team to Subway. Mental note. Next time find somebody ideally in Huntsville, less ideally but still good in Eden or Liberty that would not mind having six stinky guys + the driver come and crash at his house. Sleep is critical to success on the second and third legs for everybody, but particularly to the neurologically limited runners, which in my estimate would be about half of our team. We hurried over to the next exchange, dropped Jeff off in a hurry, dealt with a traffic jam. I am sure glad Jeff is as disciplined and detail oriented as he is, or we would have miffed that exchange. It was dark, lots of teams, you could not see one's face well enough to recognize it. I did not recognize Jon Allen from 5 feet away. He said, how is our team doing? My answer was, "which team?", with the implication of - why in the world do you expect me to know how your team is doing? I do not even know who you are. Mental note for the future. On the van-to-van hand-off, the first runner in the next van must carry a watch with precise time (or at least now exactly how much off his watch is), and must make sure he is at the exchange at least 5 minutes prior to the time estimate given by the previous van in case a miracle happens or the previous leg turns out to be short. Cell phones sometimes do not work. However, the arrival time is fairly predictable, at least the earliest physically possible arrival time. After that deadline, no potty visits, strides, or anything. Stand there, listen with both ears for the team number, and stare like a hawk at the arriving runners. A volunteer could easily miss a Fast Passing Runner, especially in the dark. Van 2 brought us the baton about 2 minutes behind schedule. Leg 13. 8.47 miles. 3.2% net drop. 712 feet of gain, and 2128 feet of drop. First mile uphill, the rest steep rolling down. Jeff McClellan against Kyle Perry. Jeff's splits speak for themselves - 6:35, 4:54, 4:53, 5:06, 5:22, 5:05, 4:50, 4:53, and 4:50 pace for the rest of the leg. 44:05, 5:12 average. Sasha Science projected 44:59, the original projection was 45:20. Kyle Perry (BYU) ran 43:33. Sweet for Jeff, only 32 seconds behind the BYU super-runner. We were 16:54 behind after leg 13. Leg 14. 3.00 miles. 85 feet of drop, 145 feet of gain. Hayden Hawks against Nate Ogden. Hayden ran 16:22, 5:27 pace, was projected to run 16:34 by Sasha Science, 17:40 originally. Hayden's form reminds me of Ryan Hall. Who knows, he might run 2:06 marathon when he grows up, I would not be surprised. Jared Kelly ran this leg in 16:00. No data on BYU times from this point. Leg 15. 4.95 miles officially, measured 5.05 on the GPS. 208 feet of drop, 265 feet of gain. 0.2% climb. Tyler ran through a side-ache in 29:02. Sasha Science projected him at 28:45, original projection was 28:32. Average Garmin pace 5:45, if the leg was right, then 5:51. Leg 16. Officially 3.05, measured 2.93 on Walter's Garmin. 31 feet of drop, 74 feet of gain, 0.3% grade. He ran it in 17:02, 5:48 pace. Sasha Science projection was 17:31 (5:44 pace), the original projection was 17:46 (5:49 pace). The projections assumed 3.05 miles. Splits: 5:40, 5:57, 5:48 pace for 0.93.
Leg 17. Officially 5.87, measured 6.03 on my Garmin. 103 feet of drop, 339 feet of climb. 0.8 % grade. Started at 12:33 AM. Felt sleepy and weak on this leg. Ran 36:43, 6:06 average pace. Was projected to run by Sasha Science in 34:18, 5:51 pace. The original projection said 34:23, 5:52 pace. Splits: 5:46, 6:06, 6:08, 5:56, 6:07, 6:31, and 5:55 pace to the finish. It is interesting to compare my splits with Chad's who ran the same leg: 6:09, 6:05, 6:03, 6:00, 6:07, 6:23. So in other words, in the first mile I was myself, from 2 to 5 I became Chad (in his current shape), and on the last mile I was transformed into a runner that is 8 seconds a mile slower than Chad. This was a clear case of neural fatigue. Next year we'll try Operation Huntsville Nap and see if that makes a difference (assuming I am in Van 1 again, which I should be because it would be a disaster to put me in Van 2). I was rather surprised that I was passing mostly fit looking young men running around 7:00-7:30 rather than mostly women running 10:00 pace as I was expecting. Every time I'd come up on one due to my past race experience (you never start behind somebody except a race like this) I would think, well as weak as I am feeling, he's going to try to hang with me. Maybe I'll draft a bit before passing him. But he never did try. Of course, he could not. If you did not even see him a mile earlier, there is no chance he'd be able to go with you. It is like passing somebody who's hit the wall in a marathon. He is a helpless lamb, there is nothing he can do. My mind was playing tricks on me in the middle of the night. Leg 18. Officially 5.23 miles, measured 5.11 on Jeff's GPS. 201 feet of drop, 695 feet of climb. 1.8% grade climb. Jeff Shadley with his quads already trashed ran 34:40 averaging 6:47. His Sasha Science projection was 33:48 (for 5.23), 6:28 average. Original projection was 32:48, 6:16 average. We messed up the exchange. It took about 30 seconds for Taylor to find Jeff. Again, a note for the future. We need military discipline in the vans, especially at night. Know the current time, know the earliest your hand off can arrive, and from that time on watch like a hawk without losing vigilance. The runner ideally should never be left alone at the exchange. 5 minutes from the earliest possible arrival the companion should come out and be there to remind the runner to stay vigilant. Immediately after picking up Jeff we headed over to the North Summit High School in Coalville. Set a PR for the sleep. 70 minutes! This later proved very helpful on the third leg. Being humbled by the hand-off fiasco we were more disciplined. However, we did waste about 5 minutes on a small detail. I forgot the exact location where Tyler and Walter were sleeping, and it was impossible to tell among about 50 sleeping bodies in the dark who was who. So we did a man to man check waking up a few unhappy runners. Some volunteered that they were not either Walter or Tyler before we had a chance to kick them. Note for the future - make sure you know EXACTLY where everyone is sleeping and can find that place in the dark. For the team members - do not go away from the van without telling the van captain (and have an official van captain to begin with) where you are with enough detail that he could find you in less than 60 seconds in case of emergency. Drove over to the Rockport Lake for Jeff to start his leg. There was a huge jam. We let Jeff out with about a mile to go so he could do his warm up. Leg 25. 5.60 miles. 385 feet of gain, 155 feet of loss. 1.3% grade. Nasty leg. I ran it last year. Slower than it looks from the elevation profile. Jeff McClellan started his leg at 5:01 AM, about 3 minutes behind Carson Campbell from the Peak Endurance team that started at 4:00 PM, an hour before us. Too much gap for Jeff to make a road kill, but enough to set Hayden up for it. Jeff's splits - 5:34, 5:50, 6:01, 6:30, 6:29, next 0.5 in 2:47, last 509 feet at 5:18 pace. Total time 33:42. Average pace 6:01. The original projection was 33:51, Sasha Science projection was 33:49. Kyle Perry reported that he ran that leg at 5:56-5:57 average. So that puts Jeff at most only a little over 30 seconds behind. Jeff finished about a minute behind Carson. We again lost about 3 seconds on the exchange. This time we did it right for the most part - I was out there with Hayden and kept him alert. But then we both spaced out spaced out, Jeff apparently went by the radio announcer so fast he could not see his number, either that or Hayden and I both spaced out, the volunteers kept us out of the exchange area until the number had been announced, and by the time Jeff got in Hayden was still on the sidewalk. Again shows the importance of being vigilant. Leg 26. 163 feet of gain, 127 feet of loss. 0.1% grade climb.
Leg 29. I started at 7:05 AM. Splits. 4:52, 4:36, 4:56, 5:30, last 379 feet at 5:40 pace. Average pace 4:59.
T4 Racer - 205.14 miles
P.M. Home to Costco relay with the kids. 1.06 with Julia in 10:48, 1.56 with Jenny in 13:51, and 2.75 with Benjamin in 22:55. Five Fingers - 452.76 miles
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Night Sleep Time: 1.17 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 3.17 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Fourth leg of the Wasatch Back this morning in the form of a 7:00 AM Stake Semi-Annual Priesthood meeting. They always have those at 7:00 AM in our stake. I forgot about the last two and missed them, so this time I was determined not to forget. The Lord blessed me - in spite of missing the sleep in the WBR I felt very energized. I even felt energized afterwards in the three hour block. Once I got home I got a good nap, though. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.75 | 1.50 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 20.25 |
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A.M. I got my check from Ogden. $550. And along with that I found on my doorstep "a ball of curious workmanship" from Ogden as well. This is what I like to say when I find a gadget on my doorstep. Just like Lehi found Liahona near his tent one day. Except this one does not work according to your faith. It was Suunto t4 foot pod/HRM toy. I ran 3 miles with Tyler, and then spent the rest of the run playing with the new toy. Good - HRM works well. The adjustable strap might even make it fit on Benjamin, Jenny, and even Julia. Bad - time display is tiny, hard to see. No display of stride frequency, only an estimate of the running speed. It always irks me when a gadget displays what it does not really know (distance) while fails to display what it does know (stride rate, ground contact time, foot acceleration vector). I knew that display of the ground contact time would be unrealistic to expect, much less the foot acceleration vector in any form, but I did hope that I could at least get the stride frequency. Without it, the foot pod is annoyingly useless even when calibrated. In hopes that it would be somewhat reliable, I went through the trouble of attaching it to my shoe (now I am having a hard time taking it off, too). Before calibration, it was showing a pace 30 seconds per mile slower that actual at around 8:00 pace. After calibration at 8:00 pace it got better at paces slower than 7:00 mile, almost satisfactory. However, at sub-6:00 pace it was showing a faster pace by about 5 seconds a mile. I could put up with that if it was not for this quirk. I accelerated quickly in one stride, and then eased off in the next in the middle of jogging at 7:50-8:00 pace. It showed 5:05 for the accelerating stride, and 12:30 on the ease-off stride. I can guarantee you I did not go from 7:50 to 5:05 in one stride, or from 5:05 to 12:30 in the next. The manual did warm about it, though. But I do this all the time when I run. Ran a mile in 5:25, got HR up to 164. Total of 15.1 for the run. P.M. 1.33 with the Benjamin, Jenny, and Julia to the library in 13:03, back with Benjamin and Jenny, this gave us 25:37 for 2.65. Then another 2.5 in 18:46. Ran into Jacob Howell, and then shortly after a BYU runner Rich Nelson who ran leg 10. Found out from him the composition of their Van 2: Jason Dorais, Warren Davis, Chad Durham, Rich Nelson, Ryan Merriman, and Derek Taylor. According to him they had no pace projections like us, just ran. Five Fingers - 465.45 miles. T4 Racer - 212.69 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.97 | 4.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 19.97 |
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A.M. Michelle came for a speed workout. We did 4x1 mile on the trail. Original plan was 5:45 each with 200 meter recovery. Michelle rebelled. I suggested we extend the recovery to 400 first time she is slower than 5:45. She did 5:40.1, 200 recovery, Matt joined us for the remainder of the workout. 5:46.5, 400 recovery, 5:45.1, 400 recovery, 5:45.7. Matt pulled away on the last one, was probably around 5:42-5:43. HR peaked at 157 a couple of times, once when we hit two 85 quarters back to back on the third one, and the other time when Michelle kicked with a 39 200 on the last one. Otherwise it stayed under 153. When Michelle struggled (88-89 quarters), it was 148, what a cold insensitive heart! However, when I yelled at her to give me five, it would go up to 152. Next time we should give the watch to Michelle so she could see my HR and play the "make Sasha work" game. If anybody wants to play it, feel free to come. Also, towing subjects wanted for power training. I have a harness I want to use to do some power training without hills (more specific to flat running), but nobody to tow this week. Ideally I want somebody slower so there is no way we can run a certain pace when the partner is being towed by having him just run that pace. This is also good for the slower runner - overspeed training.
After we finished the cool down, ran around the block 16 times. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:03, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:08, another 0.5 with Benjamin in 3:51, then 2 alone in 14:40.
Five Fingers - 485.42 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.07 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.07 |
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A.M. Ran alone. 15.07 in 1:52:20. This run took my Five Fingers over the 500 mile boundary. I think Steve Hooper will have to tell his sales rep that Five Fingers can go quite a bit over 500 miles. Did some experiments trying different form alterations and observing their impact on HR at the same pace, or the pace at the same HR. Discovered one thing - we are took quick to conclude that changing the form has given us a performance boost. I would do something different, it would make me run faster, but HR would go up as well. So in other words, I wanted it to work bad enough that I subconsciously sped up and ignored the increased effort, which was easy to do when the pace is in the 7:00 - 7:30 range. However, I did find something that appeared to be effective. No dramatic effect, but at least something. If I focused on a quick push and then a quick transition to relaxation as soon as the leg was off the ground, I was able to bring my HR down from 125 to 123 at the same pace (7:25 per mile). This was difficult to do properly, though. Not surprising, if it was easy I would have figured it out already. I kept doing one of the two - either relax too much and forget to power, in which case the HR stayed at 123 but the pace dropped to 7:35-7:40, or I would get excited, power hard, but then forget to relax. This would bring the pace up to under 7:10, but HR went up to 126-127. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:56, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:07, 0.5 with Benjamin in 3:56, and 2.5 alone in 14:58. Managed to fit the HRM on Benjamin. His HR was around 160 at 9:00 pace, around 174 at 8:00 pace, and after about 0.1 of sub-8:00 pace followed by 100 meters in 23 (6:08 pace) it got up to 186. First time I've been able to observe his HR at different speeds. Five Fingers - 505.49 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.50 | 0.25 | 2.25 | 0.10 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Ran with Adam the first 5 miles. First we ran 0.5 to verify that he still had the same problem last time we checked. He did. We went through the first quarter in 1:28, and after that he was unable to hold 6:00, and ended up with 3:01.7. He was not breathing very hard at all, but could not go any faster. Bad nervous system problem. Whatever I've got, he has 10 times worse. Helps me put things into perspective. Then I did a little bit of experimental power training dragging him with a harness 3 times, each time for 10 seconds. After that he was concerned he might aggravate an old injury, so we stopped. Dropped him off, ran around the block. Then ran with the kids. 1.05 with Julia in 10:24, 1.5 in 13:26 with Benjamin and Jenny, 0.5 with Benjamin in 4:22. Then a dog came. Benjamin identified it as a dalmatian. Wikipedia says that dalmatians have excellent endurance and are very energetic and playful. This one was so energetic and playful that after about a quarter of running (1:37) I did not have a choice except put its endurance to a test. At 5:40 pace its playfulness decreased enough to where it was trailing behind and was not trying to hit my legs with its nose. I was encouraged and picked up the pace even more. Unfortunately we were now on the trail next to the river, which provided a nice shade and cooler temperatures thus favoring the dog. I kept up the pressure and on the last mile the dog started to falter. I was encouraged again because I knew once we got away from the river it would be warmer and I would be able to drop it. My expectations were correct. I put about a 10 second gap on the dog in the last 0.4. It came in huffing and puffing after I finished. I was delighted over my success in asserting human dominion over a small part of the animal kingdom in the area of endurance. Total time for the last 2.5 was 14:10 including the first non-tempo quarter in 1:37. Last mile was 5:31. Average pace over the last 2.25 of my unplanned dog tempo run was 5:34. Total of 15.1 for the run. P.M. Ran 5 miles in 39:01 in the evening. HR readings were very low in spite of the 80-90 degree heat. In fact, the were even lower than what I would have expected them in cool weather. About 118 at 7:30 pace on average. Started out very slow, felt exceptionally sluggish in the heat, and HR for a while completely refused to go above 105, while the pace refused to go faster than 8:00. Felt more energetic after 2 miles. I think I am starting to understand why they say "oppressive heat". Looks like the brain starts employing defense mechanisms directly in response to the heat vs in response to reduced blood volume from sweating. Also did a stair test with myself, Sarah, Benjamin, and Jenny. The test consists of running up a stairway of 11 stairs as fast as you can landing on every stair. Results - Benjamin - 2.8, Jenny - 2.9, me -3.3 (self-timed), 3.6 (Benjamin-timed), Sarah - 3.8. I timed everybody when I was not running. The test is supposed to measure your ability to quickly contract and relax a muscle, which I believe is an important component in the Quality X. I wondered if the fact that Benjamin was closer to his natural stride length for the stair climb allowed him to contract/relax more efficiently. So we did a test skipping every other stair. The times were 2.3 for him and 3.1 for me, so no, I am just bad it at. The fact that I was not that much better in this ability than pregnant woman 25 weeks along gives some food for thought.
Five Fingers - 525.59 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.07 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.07 |
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A.M. Total of 15.07 including 1.05 with Julia in 10:07, and 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:22. P.M. 5 alone in 35:50. Five Fingers - 545.36 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 7.70 | 15.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 22.70 |
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A.M. Did the Provo Riverwoods 10 miler twice. First up, the immediate 180 and dash back down. Brisk warm up for the first 5 miles, then tempo the rest of the way. A fairly miserable workout as you climb 800 feet in the first half, but great preparation for Deseret News. I had two goals - beat Josse's race time from two weeks ago (1:07:02) on the way up, then James Barnes' winning time (56:42) on the way back. After a bit of jogging at 7:30 pace I realized that if I had any chances of beating Josse I needed to get down to business. So I started going around 6:40-7:00 pace up the Provo Canyon. Occasional gusts of wind did not help, but I was able to keep respectable pace through them. HR quickly got up to 130-135 range and stayed there. Got through the first 5 miles, and shifted into the tempo gear. To my surprise I had a hard time getting HR above 145 no matter how hard I tried to push it. The pace was around 6:10-6:20 range until I went into the South Fork. Did the 3.23 stretch up South Fork in 21:26, 6:38 average. Passed Michelle and Josse doing their pre-tempo warm-up. 1:07:40 at the turnaround. Chicked by 38 seconds, bummer! On the way back tried to crank it up, but had a hard time kicking into gear. HR absolutely refused to go above 145. 3.23 in 17:56, 5:33 average. Not that great of this kind of drop (400 feet in a bit over 3 miles). Better watch out, or I might not only miss James, but get chicked by Michelle on the descent. Her split at that point was only 33 second slower. Focused on running not slower than 5:40 figuring that if I can do that on flatter portions and James's average was 5:40 I should be OK. With only one caveat. The course is actually about 0.07 longer than 10 miles. Back when Curt certified it it went straight near Bridal Veil Falls. But since then he added a detour on the little bridge to avoid crossing the old highway. Finally kicked into gear and started seeing 1:23 quarters. HR climbed to 149 but rebelled against the 150 range. Towards the end as it got warmed it got up to 152. Picked it up to 5:20 pace on the last quarter, HR finally progressed to 155 during that. Finished the second half in 56:20, 22 seconds ahead of James's time. Total time 2:04:00. P.M. Benjamin ran in the state meet. I jogged a bit with him during his warm-up. He won Bantams 1500 in 6:04.20 beating his only competitor by 18 seconds. The effort earned him $4. I set up a bonus structure for him - $1 for every lap 1:35 or faster, $4 for breaking 6:00, $2 for breaking 6:10, $1 for breaking 6:18 which was what he ran last time. Time bonuses non-cumulative. His splits were 1:35, 1:39, 1:39, and 1:11 for the last 300. His last lap was 1:34. So $2 in lap bonuses, and $2 time bonus. Decent effort for 85 degree heat.
Afterwards we went on an adventure drive on the Squaw Peak road from Provo Canyon to Hobble Creek Canyon. Ran with the girls in the middle. Julia ran 1 mile downhill in 8:47. Jenny ran 1.5 in 13:23, first mile was downhill, last 0.5 uphill. That was quite an adventure drive, I think that is my PR for off-road driving both in terms of distance, the closeness to the edge of a cliff, and the bumpiness of the road. Prior PR was Avon pass which pales in comparison. T4 Racer - 232.69 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Caught up on sleep. Went to church. Took a nap. In the evening we went to the patriotic fireside at the Marriott Center. When we got there, there were no seats for all of us except at the very top. This actually made things nice for keeping the kids from getting too wild as there was a platform they could stretch themselves on. As I sat there and looked at a row of American flags at the bottom a thought came to me. It has been a recurring thought in the last 15 years. It comes to me when I look above my day to day labor and am able to see a bigger perspective. America has been blessed in many ways more than any other nations. The reason God allows us to live in America is that he wants us to serve. The scriptures not only confirm it but also add a stern warning: For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands;
wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall be swept
off; for it is the everlasting decree of God. And it is not until the
fulness of iniquity among the children of the land, that they are swept
off. Ether 2:10 in the Book of Mormon. It is dangerous to lose the mindset of service anywhere, but it appears from the scriptures, and I feel it in my heart, that the dangers of doing so in America are much greater than anywhere else. Our country will be strong as long as we reach out to others and are not fazed by the sacrifices it may require.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.38 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 20.38 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Daniel. Jeff was a lab rat today. He is such a nice rat, always agrees to participate in experiments and measurements. I put my HRM on him and watched his HR at different speeds. It was a lot of fun. At 8:00 pace he was roughly around 130. He wanted to see what happens when he held his breath. His HR did not go up at all, but he just could not keep running while holding his breath. Then I suggested that he should sing. With the Independence Day approaching he sang the first verse of the Star Spangled Banner at 8:00 pace. His HR maxed out at 144. Then he remembered that in his PE class he could get his HR from standing (around 75-80) to 160 in 50 meters of sprinting. I wondered if he really could. So at first he sprinted from 8:00 pace, but the problem was that he went so fast I could not keep up and he moved out of the HRM reception range. Noting that mistake I gave him the watch, and next time we tried from a resting start. We tried to wait for his HR to drop to 85, but there were too many mosquitoes. Daniel and I jogged around, while Jeff stood and sacrificed in the name of science. However, the mosquitoes kept him agitated enough that his HR would not drop below 100. So we decided that was as good as it was going to get and he busted out sprinting. After 15 seconds he was able to get his HR to 159. Then we decided to measure his HR at 7:00 pace. It was around 150. Afterwards we tried at 5:50 pace. It got up to 172. We dropped Daniel off, and decided to try at 5:20 pace. Well, Jeff was too feisty to run 5:20 and started out at 5:00 pace. So we ran a mile in 4:58. Jeff's HR got up to 187. This was the fastest mile I've ever run wearing Five Fingers. I liked that mile a lot better than the one we did a couple of weeks ago in 4:55 because it did not have a 70 second quarter in the middle. The pacing was perfectly even. We estimate that Jeff's max HR is around 190-192. Dropped Jeff off after 13 and ran 2 more. Total of 15 miles in 1:54:56. P.M. Home to Costco relay. 1.06 with Julia in 11:13, 1.55 with Jenny in 13:43, and 2.77 with Benjamin in 22:04.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff. The run at first was uneventful. Then we stopped for a VPB and got eaten by mosquitoes. Then we ran into Luz and she joined us. I noticed she was going about 8:05 pace while chatting, but I did not say anything at first waiting for a strategic location. Then about 300 meters away from the mile mark from where I started timing her I told her the pace and challenged her to break 8:00 for the mile. She easily met the challenge finishing the last 200 in 51 up a slight grade (6:48 pace) and hitting a 7:50 split for the mile. Afterwards she chose 8:40 pace and maintained it conversationally all the way to our house. She and Sarah continued on from there, while Jeff and I ran around the block. Jeff stopped at 13.25, I woke up Julia, then did two more laps, and then ran with her for the last 1.05 in 10:38. Total time for 15 miles was 2:01:10. P.M. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 12:57, then 0.5 more with Benjamin in 3:33. After the first easy 0.5 we played the leapfrog game. Ran 3 more with Jacob and Joseph in the stroller in 21:54, total time for 5 miles was 38:24. Five Fingers - 585.74 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.67 | Total Sleep Time: 7.92 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.10 |
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A.M. Jeff had to work late last night so only Josse showed up this morning. Ran 10.1 uneventfully in 1:25:13. P.M. 7 in hot conditions in 55:39, 3 of it with Adam. Then 1 with Julia in 11:15, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:16, and another 0.5 with Benjamin in 3:45, 17:01 for 2 miles. Five Fingers crossed the 600 mile boundary, 100 miles over the salesman limit.
Five Fingers - 605.84 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 19.25 | 0.25 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 20.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Adam. Adam was the lab rat today, wore the HRM. His HR at 8:00 pace was 160. Oddly high, but he is conversational at that pace, and his resting HR is fairly high as well - 52. However, still Jeff's resting HR is about the same, and his HR does not get that high when he is as conversational as Adam. I did a post-VPB acceleration which gave me some tempo running. Then we did 2x400 with essentially full rest. First one was 81.9. Adam's HR made it to 175. On the second one we got 85.6, and Adam's HR maxed out at 177. This is odd again. Based on Adam's conversational inclinations 8:00 for him is no harder than 6:40 for me. At 6:40 my HR is around 130. When I run a hard quarter (67) I max out at around 160. So 23% increase. Adam could only manage a 10% increase and it was not like he did not try. After two quarters in spite of a low HR increase he felt very fatigued. We decided to measure his max HR. While Adam stopped to stretch a guy ran by us that knew who I was but I did not recognize him. He greeted me in Russian and demonstrated a reasonable degree of fluency in the follow-up comment. Provo-Orem area is very unusual. Right off the bat I could think of 4 guys in the area fluent in Russian that can do no worse than finish within 1 minute behind me in a 5 K. Not that my 5 K abilities are that great, but only a small percentage of the population would make the 1 minute back or faster cut off. So to find at least 4 Russian speakers in a population of about 200,000 that meet the requirement is remarkable. On the max HR test Adam was supposed to run 7:00 pace for a mile and then floor it in the next quarter. He only made it to the mile in 6:59. His HR maxed out at 180 and he was not able to continue. This is just plain odd and wrong. Why in the world can his HR not go above 180 when he gives it all, while he is very comfortable and conversational at 160? Some kind of chronic nervous system fatigue. And it also comes on so suddenly. You cannot write it off as the lack of aerobic fitness. Adam has been running consistently enough to where stuff like this should not kill him. Nervous system fatigue is an intriguing subject. One could argue that you always slow down due to nervous system fatigue. The slow down always happens because the brain is unable to override the negative feedback from the body. We call it cardio fatigue when the heart so weak that it produces too much negative feedback. We call it muscular fatigue when the acidity of the muscles is the driver of the negative feedback. But what about if the negative feedback is coming from somewhere else, or the brain is oversensitive to it? How do you deal with it? One naive solution is speedwork. Desensitize it. It does solve the problem when we are dealing just with an oversensitive brain. But there is another aspect. What if the brain does not have the drive to sustain a level of activity for a long period of time? Not sure if there is a physiology term for it, but I would call it neural endurance. The ability to fire BAM-BAM-BAM signals for a long time. From what I've observed, anaerobic speed work will desensitize the brain in three weeks and then will not do it any more (you can puke to death in your workouts with no results after that) but it does nothing to improve the BAM-BAM-BAM ability. In fact, done too much too often it reduces the neural endurance because the brain/nervous system can take only so much agitation. Even brisk aerobic runs (20 - 40 seconds per mile slower than marathon pace) done daily produce too much agitation and cut my BAM-BAM-BAM ability. I wonder if the BAM-BAM-BAM ability accounts for 90% of the Quality X. How about that for scientific terminology? When you can feel it but do not know what it is called, invent a term. That is how all the scientific terms were invented to begin with anyway, except they have more scientific sounding names because the papers had to be published.
Cool down with Adam, finished 13 with Jeff, ran a mile alone, and another with Julia in 10:05. Total of 15.
P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:01 with Jenny running the first 1.5 with us in 12:47. 3 more after that, total time 39:51 for 5 miles. Five Fingers - 625.84 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.60 | Total Sleep Time: 8.10 |
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| Race: |
Murray Fun Days 5 K (3.107 Miles) 00:16:42, Place overall: 6 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 3.11 | 16.61 |
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A.M. Ran Murray Fun Days 5 K in 16:42, 6th place. My plan from the start was to go out hard and see what happens. The warm temperatures made it difficult. I have a weird body. I can run well dehydrated but my heat sensors are very sensitive. This makes me quite a bit better than competition average in a survival race (hot marathon) because I am still fine when others start having cramps, stomach problems, etc, but worse than competition average in a hot 5 K because the heat shuts me down and I cannot get going. There was too much trouble at the start to name. Right now in a 5 K any decent high schooler is trouble for me. Ran the first mile as hard as I could, but 5:14 was all I had in me. It was uphill and into a slight headwind, but still I hoped to see 5:08. But we were out in the sun and the air just felt too hot. By then I was with Brian Summers and a guy from Montana whose first name I have forgotten but his last name I Michels I believe. Seth and Teren in the lead, they hit the mile in 4:53, and Alexander Thomas about 10 seconds back ahead of us. Lost contact with the Montana runner and Brian on the 180 turn. Tried to push to regain it, breathing is OK, legs do not respond. Tried to get going on the downhill coming back, not much success, but closed the gap on Brian. The Montana runner had dropped Brian by that time. Caught up to Brian by 2 miles. 10:36. Wow. Only 5:22 for all this work on a downhill. One mitigating circumstance was 180 in the middle. That and the heat. No problem, life goes on. Just keep racing. Last mile has a small net gain, and is up and down. Starts with a slight up. Brian gapped me shortly after I had caught up. I gradually reeled him in, and was able to attach. Then there was a short steep down. I used that to pass Brian and hopefully discourage him. Did not work, he passed me back and started kicking. Then shortly before mile three another guy from Colorado, his first name was Mike, the last name was either Hutchinson or Huntington, went by me as if I was standing still. We hit the short uphill, it turned out to be less steep than I remembered it. Hit mile 3 in 16:12, 5:36. Not as bad as it could have been. Turned out Brian miscalculated how far away he was from the finish and started his kick too early. Once his kick was over I was able to pass him back and finish 5 seconds ahead of him. I could hear trouble from behind so I was kicking as hard as I could. I thought it was Brian, but it turned out to be our blogger Kyle Moffet. He finished 1 second behind me. Times - Teren 15:06, Seth 15:33, Alexander 16:00, Montana runner 16:14, Mike H from Colorado 16:36, me 16:42, Kyle 16:43, Brian 16:48. Looks like that I was 4th in the circuit, in a 5 K for me that is a steal and a lucky day. It is rather interesting that the best quality 5 K I've run this year was Magna, which was a week after a marathon. I think the two week taper helped me - I ran less than 80 miles the week of the marathon, and after that only 90. Other 5 Ks were run off 120 miles a week. Also I wonder if 120 miles a week affects me more in the summer when it is hot. All this time outside while the heat sensors in the skin keep hearing "slow, slow, slow, it is hot". And then I race, and the same message is still deep under my skin. Also I am probably feeling it in a 5 K more than in a longer race because you have to run faster. Ran 7.5 afterwards. Some of it alone, ran 0.5 rabbiting the kids race, a little bit with Teren, and more with Seth. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:34 with Jenny joining us for the first 1.5 in 12:55. Julia ran 1.5 with Sarah. Then took Jenny to the Y. We hiked from the trail head to the bottom of the Y in 22:21. Looked at the view, took some pictures, identified landmarks, and then headed down. Ran parts while going down, about 0.5 or so. The time on the way down was 14:11. The distance measured 0.95 in both directions. The elevation gain is about 1000 feet, so about 20% grade on average. My best time on that stretch running is 11:38.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.00 | 15.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 25.00 |
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A.M. Ran the same workout as last week - Provo Riverwoods 10 miler twice, first up, then immediate 180 and down. Except this time I had Jeff with me. Seth was going to come, but he stayed up late the night before and called in the morning bailing out. The goal was again to beat Josse's time of 1:07:02 on the way up, and James' time of 56:42 on the way down. In spite of having raced yesterday Jeff's presence made up for the fatigue and we were able to meet both goals. Not without some suffering on my part though. We did a brisk warmup averaging probably around 6:50 for the first 5 miles. After that Jeff stretched and we started the tempo portion from around the Bridal Veil Falls area right after the Walking Zone warning sign. I wondered to myself if it was OK to run through it, but did it anyway. About 6:10-6:15 while the grade was 2% then when it flattened out to about 0.5-1% about 5:55 pace with Jeff's initiative. Once we got to the South Fork climb, Jeff threw more fuel into the fire and put me in pain. I had to ask him to back off several times. This was an odd feeling. My HR never went above 155. But I felt like I was racing a 5 K, almost. At the same time, when I asked him to back off I was not thinking so much "we've got another 12 miles of this still ahead", but more "if they told me the finish is at the top and I am done for the day, I do not think I could go any faster". The good news is that I had enough confidence in my endurance to have no fear of bonking at the end. We did the control 3.23 stretch in 20:42. 6:21 average, 48 seconds faster than last week. I think is my PR for that stretch period, not just in the middle of a 20 miler. If not, it would be awfully close. 1:06:05 first 10 miles, beat Josse's time by 57 seconds. Unchicked myself and very satisfied. Now 10 miles going down. We hard a hard time shifting gears and goofed through the downhill where we really could have made up some time. Probably from the fatigue of climbing. 17:57 on the control 3.23 stretch, 1 second slower than last week. No problem, though. With Jeff pulling me we'll be OK. We ran strong through the flatter parts although I did have to ask Jeff to back off a few times and finished the second half of the run in 56:11, 9 seconds faster than last week, and 31 seconds ahead of James. 2:02:16 for 20 miles, 1:44 faster than last week. Actually it is more like 20.14. But who cares, the run is Double the Provo Riverwoods 10 miler however long it may be. With all the climbing and then dropping it is not a normal course anyway. Went to a show by the Provo Tabernacle with the family afterwards. During a puppet show the performer asked the kids if they knew who had written the Declaration of Independence. Benjamin raised his hand and gave the correct answer - Thomas Jefferson. The performer said - "Wow, they teach well in school nowadays!" Little did he know that Benjamin had always been home schooled. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:10, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:23, 2.5 alone in 18:43. Five Fingers - 630.84 miles. T4 Racer - 268.70 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Managed to play the Star Spangled Banner on the keyboard without mistakes with Sarah listening. Called Lybi, and being a bit more nervous with her listening over the phone made a couple of mistakes but recovered and was able to play it through. That is an improvement for me. Also, a few days ago sang the Star Spangled Banner solo for Sarah and she gave me 5.5 out of 10. Off key only on a couple of notes. So, assuming her rating system matches Daniel's, on a good day and a very familiar tune and stationary I can sing as well as Jeff running at 5:30 pace.
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Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.40 | 0.00 | 0.60 | 0.00 | 17.00 |
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A.M. Decided it was time to cut back the mileage and add some intensity. This is going to be more experimental. The purposes are to test a) how it will affect the performance in shorter distances now that I've run 8 months of very solid base and b) how much of that speed will be retained once I go back to base mileage. My recent HRM data suggests that while I've received significant cardio gains from base building, I am running more and more into the 5 K speed limit. In other words, I cannot go any faster in the half because I am almost at my 5 K pace already. My hope is that the 5 K speed limit will budge more than it has in the past now that there is a huge aerobic base breathing down its neck. Ran with Jeff and Daniel. Dropped Daniel off, finished the run with Jeff. Did one post VPB pick-up and we also tried to chase down a guy to recruit him for FRB, but he turned around early. Thus 0.6 of tempo running. Total of 13 miles in 1:41:50. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:52, 2 with Benjamin in 16:58 with Jenny running 1.5 in 13:11. One more without running kids in 7:28. Pushed Jacob in the single stroller the entire time. Played freeze tag in a park with Benjamin and two other kids. Lots of places to climb and hide at that park, so it was tough. Finally wore all of them down and froze them all. With reduced mileage felt energetic. Five Fingers - 647.84 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 9.75 | 0.00 | 0.25 | 6.00 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Power workout for me today. Ran with Jeff, Josse, and Michelle. Matt found us on the trail and joined us. The workout was 6x1 mile with 400 recovery on an almost flat stretch on the Provo River Trail alternating directions. The power training aspect came from towing Josse in a harness. This was going to give her some overspeed training. Who needs an overspeed treadmill when you have a harness and somebody to pull you? And who needs a hill when you have a harness and somebody to pull? I did not know what to expect, but a rough goal was to allow Josse to stay with Michelle. This proved to be too hard of goal for a couple of reasons - Michelle was stronger than I expected, and the pulling Josse in a harness was not as easy as I initially thought. I expected to work at about 1-2% grade uphill effort, but it ended up being more like 3% grade or 20-30 mph headwind. Splits: 5.47.9 (on this one we managed to stay with the pack), 5:51.5, 5:50.9, 6:02.1, 5:46.6, 5:53.4. Peak HR was 164 on the first repetition, after that it was between 166 and 168. Michelle chicked me on all the repetitions except the first. It was an interesting experience. I am running with everybody, and all of a sudden I am working the same, even harder, and they are pulling away as if I were standing still, and there is nothing I can do to keep up. The harness handicap turned Michelle into a virtual Kara Goucher from my perspective. This was a good chance to learn humility. Towards the end I started to get the grasp of the art of pulling. Which is probably the same as the art of running uphill or into a headwind. To be successful it is very important to fire up the leg muscles as quickly as possible the very moment your foot lands. A quick explosion of energy, once you get going start relaxing the muscles, they've done their work, you're going, they can rest. Easier said than done, it is like saying all you need to do to play a piece on the piano is hit the right keys at the right time. Overall a good debut of the FRB Towing Service. Josse enjoyed the workout, felt good, but we'll have to see if she gets the delayed onset soreness. I estimate she had just run the equivalent of 6x1 mile down a 3% grade. This could be hard on the quads. Total of 12 miles for the run. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:55, 2 with Benjamin in 16:58 with Jenny running the last 1.5 with us in 12:56. 1 more with no running kids in 7:51. Pushed Jacob in the stroller the whole run. T4 Racer - 280.68 miles. Five Fingers - 651.84 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.33 | Total Sleep Time: 7.58 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.20 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 17.20 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Daniel. Daniel ran 3 miles then turned around. Jeff was with me the entire time. We talked about education, how much difference motivation makes in the ability to learn and how to motivate kids to learn. Just as we were talking we saw the Provo High team with their coach Phil Olsen who also teaches Spanish. So we joined them, and gave them a pep talk. 13.2 miles in 1:43:13, 7:49 pace, avg HR 115. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:55, 2 with Benjamin in 16:49 with Jenny joining us for 1.5 in 13:10. 1 mile alone in 6:59. Pushed Jacob in the stroller for the first 2.5 of the run.
Five Fingers - 668.04 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.85 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.50 | 16.35 |
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A.M. 6x400 with 200 recovery with Jeff on the trail on a mostly flat section alternating directions. The target was 72 seconds but it was rather approximate. I did not want it slower than 73, nor did I want to hurt like 67. I was OK running a 67 if I could do it relaxed, but I did not want to become preoccupied with running 67s once I happened to get into that zone on accident. On the first one we were overcautious in the first 200 - Jeff was waiting for me to go and I was waiting for him, so the first one was way off pace. After that we settled into a brisker groove and were ahead of target on all others. Splits (max HR in parenthesis): 75.2 (153) - 70.5 (161) - 69.8(161) - 67.6(166) - 67.6(165) - 68.0(164). We had a forced extra stationary(for me) minute of rest before the last one due to Jeff's VPB. Thus lower HR at the same pace in spite of doing it later in the workout. The thought that entered my head while we were in the 67-68 zone - why can't you run a 10 K like this? It would be nice, 68 400s gives 28:20 in the 10 K. I left that I lacked the power in the legs to sustain it. The heart could handle it just fine, I think. I would only need to be able to sustain the HR of about 180 for 28 minutes. I could do that in 2000. Then by 2004 I apparently experienced some dramatic cardiovascular gains and since then was never able to get my HR above 175. Ran a long cool down (total of 13.35 for the run). Luz joined us shortly after we were done with the speed portion. Since she commented earlier about how easily Jeff handled 6:00 I volunteered him to sing for Luz. He got 8 out of 10 from her on the Star Spangled Banner at about 9:00 pace. Then I did it as well. Luz gave me a score of 5, I am wondering if that was too generous. She also gave me a more objective evaluation - completely off key 3 times, and flat 10 times. Have not counted the total notes in the song, but it appears that this would make it about only 20-25% error rate. This is a great improvement for me even for stationary singing. Ran a mile with Julia in 10:00. T4 Racer - 294.03 miles
P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:28 with Jenny running 1.5 in 12:17. 1 more alone in 7:49. Pushed Jacob in the stroller. Five Fingers - 671.04 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.85 | 1.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 17.10 |
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A.M. Total of 13.1 in 1:43:10. Started with Jeff, Matt joined us for a few miles. Did a VPB tempo for about 0.5 miles. Ran the last mile with Julia in 9:17. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:11 with Jenny running 1.5 in 13:03. Benjamin ran a 0.5 without Jenny in 3:08. It was out and back, and nasty rolling going under the bridge at 800 N on the trail twice. I was pushing Jacob in a stroller, so I figure this was about marathon pace effort for me. Then I ran 2 more in 15:25 pushing Jacob, most of it slow, but a biking couple passed me, and they were not going very fast. They were going slow enough to tempt me into picking up the pace, and I fell for the temptation. When the guy noticed that he was being followed by a runner with a stroller, he signaled the girl to pick up the pace, and they were gone. But not for long, they eased off and starting coming back. Then it was time for me to turn. I ended up running a quarter in 1:23 down about 0.5% grade. Five Fingers - 688.04 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 17.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 17.25 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Thatcher. Thatcher is 18. He set a PR for the longest distance ever run. I set a PR for the negative gap in age (17 years younger) with a running partner to go over half-marathon distance in one run. We ran 14.1 in 1:47:08, 7:35.8 avg. The weather was cool, so that kept my HR below 120 for most of the run. Then we had a 0.15 mis-start with Julia - she realized she need to go the the bathroom shortly after we left the house, so we went back. Ran 9:58 mile with her and Jeff. Then we ran 1.5 with Jeff, Jenny and Benjamin in 11:47, and Jeff continued with me and Benjamin for another quarter, and then Benjamin and I turned around. We finished Benjamin's 2 miles in 15:32. Five Fingers - 705.29 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Set some serious recent sleep PRs. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 3.00 | Total Sleep Time: 12.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 3.00 | 16.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 19.00 |
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A.M. DesNews practice run with Seth and Jeff. Got up at 4:30, picked up Jeff, met Seth at Hoggle Zoo. Drove up to the top of Big Mountain, the boundary of Utah and Morgan counties. Right on the Pioneer trek. Come come ye Saints, No toil, no labor fear, but with joy wend your way. Though hard to you this journey may appear, grace shall be as your day... And should we die before our journey's through, happy day, all is well. We then are free from toil and sorrow too, with the just we shall dwell... In that spirit we started the run. The plan was to see how Seth's and my legs handle 5:00 pace down 8% grade. I was going to rabbit him running as hard as I could for as long as I could to keep him on pace, after I could not we were going to slow down to my marathon pace. Jeff drove down 3 miles to avoid the 8% down, and also to make it so he would not have to run the whole 16 miles. Due to the differences in terrain mile splits were all over the place. I did have the Garmin for backup in case we missed the turn in the subdivision or a mile marker. But all the painted marks were visible and we were able to follow the course without problems. Splits are by the painted markers:
4:50, 4:51, 4:48, Jeff joined, 5:10. End of crazy downhill. I am hurting like it is time to sing the 4th verse of Come Come Ye Saints already, but still going. 5:24, 25:03 at 5 miles.
5:51. Now Little Mountain. Seth and Jeff are chatting, I am in pain. We are now definitely in my marathon pace territory, this is too slow for Seth. 6:36 mile and we are not done with the hill. Seth and Jeff are still chatting. I am thinking about those near death experience accounts when the nearly dead person is aware of what is going on in the room, even sees his own body, but cannot communicate. They are talking but I cannot add anything to the conversation. Done with the hill finally, now going down. Next mile in 6:07, then 5:19, and now I feel like I can talk more. Into the subdivision, up, then back down. Next mile in 5:52, 54:49 at 10 miles. Seth at that point said he got the idea of course and the pace, and wanted to back down. We backed down to about 6:00 pace, but then he and Jeff backed down more, and I wanted to keep it faster than 6:00. So I took off. 5:58 (with some easing off), next two miles in 11:27, 1:12:49 at the half. Last three miles 5:35. 5:37, and 5:49 (with uphill). Total time 1:29:15 for 16 miles, 5:34.7 avg. Jogged from mile marker 16 to the car and met Seth and Jeff. With that and the warm-up this added another mile. Felt very energetic in the last 3 miles in spite of the aggressive start and the near death experience up the Little Mountain. Afterwards both Seth and I passed the hop test, no muscle soreness, at least yet. T4 Racer - 311.03 miles. P.M. 1.25 with Benjamin, Jenny, and Julia in 12:46, dropped off Julia at the park, finished 1.5 with Jenny and Benjamin in 14:57. Then ran 3:08 half mile with Benjamin. Five Fingers - 707.29 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.50 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.10 | 1.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.60 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Josse. Did a VPB tempo of about 0.6 at marathon pace. Then we saw Matt and he said he was going to run a 5 mile tempo. So I decided to pace him 2.5 out and however long it took to get back to Jeff and Josse afterwards. We did 6:05, 6:02, then three more quarters in 1:32, 1:32, 180 turn, and 1:29. At that point Matt was 10 seconds behind the 6:00 guy. I admonished Matt to catch him. Do not know if he did, he has not yet posted his workout report. Total time for 10.6 was 1:18:37. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:51, then 2 with Benjamin in 16:46 with Jenny joining for 1.5 in 12:53. Five Fingers - 720.89 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.70 | 0.40 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.10 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Jeff. Matt joined us for most of it. Total time was 1:19:50. Did 0.4 VPB tempo. 5:40 pace felt very easy, I was surprised it was 5:40, I did not think I was going sub-6:00. Discussed various subjects from the art of fly swatting to DesNews pacing. We even discussed unsigned vs signed database fields and what happens when you insert a negative number into an unsigned field. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:57, Jenny joined for 1.5 in 11:37. 1 with Julia in 9:25. Pushed Jacob in a stroller. Five Fingers - 733.99 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.67 | Total Sleep Time: 8.42 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.16 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.16 |
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A.M. Easy run with Jeff. 10.1 in 1:17:55. Avg HR 115. Discussed nutrition, thus a lot of nutrition comments by me today. P.M. 1.06 with Julia in 11:00, 2 with Benjamin in 16:25, Jenny joined for the first 1.75 in 14:38. Five Fingers - 747.15 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.67 | Total Sleep Time: 8.42 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.10 |
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A.M. Easy run with Jeff. 10.1 in 1:16:50. Avg. HR 116. Discussed running form. Tape worm story. Julia asked a question about mosquitoes and Benjamin explained that mosquitoes carry malaria. Then Jenny had follow up questions about the symptoms of malaria, which Benjamin answered as well. That got his mind on a related subject and he started telling the girls about tape worms, and how there is a kind that causes sleeping sickness when the parasite enters the brain and shuts it down. I did not know about that until Benjamin told me, and was not quite sure if he got his facts right, but after some research I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_sickness and realized that Benjamin knew what he was talking about. Maybe a bit off on terminology, he could not remember the term Trypanosoma brucei, so he called it a tape worm. So right after we went to bed Jenny comes into our bedroom crying. "I am afraid to go to sleep, because Benjamin told me about the tape worm, and I am afraid that I will not wake up." It took some time to convince her that it was very unlikely that she would get infected with an African parasite.
P.M. Jared was visiting with us. Ted wanted him to run 3 miles. So he, Benjamin, and Julia first ran 1 mile in 8:54. Then we dropped of Julia and picked up Jenny, and ran another 1.5 in 12:53. Jared was not feeling good and ran slower. Benjamin was not feeling good after the run and decided to forgo the remaining 0.5 with Jared. Jared jogged through the remaining 0.5, his total time for 3 miles was 28:26. Five Fingers - 760.25 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Race: |
Draper Days 5K (3.107 Miles) 00:16:28, Place overall: 8 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.40 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 3.30 | 11.70 |
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A.M. Draper Days 5 K, 16:28, 8th place. The course has been changed. It is now a loop course with some moderate hills. The grade for most of the course is about 0.5-1%, a short (about 0.1) stretch of 3-4% climb about 2.6 miles into the race, not a spot that is flat - you are either going up or down. Definitely slower than what it used to be. On the positive side of things, the temperatures were ideal this morning. If felt perfect. Warmed up with Carol Cabanillas and Carre Joyce. Steve Ashbaker ran by with the ladies he is coaching. He was not in the race, but stopped by for a visit. We chatted a bit. He predicted that I would run 16:26. Lots of trouble at the start. My plan was to run with Alexander Thomas regardless of how fast he went for as long as I could, then hang for as long as I could with every runner that passed me after that. Seth, Teren, and Stephen Clark were a few seconds ahead, then Alexander, Dennis, and me. I made it to about 0.75. Nate Hornok caught me, I managed to make it to the mile with him. First mile in 5:02. I was pleased. It was a slight up. Nobody passed me in the second mile. It started out with a downhill stretch, and then it was a slight up. 5:17, pretty much what I hoped to run it. Right after mile 2 mark Kyle Moffet passed me, and I was able to hang with him to the middle of the uphill at 2.6. Caught a split at 4 K - 12:58. Did the math, realized Steve was going to be right. Pushed myself as hard as I could on the last mile. 15:54 at 3 miles, 5:35. Not spectacular but acceptable. Kicked at the end, last .107 in 32 seconds. My watch said 16:26, but my official time was 16:28. Other times: Teren 15:08, Seth 15:26, Stephen 15:33, Alexander 15:36, Nate 15:41, Dennis 16:10, Kyle 16:20, Neal Gassmann 16:34, Thatcher's friend 16:36.
Ran back, paced Alexander Berry for the last 0.15 or so. He finished in 20:37. Then cooled down with Bill Cobler. Then talked with Mark Olsen and he had his timing gate handy. So we did a few sprints measuring top end speed for 10 meters. My best time was 1.42. Bill got 1.38. Breanna got 1.50. Thatcher's friend from Ethiopia whose name starts with a G (I will learn how to say and spell it some day) ran 1.11. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:48, 2 with Benjamin in 16:38. Jenny joined us for 1.5 in 12:36. Her friend Brinley joined us for a little over a mile and the mile that she ran was 8:25. T4 Racer - 319.73 miles Five Fingers - 763.25 miles
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.83 | Total Sleep Time: 7.83 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Glorious day of rest. I told my body to relax and it did. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.50 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 11.00 |
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A.M. Started with Jeff and Daniel. Daniel turned around at 1.5. Then we met Luz and she ran a little bit more than 3 miles with us. Her 3 mile split was 24:21, mile splits - 7:57, 8:04, 8:21. This was not a planned tempo run for her. I noticed she was going around 8:00 and chatting, and I just did not say anything until she started slowing down when we hit the bridges and uphill with less than a mile to go. What boggles my mind is how in the world she manages to chat so much at a pace that she cannot sustain a mile later. She chats with as much ease at 8:00 pace as I do at 6:30. Total time for 8 miles was 1:05:26, avg. HR 113. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:04, then 2 with Benjamin in 15:49, including 3:09 0.5. Pushed Jacob, and it had some hills, so counting this 0.5 as marathon pace. Jenny joined us for 1.5 in 12:40. Five Fingers - 774.25 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 9.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 9.00 |
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A.M. 6 miles with Jeff in 47:55. Daniel and Matt joined us at different times. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:30. Jenny joined for 1.5 in 11:55. 1 with Julia in 9:08. Pushed Jacob while running with Benjamin and Jenny. Five Fingers - 780.25 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 7.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 7.00 |
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A.M. 4 with Jeff in 31:59, then 1 with Julia in 10:03, and 2 with Benjamin in 16:41 with Jenny running 1.5 in 12:34. Pushed Jacob in a stroller. Jeff joined us for the entire run as well. Five Fingers - 787.25 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.75 |
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| Race: |
Deseret News Marathon (26.22 Miles) 02:34:43, Place overall: 8 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.50 | 26.22 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 26.72 |
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Executive summary - 2:34:43, 8th or 7th place (depending on what they do with the Colorado runner that missed the turn into the subdivision), 1st from Utah, $500. 6 Kenyans at the start, 6 Kenyans at the finish. Looks like Bob Wood said no travel expenses unless you finish. Good move for him. Tight left calf from the start of the race contributed to running slow, and is hurting like there is no tomorrow now, but on the positive side quads seem intact. Details to follow.
Stayed with Adam Wende the night before. Got up at 2:45, made the bus without an incident (unlike last year). Noticed a tightness in the left calf during the warm up. I've actually had this tightness the entire week, but figured it was one of those taper cramps. For some reason the muscle responds to reduced mileage with occasional cramping. So when I felt it I thought, no big deal, it will go away because it always has even when I felt it on race day. But it did not before the start. I figured it would go away as the race progressed, and proceeded to execute the plan. The plan was to hit pretty much exact same splits I did in the 16 mile tempo 10 days earlier, and then see how I would fare after that. Last year I started slow, ran strong after 10, then by 20 the strength had left me, and I finished at about the same pace I did in 2006 when I started fast only it took me a minute longer to get to 20, so I ended up finishing a minute slower. I ignored the competition, and took off. I figured they would eventually catch me, and when they did try to hang with them for as long as I could, and I figured I wanted to be at the top of the Little Mountain with the Kenyans because then it is downhill again and I'd be able to hang with them a little more. Seth told me he was not feeling that great, so he wanted to start a little slower. Steve Ashbaker was there as well, and acted as a threat from behind if I let my guard down.
Downhill, 8% grade. 4:50, 4:51. Perfect. The first mile felt good, I was going to guess 5:00-5:10 by the effort. So I was pleased to see 4:50. Then the calf started hurting more and I eased off on the third mile. 4:52 instead of planned 4:48. Now gradual flattening out. 5:18 (plan 5:10), 5:35 (plan 5:25), and 5:56 (plan 5:45). Reached 6 miles in 31:15 vs 30:54 in the tempo run. Calf pain has been getting progressively worse, but I took it as a positive - when it goes away I'll be able to run faster. On the positive side, the breathing kept getting lighter. So at least the fitness was OK. Right around mile 5 a white guy whose exact name I still do not know who is rumored to be from Colorado went by me and I could not latch on. After the first 6 miles we started a climb up the Little Mountain. Back in the days of the old DesNews course when we did not experience the Big Mountain I wondered why that mountain was called Little. It is a climb of 1.5 miles during which you gain about 300 feet of elevation. That sounded pretty big, but not when you look at the Big Mountain that drops 1500 feet or so in 3-4 miles. 6:38, plan was 6:30. Seth passed me. However, he was not moving as fast as I expected him. That could mean two things. He is either holding back, or is he is as sick as he thinks he is. I think the climb gave my calf a break and stretched it a bit. Next mile in 6:03 (plan 6:00), and I felt strong. However, now a VPB is looming. Does not look like I can hold it. Had to pull off to the side of the road and do my patented (clean!) 5 second job. Still managed 5:32 mile (plan 5:20). The Kenyans finally caught me, and I ran with them for a minute or so. Went into the subdivision. This allowed me to measure the gaps. Seth had a bit less than a minute on me. Steve and a stray Kenyan runner were about 30 seconds behind. Next mile 5:56 (plan 5:45). I was hoping that running with the Kenyans would give me a better time on that mile. Reached 10 miles in 55:22, vs 54:49 in the tempo run. Next 2 miles were both 5:37. I had an approximate plan of 5:30-5:35 for them as I was not exactly sure about their quality. During the tempo run I eased off at that point to about 6:00 with Seth and Jeff. But this was within range. However, 5:46 on the next mile gave a cause for concern. What was strange is that I was not feeling bad, nothing was wrong except I felt I was running way too easy but could not go any faster. Probably what was happening is that the calf kept getting tighter and tighter, but because of the endorphines the pain was not getting any more acute, nevertheless the push off power kept getting reduced, so I was running slower and slower. 1:12:57 at the half vs 1:12:49 in the tempo run. Even with the ease-off between 10 and 12 I still could not catch my tempo run guy. Next two miles in 5:50 and 5:49. 1:24:01 at 15 miles vs 1:23:26 in the tempo run. The plan was 5:35 for both. At this point I realized I needed to ditch the plan and just hang in there hoping Steve won't pass me, and hoping for the best in general. Maybe the calf pain will go away and I'll be able to close strong. Saw Seth in the distance. My first thought was that he failed to keep up with the Kenyans when they caught him, and from that point just decided to run for first Utahn, the slowest it takes. Which would mean he would run with me, then blow me away on the last mile. That's OK, at least I'll have somebody to run with. Or maybe not, maybe he is just plain out of commission with no guile involved. The stray Kenyan runner caught up to me, and I followed him for about a mile. We ran the next mile in 5:48, which had the uphill by the Hogle Zoo. This gave me 1:29:48 at 16 miles vs 1:29:15 in the tempo. This gave me some hope. However, the next two miles showed the hope was vain. I felt decent but the pace kept getting slower. The next two miles which were a net downhill produced a split of 12:24, 6:12 average, and a 1:42:12 split at 18 miles. The grim reality of having to run slower than 6:00 for the rest of the race began to show its ugly face. By this time I had caught up to Seth. We chatted. He told me he was struggling. I told him to run with me and finish the race no matter what. 1:54:41 at 20 miles. 12:29 for the next 2 downhill miles. At least it is not getting any uglier. Seth dropped back. I felt very perky on the next uphill mile. So perky that I thought for sure it would be under 6:20. Good luck - 6:42. Last year 6:33. I guess the quads were perky, the fuel system was perky, but the dysfunctional calf spoiled the show. Next downhill mile in 6:07. Last year 5:45. So we are starting to see a pattern. I am losing in both direction, but more on the downhill. Mile 23 brought some excitement into the drudgery. 6:14 with some uphill on 13th South. I see a Kenyan ahead of me, but do not feel like going out of my way to chase him down. What's the glory in passing a Kenyan that is in a hopeless out-of-money position? He is just doing a training run to finish. Now if passing him meant his money is now yours then it is a different story. Then you indeed are racing a Kenyan. Mile 24 in 6:20. Two more to go, and all of a sudden it is warmer as the course turns from the shade South Temple into the sun on 300 East. The downhill ends as well. Mile 25 in 6:24. Now the nasty last mile. It starts going uphill, it is still out in the sun, and it has a long stretch of straight road, you count the blocks. I guess the problem with the straight road is that when you are in pain you can maintain your focus better by setting small goals. Get to this landmark, then get to that landmark. Luckily I know how nasty it is, I also know exactly where you turn, and I know how blocks work in Salt Lake City. So that makes it easier. 2:33:15 at mile 26, 6:47 split. Very unspectacular, but with the calf problem could be a lot worse. And as usual, my local competition suffered more than I did at that point, so nobody passed me. Last 385 yards in 1:28, 6:42 pace for the "kick". Steve Ashbaker was about 30 seconds behind me at 20 miles, about 1 minute behind me at 25, and then he had to stop for a couple of minutes to throw up. So he finished in 2:38. Seth barely held off Bill Cobler at the end finishing in 2:45. The top Kenyans were very fast. The results have not yet been posted, but according to: http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700245616,00.html Joseph Chirlee 2:18:16,
Jynocel Baswell 2:19:31, Edward Korir 2:19:51, Jon Ndambuki 2:20:33. Ndambuki ended up out of money with the fastest time he's ever run on this course (2004 does not count, it was short).
P.M. The calf was very sore. Could not walk without a serious limp for a while. Iced it, Sarah massaged it, then Josse massaged and scraped it. After Josse's magic it felt a lot better. I could walk without a limp and could even jog a bit. Nevertheless I rode my bike for the kids run tonight just to be safe. Julia ran a mile in 9:37, then Benjamin ran 2 miles in 17:07 with Jenny running the first 1.5 in 12:59. Not counting biking miles because they were too slow. T4 Racer - 346.45 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 5.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 5.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 8.00 |
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A.M. The calf was runnable, but I decided to give it some rest and bike anyway. Rode my standard 10.1 course in 37:12, 3:41 per mile average, or 16.29 mph. Was pleased with that given that the trail has a lot of places where you have to slow down, and I had to get off the bike to make a 180 (did not stop the watch for that). On a straight flat stretch I was going about 3:20 per mile pace, or 18 mph. The bike does have issues. It is a 30lb old mountain bike that has not been maintained. The third (highest) front gear does not work. The second gear makes a funny noise, the chain is rubbing against something. The frame is too short and the seat does not go up very high. I did 17:52 going out, and came back in 19:10. Out is a slight downhill. HR maxed out at 149, and averaged 134. To get that HR running I would need to be going about 6:20 pace. So I figure if we say I worked at around 7:30 pace equivalent we can call this a match for 5 miles of running. Will run with the kids tonight and possibly some more if feeling good. P.M. 1 mile with Julia in 11:25, 2 with Benjamin in 16:44. Jenny joined for 1.5 in 12:48. Calf felt good enough to run on without limping, but still painful. Wore my cushioned old running now mostly walking shoes. Nike something, do not remember what, too lazy to take them off to find out. I did run DesNews in them last year, though. I imagine they have about 3K miles. But for me it is a cushioned shoe.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.20 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.20 |
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A.M. Woke up, the calf felt significantly better walking, but still quite a bit of pain. Nevertheless, good enough to run 10 miles on. Was originally planning on running in my old Nike shoes to get more cushioning, but then had a crazy thought - try Five Fingers. Somehow in spite of all logic against it the feedback from my body was that Five Fingers would be a better option. So I put them on. Was able to run with only minor pain right from the start. As the run progressed, kept adjusting the form to minimize the calf strain. Eventually I figured out how to turn the calf slam into a calf stretch. Amazing! All you do is dorsi-flex the ankle (pull the foot towards yourself to make it look like you are duck) prior to landing, and it does not hurt. You are just getting a pleasant calf stretch from the impact. I kept speeding up from 9:30 pace at the start to 7:00 pace at the finish. My total time for 10.1 was 1:16:58. The calf felt the same when I was done. Jogged another 0.1 to meet Sarah and jogged with her some more, but will not count is as running mileage since she was going around 15:00 pace. My rough standard for running mileage is sub-12:00 unless recovering after a hard interval. The quads were only very slightly sore, but so were the gluts and the hamstrings, and I am not sure if it is from the marathon or yesterdays bike ride. So the calf problem perhaps was a blessing in disguise. It forced me to run slower, and not hammer the rest of the body so much. This is actually the first time I came out of DesNews with quads that I can run on the next day without wanting to scream. So I guess now I know the secret, or at least one way to do it. Run race pace for the first 2 miles, a little slower later on, get to the half in 1:13, then gradually taper off to 6:20-6:30 pace in the last 8 miles. I have always wondered if I could avoid soreness by running it slower, now I know.
Recalled a conversation after DesNews. I could barely walk afterwards. As I limped towards Matt's car, I wondered out loud: "How in the world did I manage to run 6:45 pace in the last mile on a calf that now would not even let me walk without a serious limp?!" One runner overhead it and answered: "By the grace of God!" I contemplated the depth of the answer and agreed with his assessment. Of course, there is a physiological explanation. I was already running at mile 25, my HR was higher, there was more blood flow to the damaged area, the muscle was warm, the endorphines were helping me dull the pain, and being in a mental state of racing helped my brain disregard pain signals as well. But I wonder how often we provide those technical explanations that in essence say something to the effect "it worked because it worked", "the car was moving because its wheels were spinning while in contact with the ground", and in the process having filled our minds with enough non-essential detail and thus satisfied our curiosity, or at least having satiated our ability to receive knowledge, we fail to understand the more profound force behind the event. We acknowledge the creation and its mechanics, but fail to give credit to the Creator. Why? Because He does not reveal Himself unless we have faith. With faith, we gain the ability to see past the fact that the spinning wheels make the car move and are able to recognize that the car is moving because somebody is driving it, and that it will go where the driver wants it to be. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:48, 2 with Benjamin in 16:34, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 12:43. Five Fingers - 800.55 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. |
Night Sleep Time: 10.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.17 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.17 |
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A.M. 10.1 with Jeff in 1:20:38. James, Matt, and Daniel ran with us at some points. Then 2 with Benjamin in 16:49. Jenny joined us for 1.5 in 12:40. Jared ran with us for the first 0.75, but then fell back. He finished 2 miles in 17:57. Had a thought about modern day scientific understanding of running, the dark ages, and the printing press. Back in the dark ages only select few knew how to read and had access to books. The two were connected. If you do not get to read, there is little motivation to learn how to read. If you do not know how to read, books present little value to you. You can only learn by talking to those who know how to read and have access to books. You have no choice but accept their word, that is the best you can do. Vicious cycle of ignorance. I think our understanding of running (and many other things as well) is still in that cycle to a great extent. The average runner has no way of measuring much - distance, time, heart rate, body weight and stride rate are about the only things that a middle class home budget runner is able to measure on a daily basis. Maybe blood glucose and cholesterol if you are willing to poke yourself every day. Lactate levels if you are willing to poke yourself and pay $900 for the device. You could measure pH of your body fluids, and electric properties of the body. There are a number of smart alec devices that think they know how much body fat is on you from the electric properties of your body. But I would not call this a body fat measurement. This an electric current measurement that is being used for an almost wild guess estimate. Maybe I missed a few more measurement opportunities, but the point is, there are lots of things we can measure in a lab compared to what we can measure at home. Because lab equipment is so expensive, most people do not have access to it. Because they have no access to it, even those who can study how that equipment works have only a superficial knowledge of the meaning of those measurements. Even those who have access to it who we consider experts are still at the level of a dark age scholar compared to what it could be if those measurements were affordable enough to be done by the general public in their own homes. There is little motivation for the general public to learn what that equipment can do and how to read the results. Thus we have the same vicious cycle of ignorance. On a different level than in the middle ages, but still the same pattern. The vicious cycle of ignorance was broken by the invention of the printing press. All of a sudden your average Joe had a reason to learn to read! It is starting to happen a bit in the way we understand how our body works, but there are obstacles. I believe we would see a lot more affordable scientific equipment if the public was more interested in practicing science than in watching a TV show about science. But a TV show about science is about as scientific as we get in our pursuit, for most people that is a pinnacle of their mind training for the day. If we could make it the very low point instead of the very high point, eliminating the mind-numbing, aptitude decreasing, and time wasting entertainment from the lower spectrum we might see more sub-2:10 marathoners among with many other positive developments from this change. If, only if. If mushrooms grew in a mouth, it would not be a mouth, it would be a garden! P.M. 1.07 with Julia in 11:05.
Five Fingers - 812.65 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.13 | 6.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 14.13 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Michelle, and Josse. Jeff paced Josse, while I paced Michelle through a 3x2 mile workout with 200 meter recoveries. We ran them on the trail alternating directions starting at the start of the 5 mile tempo. The times were 12:00.7, 12:01.4, and 11:51.2. Michelle wore the HRM while I wore the watch so I could see how hard she was working in terms of cardio. She was not working at all according to the HRM. Most of the time her HR hovered around 174-175. It would get there in the first 5 minutes of the interval and then just stay there or even drop a bit. But she struggled maintaining the pace. I challenged her to get her HR to 190 in the last mile of the last interval. She tried, was able to hit 177 briefly, then lost it back to 174. Then in the last quarter (1:22) she was able to bring it to 180, but she could not hold it there. Last mile was 5:53. I told Michelle she needed to remove stress out of her life and get more sleep. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:04, 2 with Benjamin in 14:58. Jenny joined for 1.5 in 11:30. Five Fingers - 826.78 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.52 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.52 |
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A.M. Ran with James, Jeff, and Matt at different times. Total of 10.27. James, Jeff, and I started together and warmed up for 1.38. Then I paced James through 6:00 pace until failure test. He made it to the mile in 5:56 with HR reaching 199. After that he suffered through another quarter in 1:36. His HR dropped to 197. I challenged him to bring it over 200, but he could not. He said the limit was not being able to get enough air. Looks like a cardio weakness, probably maturation related. Breanna had a similar problem about a year ago, and eventually grew out of it. Then ran with Jeff the rest of the way after jogging back to him. Of all things the subject of our conversation drifted to microwave safety. I recalled a time when I was messing around with a microwave trying to crash its computer. So I was pressing lots of buttons randomly. Eventually the microwave responded with a message that said : Child. Jeff recalled a story about how he and his brother fried oats in a microwave. His younger brother (2 at the time) put in his oats into the microwave and tried to cook them. He was pressing all kinds of buttons randomly. Then Jeff (5 at the time) came and said, no this is not how you do it - Mom told us pres 1,3,0,Start. So he did that, except there was a number on it earlier from his brother's messing around. So the oats cooked for quite a while and caught on fire. Ran into Matt and ran with him some as well. A.M-2 Took VanGoGo to Computune to check out the anti-lock break light on problem and ran back with Benjamin and Jenny - 2.25 in 19:31. P.M. 1 mile with Julia in 8:57. She earned the Saturday lunch out with Daddy prize. The standards are 9:00 for 1 mile for Julia, 1.5 in 12:00 for Jenny, and 0.5 in 3:10 for Benjamin. Benjamin has a shorter distance because he normally runs 1.5 with Jenny - I decided to make him do that to keep him from speeding on his daily runs. It did take a trick to get Julia to do it, though. I pulled ahead shortly before the turnaround and said - Julia, if you are behind at the turnaround, we are going past it until you catch me. This got her to pick up the pace and hit the half mark in 4:35. After that it still took some work to convince her that she was capable of getting the standard with some reasonable effort, but it was not exceptionally hard.
Five Fingers - 837.05 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 8.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.75 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 13.50 |
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A.M. 10 with Jeff in 1:19:24. Benjamin rode his bike for 2 miles, then ran a warmup, then we did 6:00 pace until failure, which came at the quarter (1:29). Then he jogged 400, then tried 0.5 under 3:10, went through the quarter in 1:37, was losing it, and eased off to a jog. Still ran 0.5 in 3:30, and then we jogged back to his bike. Then we took him home, and ran 4 more miles. Ran 0.5 in 2:29 to feel the 5 K pace for the Minuteman 5 K this Saturday. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:48, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:15, and one more mile with no running kids in 6:40. Pushed Jacob the entire time. Five Fingers - 850.55 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.50 |
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A.M. 10 miles in 1:18:49. Jeff ran with me all the way. Daniel came to borrow the bike, and rode with us for a little bit to test the tire before taking off. Benjamin rode with us to a nice part of the trail, then ran 2 miles in 15:28 with 0.5625 in 3:32 (this was supposed to be 0.5, but we missed the mark and went 1/16 of a mile further). About 0.6 into the run we found Matt and he joined us. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:57, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:13, and 1 more with no running kids in 8:02. Pushed the double stroller, first with Jacob and Joseph, then traded Jacob for Julia. Benjamin rode along on his bike during Julia's and Jenny's runs. Jenny almost got bit by a German shepherd that got out of the gate and was roaming the street attacking the passers-by. It sniffed her but then got scared of something and ran away. Five Fingers - 864.05 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Race: |
Minuteman 5 K (3.107 Miles) 00:17:07, Place overall: 15 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 3.11 | 14.61 |
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A.M. Minuteman 5 K 17:07, 15h place. Same course as the new Draper Days. Warmed up with Seth and Jeff. At the start was not feeling super-energetic. Part of the problem was warm weather, but only a part. I could blame it on the post-marathon fatigue, but there was not that much of it. Maybe the combination of reduced mileage, the marathon itself, and the tight calf issue brought on the slump. Something was not right, I suppose we will find out if this is just a post marathon slump or something more serious.
First mile was OK, 5:04. 2 seconds slower than Draper Days. I brought the HRM this time. HR climbed up to 168. I was running with Dennis at this point with a whole bunch of guys led by Teren ahead of us. And I knew they were not coming back. I did not feel like I was breathing too hard, but legs started feeling a bit shaky. On the second mile the legs started to give out, and I backed off. HR dropped to 165-166. Neal Gassmann passed me. I tried to latch on, and was able too, HR climbed to 168, but then the legs started feeling too weak to hold the pace, and I backed off. Danny Oliva passed me, again the same story as with Neal - was able to follow a bit, then legs feel weak, cannot do it. 9:49 at 3 K, 10:33 at 2 miles, 14 seconds slower than Draper Days. 4 K 13:23, now 25 seconds slower than Draper Days. Not good. HR hovers around 166-168. Managed to push it to 172 on the hill. Steve Ashbaker passed me shortly after the hill. Made it to the finish in 17:06.3 on my watch, 17:07 officially. 39 seconds slower than Draper Days! Jeff ran great - third place with 15:31 in that company, only 17 seconds behind Teren. Seth was second with 15:30 (officially, mistimed, though, his time should have been 15:27), Teren won with 15:14. Alexander Tomas was fourth with 15:33. Some other times that I remember: Dennis 16:01, Josh Steffen 16:16, Neal Gassmann 16:20, Augustus Grey 16:21, Thatcher 16:48, Steve 16:57. Ran a long cool down starting out with Jeff, Seth, and Teren, then Jeff turned around early due to time constraints, Seth stopped earlier as well. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:38, 2 with Benjamin in 16:51 with Jenny running the first 1.5 in 12:59 with us. T4 Racer - 358.06 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.65 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 16.15 |
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A.M. Did not sleep well because my skin was itching. It does not like the sun. It actually has been itching for a while. But I was able to stay in bed. This time I woke up at 5:10 and did not feel like I'd be able to fall asleep soon enough to get anything out of it, so I decided to just get up. Started with Jeff, James, and Benjamin on a bike. At 2 miles hid Benjamin's bike in the bushes and he ran with us. We ended up running 2 fastest continuous miles for the day with him - 14:21 with the splits of 7:18 and 7:03. Matt joined us shortly after Benjamin started running and ran to the end of his run. Benjamin got back on his bike and we took him and James home, so that was 6 miles. Then I wanted to measure Jeff tugging power against mine. So we got out the harness and tried running in opposite directions. Jeff was a clear winner in the running motion - I was steadily moving backwards. Then we tried facing each other and play a tug-of-war with no arms, squatting down and pushing the harness with our backs. In that motion Jeff was a little bit stronger, but not as much as in the running motion. Then we went for another 6 miles, and Benjamin wanted to ride along with us, so we took him as well. We were discussing the results of the test. They were rather interesting. We measured my leg extension to be better than Jeff's in the absolute value earlier (although it was a little bit worse relative to body weight). Yet in the running motion Jeff was clearly stronger, not just in proportion to his body weight, but in the absolute power of the pull. To add to this, in 2003 I increased my hamstring curl max by 50%, and the leg extension by 10%, yet the increase in individual muscle group strengths did not make any difference in an all out 100 sprint. So this led to the contemplation of the need to be able to use the muscles together, that there might be some kind of limit not related to individual muscle strength that you could hit when you have to use several muscle groups. We started talking about the kangaroo, how its preferred way of motion is hopping, and began to wonder exactly how inefficient humans are at moving this way. So we did a kangaroo hop for 100 meters. The results were interesting. Jeff was a much better kangaroo. He hopped it in 33 seconds, while it took me 49! However, my HR got up to 140, which (over 49 seconds) suggests I was probably putting in an equivalent of maybe 5:30 running effort. We did not have an HRM on Jeff, but subjectively he said he really felt the pain of the effort. Our next experiment was the bound - cover 100 meters in the least number of steps. Jeff bounded 100 meters in 46 steps and it took him 20 seconds. I took fewer steps (44), but it took me 21.5 seconds. We did one more experiment - 100 m sprint on one leg. Jeff did it in 25 seconds, I did it in 28. This gave us some food for thought. One legged hop was consistent with our all out sprint difference. The bound results were consistent with what we've seen in the past, although we still do not understand why I can bound further than Jeff while he outdoes me by quite a bit in every other strength measurement prorated for body weight that we have tried so far. Perhaps the leg length? But at the same time, I've performed on par in the past with people my height in a bound that would outsprint me by quite a margin (24.5 200 for the peer group vs 27.5 for me). And I am not that much taller than Jeff anyway (5'8 vs 5'10). So we still have this bound mystery to solve. The difference between the kangaroo and the one legged jump was interesting. Both of us were faster on one leg than on two. Probably because the other leg was making a good contribution with a swing, which was more than what it could have contributed in the power when forced to be on the ground at the same time. One question that remains unanswered is why I did such a bad kangaroo job. One thing I can try is see if I can improve it with training, and when improved if it will have an effect on the all out speed. Then we ran into a lady on the trail that was doing 8x800 with 1 minute rest at about 3:05-3:15 range. Her names was Cherri Erickson. So we paced her over a few of those. She has 3 children, used to run for BYU, and graduated in 1994. P.M. 1.05 with Julia in 10:23, 2.1 with Jenny in 18:45, another mile with no running kids. Pushed Jacob and Joseph the entire time. Five Fingers - 880.20 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.17 | Nap Time: 0.83 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.18 | 0.00 | 4.00 | 1.12 | 16.30 |
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A.M. Ran with Tyler and Jeff. Tyler ran our warm-up, 2.5 out, then 1.125 back to the start of the tempo. Then he went on back to the house, and we ran the Gerry Lindgren style tempo. The plan was to start out at 5:00 and hold it until I could not. Then run the best pace I was capable of to the end. Rather unconventional, but it makes sense to me. You will not learn to be comfortable at 5:00 pace by running tempos at 5:20-5:30. At least I won't - I've tried for years. There is a hard barrier around 5:20 where I lack something that cannot be overcome with pure aerobic training. Nor will you learn by running mile repeats at 5:00 pace. Those essentially are mini-mile races. All I've gotten out of those is that I learn to be comfortable running 5:00 pace for exactly one mile. Then in a race as short as a 5 K (flat), I get to the mile in 5:00 feeling good, I might be able to go another quarter at that pace, and then I am done. So I wanted to try something new. Ask the body - why can't you run 5:00 pace forever, and make it ponder the issue for 5 miles of pain. This would also provide a chance for lots of measurements and observations.
We had one false start - 100 meters into the run I realized that my watch had not started. So we called it a stride, and went back to start for real. Jeff was feeling sleepy and took me through the first quarter in 78 according to his watch. I did not look. We sped up on the second to 74 according to Jeff, but my watch said 2:31. Next quarter was 76, and then my legs started to give out. I made an honest effort to keep the pace, but was falling behind. Maybe subconscious fear of really leaving it all there in the first mile vs kind of when I had 4 more to go. I could only do 81, which gave us a 5:08 mile on my watch. What is interesting is that HR only got up to 164 at the point of failure. The subsequent quarters were 86,86,87,85 for a 5:44 mile. HR dropped to 159-160. Better than I expected. I had concerns that I'd be running slower than 6:00 for a while to recover. Things began to improve in the third mile to my surprise. HR went up to 163, and I started hitting 84 quarters consistently. We hit 2.5 in 13:42 (2:50 for 0.5), and then 16:30 at the 3 mile mark (5:38). I made a mental note that I'd be a second or two faster than my 5 K race time on Saturday at the 5 K mark. I managed another mile in 5:38. HR started to hit 165-166. With Jeff challenging me to give him five I managed 5:35 in the last mile, HR climbing to 170. Total time was 27:43.4, 5:32.68 average. We ran a cool down after that to make the total 12.17. Some analysis - the whole run felt like I was running uphill. I was concerned after being unable to run 5:00 pace as early as 0.75 into the run that things were really going to go downhill, but was pleasantly surprised when they did not. The result provided some evidence in support of the heat sensitivity theory to explain a set of recent sub-par 5 K performances. I was pleased to see HR getting as high as it did in the second half of the run and staying there. It was high for the pace, though, but this is to be expected. Running anaerobically early on produced some oxygen debt (although not much, from VO2 Max data my max RER is only 1.06 vs more normal 1.10-1.15), and so it would be reasonable to expect that the heart would be pumping harder to clean it up the rest of the run. But it is good to actually see that my heart can work into those ranges for a sustained period rather than just theorize that it can because it used to be able to when I was less fit. I wonder if the Gerry Lindgren tempo might be about the only way I can give my heart a workout until the neural drive/strength issues are fixed.
In spite of the Gerry Lindgren maneuver, and the fact that the second half is naturally about 7-10 seconds slower than the first due to the terrain, the splits were 13:42/14:01. This run also has resolved my concerned that I might have gone into a slump similar to the one after DesNews 2006. Back then I struggled to run 28:26 on the same course starting normally with plans to negative split, and those issues continued for over a month. P.M. 1.05 with Julia in 9:50, 2.1 with Benjamin in 16:52, Jenny joined for the first 1.6 in 13:10, and one more with no running kids. Pushed Julia and Jacob for all of the run except the initial part with Julia running. T4 Racer - 370.23 miles Five Fingers - 884.30 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.20 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 15.20 |
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A.M. Jeff messed up setting his alarm clock and did not make it. Tyler for some reason was not there either. So I ran solo for 10.1 miles. Opened with a 2:28 quarter and a 9:03 mile. Then was able to speed up to 8:00. I say "was able" but I really mean "was able while running naturally". My rule is to never force the pace during an aerobic run. Whatever the body chooses without pressure is the right pace. Towards the end of the run I worked up my way to a little slower than 7:00. With a mile to go I had a thought that I should be thankful for my ability to run sub-7:00 pace on a whim. A lot of people cannot race an all out mile like this. So as a token of gratitude, and in behalf of all those who cannot go sub-7:00 in spite of their best efforts, I decided to run the last mile under 7 minutes, and finished with a 6:52, 1:17:55 for 10.1. P.M. 1.5 pushing Julia and Jacob, 1 with Julia running and Jacob in the stroller in 9:10, 0.5 more pushing both, then 2.1 in 17:40 with Benjamin and Jenny running and Jacob and Julia in the stroller. Need to teach Julia to ride a bike, then I'll be able to take all of my children at once for a run (until William is born at least). Five Fingers - 899.50 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.40 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.20 | 16.60 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and James. James turned around after 3 miles. Then Jeff and I did 5x10 seconds all out for me, a nice stride for Jeff, with 5 minute rest. Total time for 12.1 was 1:35:59. I gave Jeff a history test that he passed in spite of his young age. The question was - which East European communist regime went down violently? For me, of course, this was not just a history question. I anxiously watched, read, and listened as those regimes went down wondering how far away we were from losing the communist grip over the Soviet Union itself. It directly affected my life, so of course I remember, just like most Americans living today will remember September 11th, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Probably even more. So anyway, Jeff passed the test. I wonder how many bloggers will without the help of Google and other references. So post if you did or did not know the correct answer before looking it up. To check if you are right, or to find out if you have no clue to begin with, click here. Also, I took a look at the Deseret Book catalog I found lying on a table. It had an interesting collection of books. How to Raise a Strong-Willed Child. Strangling Your Husband Is Not an Option. How Do I Change My Husband? And the best - Parenting Breakthrough with a picture of a kid cleaning a toilet on the front cover. P.M. 1.25 with Julia in 12:55, 2 with Benjamin in 16:09 with the last 0.5 in 3:08. Jenny joined us for the first 1.5 in 13:01. Another 1.25 alone.
Five Fingers - 916.1 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 8.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.30 | 0.00 | 0.25 | 0.45 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Talked to Curt last night and realized we were in big trouble. The course of the Provo River Half would be impossible to follow correctly in the last 3 miles, and barring a disaster or an unexpected super-runner appearance, Jeff would be acting as the "lead vehicle". So he needed to know the course. So we had Curt show us the course this morning (the last 3 "loopy" miles), and then we ran that section again to make sure we knew it. On the second try without Curt we managed to miss a turn and it took us a minute before we realized it. In any case, I decided to plot out the map - check out Provo River Half 2008. Rather approximate, but reasonable. To avoid a complete disaster I had to code up a couple of features in the Course Tool. The USGS service was down, so I found a new elevation data service called Eathtools.Org which is not as accurate (only 90 meter segments), but at least it is up. So now we have a failover - first try USGS for 3 seconds, if nothing comes back or nothing good comes back, then try Earthtools. In the process I made an oops and incorrectly resolved the missing elevations in a number of existing courses, including a part of the Provo River Half that I was making. To fix this I needed a new feature - Re-lookup Elevations. Coded that up. Then figured a Save button that returns you to the course editing would be nice, since this was essentially a freebee after reworking the code. Then the elevation profile from the low resolution of Earthtools was just terrible and the supposed ups and downs extended the distance by a good 0.6 of a mile compared to the crazy grade adjusted distance. So I figured before I make this map public the crazy grade adjustment needed to happen first. So I coded up adjusting the crazy grade permanently as well. With all said and done the course now shows as 13.27 miles, which is very reasonable considering that I was not 100% sure on the start, the trail in some places is very difficult to follow from aerial view, and Google Maps probably do have a measure of geo-coding drift. Expecting lots of comments from Paul on the subject. After running the "loopy"section, Jeff and I ran more on the trail to make the total of 12 miles. In the process I did the hyena workout - once every 5 minutes you pretend for 10 seconds that a hyena is out to get out and run as fast as you can to get away. Did that 5 times. Coming back down the Provo Canyon we tried some race pace strides. First we ran a quarter in 82, and then a while later in 74. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:20, 2 with Benjamin in 15:25 with Jenny running 1.5 in 11:54, and 1 more alone in 7:40. Pushed Jacob. Five Fingers - 932.1 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Race: |
Provo River Half Marathon (13.1 Miles) 01:12:14, Place overall: 3 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 4.80 | 0.00 | 13.10 | 0.00 | 17.90 |
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A.M. Quick report, details to follow when I have more time. Provo River Half 1:12:14, 3rd place. Jeff won with 1:08:55, Dave Holt was second with 1:09:56. Barely held off Adam Wende (4th), and Chad (5th). Walter was 6th, so that's at least 1-6 FRB parade. Struggled with neural fatigue pretty much from the gun, but as it usually goes with this problem, things kept getting worse as the race progressed until they just could not get any worse. I was able to run with Dave for the first 2.5 miles, then ran alone the rest of the way until Adam came up to within 10 seconds of me around 10.8. Then my first thought was I don't care if he passes me, then I told myself to do my best, figured that if I could just bluff 5:30 pace for half a mile, that will play a trick on both the neural fatigue and Adam, and then I'll be safe. The operation was successful. More details. No trouble felt in the warm up, actually maybe a bit feisty. Noticed that the mind was not quite there on the bus - had a hard time connecting words into sentences. From the gun the pace felt a bit fast, but sustainable. First mile was 4:57, then 10:00 at 2 miles (by the official mile marker). Dave and I tried to hang with Jeff, but backed off after about 0.5 or so. Noticed that I was not breathing very hard, but felt unmotivated to breathe harder. Nevertheless decided to stick with Dave. Made it to about 2.5, then I was supposed to take a quarter, but could not pass Dave to do the job. Then I just could not hold the pace, not even for another quarter if they had told me the race ended right there. So I backed off. Dave and Jeff gradually kept disappearing into the distance. The uphill on the highway actually did not feel too bad. Hit the official mile 5 in 26:11, then 32:02 at 6 miles. Started experiencing an urgent need for a VPB, but there were no good bushes on the highway. Then shortly before mile 7 I grabbed some leaves off a tree on the run, and shortly after jumped into a conveniently located bush. Because there were so many people on the trail, I could not do my patented technique, so I lost about 10-12 seconds instead of the usual 5. The quarter was 1:35, and the ones that followed were in the 1:22-1:25 range. Hit the official marker 10 in 54:21. Saw Iain Hunter running in the opposite direction. Was stuck at around 5:35-5:40 pace. Was not breathing very hard, but could not go any faster. We made a turn at 5200 N and I noticed that Adam was about 10 seconds behind with Chad about the same distance behind him. My first thought was that I do not care. The race already went down the toilet. I just want to get to the finish and ensure a deeper blogger sweep, and I do not care about which order we come in. Then I told myself that this was a bad attitude, and I needed to fight it out to the finish no matter how poorly the race was going. Then a thought I occurred to me. Although I was neurally fatigued, if I gave it all for 0.5 mile I could run 5:30 pace. Adam and Chad would not have the cardio and the glycogen storage to run 5:30 pace on the flat at this point. So that would give me another 10 seconds on them at least. Then I could jog at 6:00 pace for a bit, recover, and maybe even kick at 5:30 pace, and that should be enough to hold them off. So I just focused on that 0.5, and it worked. My GPS showed 13.20 for the distance. That may be right, may be not. Who cares anyway? It is a new downhill course. We have to figure out what its worth empirically in any case. My conservative guess is a minute slower than Bryce Canyon, and three minutes faster than Striders Half with the headwind this year. Probably about the same, no more than 30 seconds faster if at all compared to the 2006 and 2007 versions. No cool down after the race, had to hurry to make it to a temple wedding of our friend. For those who do not know what neural fatigue is all about. It is when your body can go faster, except the brain or the nervous system is malfunctioning and in spite of your most noble efforts does not produce or deliver the signals that are strong enough to get the muscles to perform at their potential. The symptoms are that your breathing becomes more comfortable, your heart rate drops, but the legs are in slow motion, they start feeling unbearably heavy when you try to push the pace, and your normal race pace very quickly becomes so impossible that you cannot do it for another quarter mile even if you did not have to go any further. This is one of the days when you can run a 5 K at a slower pace than you normally race a half marathon. Yet you can still finish the race at a slower speed wondering the entire time why you cannot go faster when nothing hurts. This is a very frustrating experience and it is very easy to get depressed and mentally quit. The sad part is that if you just kick back and coast to the finish you run only 5 seconds per mile slower than when you are giving everything you've got, when normally this much difference in effort would give you 20 seconds per mile.
To prevent it you need to sleep well, eat proper amounts of carbs, avoid stress, and not speed on your base runs. Sometimes it happens anyway even if you do everything right. Many people never have to worry about it because their cardio/glycogen storage will hit a limit first before they reach the limits of their neural drive even on a bad day. On the positive side, the neural fatigue this year was much milder than two years ago when I ran 1:14:00 on the same quality of the course. I believe it was also less severe than during Minuteman 5 K. At least I was running 5:50 up a slight grade at the end of a half marathon instead of at the end of a 5 K, and I could do several sub-5:40 miles down 1% grade after running 7 instead of only one after running one. And I could will myself into running 5:30 pace down a slight grade for half a mile, something I do not think I would have pulled off in the same place at the end of Minuteman. So things are getting better. As to the cause of the neural fatigue, there are two suspects. A popular opinion suspect is DesNews, but I question it. Last year there was no neural fatigue (I surprised myself with 1:09:40) even though every muscle of my body hurt for three days after DesNews. This year in DesNews it was just the cramped calf. The rest of the muscles had not experienced noticeable damage because I ran too slow. However, it is a possibility that the pain in the calf lasting for 2.5 hours caused some brain damage. Another theory is itching skin. My skin has been itching pretty bad over the last couple of weeks, and it has interfered with the quality of my sleep. Two years ago when the neural fatigue was worse, the skin itched pretty bad as well and my sleep suffered. It affects not only sleep. It puts me on alert during the day, so towards the end I have been somewhat irritable. Our kids have been doing a lot of push-ups, squats, and household jobs for various rule violations. All well deserved, they have been taught and warned multiple times, but I normally do not notice that much. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:48, then 2 with Benjamin in 16:20 with Jenny running the first 1.5 in 12:33. It started raining and we got soaked. T4 Racer - 385.13 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Julia surprised us today. She read most of her talk in Primary without help. We are very excited - she is on the verge of reading. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 18.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.20 | 18.80 |
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A.M. Jeff is in California, so I ran alone. 12.1 in 1:27:57. Did my standard hyena sprints. A.M - 2. Ran to the Provo City Center to try out some equipment with Adam. Found the leg press machine somewhat useful for my purposes. My goal is to find something that will produce the maximum degree of muscle recruitment. Ran back. Total of 2.2 miles. P.M. Costco Relay. 1.08 with Julia in 10:36, 3.42 with Benjamin in 29:08. Jenny joined for the first 1.56 in 13:48. Five Fingers - 950.9 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.00 | 4.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Michelle, and Josse. Matt joined us after a mile. The original plan was for Michelle to run the standard 5 mile tempo at 6:00 pace, while I towed Josse trying to stay with Michelle until she dropped us, then keep towing until Michelle had a gap of about 100 meters, then drop the harness, catch up to Michelle as fast as possible, and pace her from that point. Josse was not feeling good, and decided to just jog. So I just paced Michelle, which was OK as I could tell I was still feeing the neural fatigue. We hit the first mile in 5:57, and during that mile I was really glad I was not towing Josse - I could feel the signs of neural fatigue in my stride and in the overall feeling. I was thinking, I am glad she cannot run low 5:50s, and it was not "I am too lazy to run 5:50s this hour of the day", not a sleeping lion annoyed that his sleep was disturbed, it felt like the start of the Provo Half - I really do not want to race today, I like my bed better than running. Michelle's HR was around 173-175 towards the end of the mile. On the second mile Michelle started losing steam, but she was consistent - 4 quarters in 1:31, 6:04. HR about the same. We hit the turnaround in 15:04. I waited as long as I could to start the Give Me Five (TM), but I figured after a 180 Michelle needed to be woken up. 6:07 for the next mile. Her HR dropped to as low as 171 on a 1:32 quarter. Over the last two miles Michelle tried to pick up the pace, but she did not have much juice. Nevertheless, she was steady. Her next mile was 6:08, and she closed with a 6:05 to finish in 30:21. Her last 200 was 41 seconds, though, and I had to work to keep up. Her HR was very interesting during the kick. She was able to get it up to 178, but then it dropped to 176, although I did not feel any let up in the pace. Not sure what that means. Might be normal - to accelerate is harder than just to maintain. Which implies that when you are kicking you should explode for 5 seconds with every bit of energy you've got, and then coast to the finish, and you can coast pretty far. Also, the highest I've seen her HR is 180, yet she has been able to maintain 173 for 5 miles. That is 96%. I wonder if this ability is a sign that the cardio is stronger than the nervous system, which could mean that either the cardio is very strong, or the nervous system is very weak. Ran some more with Michelle, Josse, and Matt, total of 13 miles for this morning. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:51, 2 with Benjamin in 17:14 with Jenny running 1.5 in 13:10. T4 Racer - 398.14 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.75 | 2.50 | 1.50 | 1.25 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Gerry Lindgren tempo. Interesting results. Again, this tempo is done like this - go out hard at your dream pace until you can't. Then run the rest of it at your best pace in that condition. Warmed up, did some strides to be ready for the 5:00 pace. First mile: 75,77,79,82 - 5:13. Legs started caving on the second(!) quarter. HR never went above 164. The breathing was the hardest in the first quarter. Hmm... - last week I managed a 5:08. Am I holding back, or am I in worse condition?
Second mile: 85,86,86,87 - 5:44. Same as last week for the total, but 87 at the end is a bad sign. HR drops to around 160. Third mile: 90,90,92,91 - 6:03. 13:57 at 2.5. HR drops to 153(!) Michelle is going to chick me if I run like this for the second half. Emily is going to chick me for the whole tempo. I am trying every trick I know to go faster with absolutely zero results even though I am barely breathing. It feels like the end of a marathon. Some food for thought. Fourth mile: 92,91,90,90 - 6:03. HR had sporadic spikes to 155 in the last two quarters. Interesting. Last mile: 91 (up a slight grade), 88, 86, 83 - 5:48, and 28:51 for the tempo. 14:54 for the last 2.5. Emily did not chick me, got to enjoy small success! And I put a whopping 23 second gap on Michelle's second half yesterday. And I outkicked her in the last 200 by a whopping 1 second (40). For sure I thought earlier that she was going to beat me on that segment today. Something interesting happened in this mile. With 1 K to go all of a sudden I started running faster. No heroic effort. The earlier miles when I could not break 6:00 for the life of me were a lot more heroic. But all of a sudden I started breathing like I would in a tempo, HR went up to 160 and I started running 5:44 pace feeling like I could go further. Jogged some more to make the total 12 miles. Plenty of food for thought. Clearly a case of neural fatigue. But also an interesting twist. We are deal with some odd resource here. Neural fatigue is just underscoring the importance of that resource, makes it come out more in plain view. Today it got exhausted in a bit over a minute of running at 5:00 pace to where I could not hold that pace anymore. It continued to get exhausted at a pace as slow as 5:44 to the point of not being able to run sub-6:00. Running slower than 6:00 partially replenished it to the point of being able to run 5:44 again, and that replenishment was very sudden. It is not blood lactate levels - if it was, HR would have stayed high to clean up, and the breathing would not have calmed down. Fluctuating blood sugar is a reasonable possibility, but if it was, I should have felt weak and fuzzy headed during the slump, and I did not. There were absolutely no symptoms other than I could not go sub-6:00 no matter how hard I tried. And it felt just like the end of St. Jude last year, and Salt Lake, and Ogden this year. I know I need to go faster, I feel good, the head works, the legs are not sore, I know every second could cost a few hundred bucks, and for the life of me I cannot go faster. So what is that mysterious resource? My first thought was something in the brain. How do you find out for sure? My first thought was I need a brain scan machine to measure me every day, and see what is different between good days and bad days. But who is going to give me a brain scan machine along with the necessary expertise? That is wishful thinking. Come on, think of something more simple. After some thought, I had an idea. In the absence of equipment we use the infamous Sasha Science. Question number of one - once we know it is section X in the brain, what are we going to do to fix it? Well, we are going to try a number of different things and measure how they affect that section X. Can we measure how that section X is doing without a brain scan machine? Sure. Gerry Lindgren tempo with the HRM tells us everything we need to know. Only one problem. Gerry Lindgren tempo is a rather invasive measurement. I can do it only twice a week at most. However, here is an idea. Do a whole bunch of those tempos. Always make a prediction for the split at the mile, and the finish time for the whole tempo after the first quarter based on how I feel. Keep doing that until I start getting it right. Once I perfect the skill I will only need to run one quarter in 75 to know what would have happened in the whole tempo. I can run one 75 second quarter every day! So that gives me the benefits of daily monitoring with a brain scan machine without having to pay a cent for it. The beautiful thing is that if I am completely off the target, and it is not in the brain, or if it is but the modern day science has no way of measuring it, the method still works! Columbus thought to the end of his life that he had found a new way to India, but that did not change the consequences of his discovery - thanks to him we are now here in America. Inspired pursuit even with factual errors beats being exactly true to the fact but treading in your own tracks with no inspiration. I can try different things, measure the results, quickly, and hopefully find something that works. Of course, there is no free lunch. It might take a long time to develop a sense that is keen enough to know what's up from just one quarter. But at least it is worth a shot. T4 Racer - 410.13 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:45, 2 with Benjamin in 16:40 with Jenny joining us for 1.5 in 12:53, and one more mile alone. Five Fingers - 954.9 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.92 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.30 | 17.22 |
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A.M. Ran the first 6 miles with James, the rest (6 more) alone. Total time for 12 was 1:29:21. Had to stop for a VPB, told James to go ahead. Then caught up to him. During the catch-up decided to practice 5:00 pace. Ran a quarter in 76, and then another 100 in 20 with no stopping. It felt unsustainable. Not sure if better or worse than yesterday, but I was not going to try to find out. I'll wait until Saturday. The idea now is to focus on 5:00 pace. I must be able to hold it on my 5 mile tempo to have any dreams of an OTQ. Sure, I'll only need to run 5:18, and at sea level, but it would need to be on a rolling course for 26 miles, and likely on a less than perfect day. So I figure at the very least I need to be able to transition from 5:00 being a near-sprint to a brisk tempo pace. I am figuring the cardio is there to support it, but something, some component X (neural drive?) is missing. Some day I have more of it than others, but never enough. Perhaps the days when I have less are most meaningful for study - the problem is more apparent, and hopefully this will inspire a solution. P.M. 2.05 with Benjamin and Jenny to Benjamin's soccer practice in 18:49. Pushed Julia in the stroller. 1 on grass with Julia in 10:38. 2.17 back in 16:54 pushing Jacob. Five Fingers - 968.12 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.83 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.37 | 16.20 |
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A.M. 12.1 alone in 1:29:09. Did a neural strength evaluation/sense development interval. Was planning to run 400 if feeling really bad, 500 otherwise. Got to 500 and was feeling good enough that I wanted to run a bit more. So did 600 in 1:52, that is 5:00 pace. It felt a lot more sustainable than yesterday or the day before. Official guess on what would have happened in the Gerry Lindgren 5 mile tempo - 5:04 for the first mile, and 27:30 for the whole thing. P.M. 1.1 alone, 0.5 with Benjamin in 3:09, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 11:47, 1 with Julia in 9:54. Julia run was particularly interesting. She was dragging along at about 10:30 pace when we saw a couple running. I challenged her to catch them. She said no. I said how about for a fruit snack. She said no. How about if you get to play GCompris (an educational computer game)? Still no. How about if I read you a book? She said no, but I'll do it for all three. So we struck a deal, and she whizzed by them, then eased off just enough to keep them at bay to the end of her run.
Five Fingers - 984.32 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.00 | 5.00 | 4.00 | 1.00 | 24.00 |
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A.M. Interesting workout today. Total of 21 miles with two tempos. One after a short warmup, the other towards the end. The first being the Gerry Lindgren kind, the second end of the marathon kind. Warmup - 2.62 miles in 20:50. Gerry Lindgren tempo: First quarter in 76. Official prediction - 5:10 for the mile, 27:50 for 5 miles. Subsequent quarters: 76, 79, 82 - 5:13 at the mile, 3 seconds off the prediction on the slow side. HR peaked at 163 around 0.6 then dropped to 160 by the end of the mile. The first half mile felt more sustainable, but then I could not sustain it.
Second mile: 83, 84, 86, 86 - 5:39. HR at 159-160. Third mile: 86, 86 (13:44 at the turnaround), 87, 86 - 5:45. HR drops to 157. Not for the lack of trying, though. Mile 4: 87, 84, 87, 87 - 5:45. I decided to try something new. Attempt a surge to see to what extent this overrides neural fatigue. Could do it for a quarter, but could not sustain it. On the positive side, I was back to pre-surge pace post-surge. So perhaps this is a good strategy - I just bought myself a couple of seconds for free. HR climbed to 160 during the surge, then went back to 158 afterwards.
Mile 5: 86, 85, 84, 81 - 5:36. Was able to get HR above 160, and to as high as 166 on the last quarter. Total time was 27:58, last 2.5 in 14:14. Much better than on Wednesday. Jogged 6.5 miles in 51:41. Met Larry Lawrence and Marie Gluhn (Hodson), ran with them for most of it. Larry back in his youth was fast - 3:58 mile. Then did another 5 mile tempo. I did not plan to make it 5, it kind of happened on accident. I only wanted to go 3, but then realized I started it too early, so I figured I'd go more. Then it also took me forever to get up to speed on those twists and turns, and the bridges, so I needed to go the whole 5 to hit a sub-6:00 average. Ran 29:58, last mile in 5:51. It got warmer, but not too bad. Cooled down 1.38 miles - total of 21 for the run.
Observations - not a whole lot of difference between the last 3 miles of the Gerry Lindgren portion, and the end of the run portion except for some fuzzy head. So in other words, it appears so far that I can simulate the end of the marathon minus the fuzzy head by running hard in the first mile and not stopping, just tempoing through. With proper focus I can run through the fuzzy head as fast as 5:30-5:40 pace on a good day. Fuzzy head in and of itself does not cause the slow down, there is something else that is involved, and I can get that something else to show its ugly head in the Gerry Lindgren tempo. So I will call that a small victory - I know how to make the dragon stick his head out. Now I just need a sword to chop it off. P.M. Went to Michelle's house to watch the womens Olympics marathon. Turned out we were the only ones there. Ran there with the kids. 1 mile with Julia in 10:34, then 1.5 with Jenny in 12:40, and another 0.5 with Benjamin to make the total time for 2 miles 16:39. Kids did very well at a higher elevation and with the hills (6000 feet). T4 Racer - 431.13 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 11.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.60 |
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A.M. Ran with James, Daniel, and Derek Taylor. Daniel went 3 miles, James 6, Derek around 8. Afterwards ran 1 with Julia in 9:42, and 2 with Benjamin in 16:22. Jenny joined for 1.5 in 12:48. Pushed Jacob during Benjamin's and Jenny's run. P.M. Pushed Jacob and Joseph for 5 miles. 40:57. Five Fingers are celebrating their first 1 K miles. Still in good condition - just one small hole under the right big toe. I wonder if I should just wear them down to the holes, gradually get used to the surface, and then just run barefoot period.
Five Fingers - 1000.97 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.30 | 0.00 | 4.00 | 1.00 | 17.30 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek. Did the Gerry Lindgren 5 mile tempo. Derek just started after reduced mileage, so he is being caution. So he just did the first and the last mile with me. We also found Matt and he joined us for a portion. Mile 1: 75, 77, 75, 82 - 5:09. Forgot to make the prediction after the first quarter. Derek pulled away after the first 0.6 and finished it in 4:58. Matt made it to 0.5, I think. HR peaked at 161(!) and I lost steam without being able to push it any higher on this mile. I wonder if I would get better results if I did 78,78, then hold 75/76 until failure, if I'd be able to do more of those this way. Should try this next time, which will be in a week.
Mile 2: 87, 86, 86, 86 - 5:45. Legs feel heavy, cannot go any faster, but HR drops to 156(!). This is a joke. Shouldn't it go up to 165 at least to clean up the lactic acid? Am I weird, or maybe this is normal? We should try this on Jeff when he gets back. If anybody wants to try the experiment as well, please go ahead. Protocol - go to the track or well-measured flat road segment, warm up, then run your dream pace that is much faster than what you have been able to sustain even in a 5 K recently until failure, then run the best pace to the finish of 5 miles. Record quarter splits along with HR patterns. If you live near Provo, I'll be happy to lend you my HRM and run alongside (if I can). Mile 3: 86, 86, 88, 86 - 5:46. 13:46 at the turnaround. HR at 157. Mile 4: 88, 86, 86, 86 - 5:46. HR at 158. Mile 5: Derek joined me and stayed with me. 86, 86, 84, 82 - 5:38. 28:04.1 for the run. Last 2.5 in 14:18. Managed to get HR to 161 in the kick. Almost exact carbon copy of Saturday run with minor variations. With Derek's help I pushed the 3rd quarter of the first mile, which gave me a faster first mile. But then the fatigue was greater and I ended up running 6 seconds slower for the whole run. HR, however, was lower. Part of it was the difference in the temperature. It was warmer on Saturday. But not that much warmer. And I should be able to sustain my HR above 161 in any weather. Too early to make any serious conclusions, but the emerging pattern appears very interesting. Pushing the pace harder in the first mile so far has produced a lower(!) HR in the remaining 4 miles, not just a slower pace. Ran a cool down with Derek, then 2 with Benjamin in 15:29, and 1 with Julia in 9:29. Julia set a 0.5 PR over the second half - 4:11. Total of 15.8 for the run. P.M. 1.5 with Jenny in 13:18. T4 Racer - 446.93 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.50 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek and Matt, then some alone, and 2 with Benjamin in 16:18. Total of 11.5 miles. Julia ran 1 mile with Sarah.
P.M. 5 miles in 39:43, including the first 1.5 with Jenny in 13:25. Five Fingers - 1017.47 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.60 |
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A.M. Ran the first 2 miles with Daniel, then he biked. Found Matt on the trail, he joined me for a bit. Ran the rest alone - 12.1 miles in 1:29:54. Then 2 more with Benjamin in 15:27, including a lunch-with-Daddy qualifier 0.5 in 3:04, a bit of a jog to rest, and then picking it up to finish the mile in 6:54. Last night completely of her own initiative Sarah committed to working on her Russian more seriously. She speaks quite well, has good accent, can say what she needs to, but she does have her struggles. She cannot yet speak with color reordering her words just the right way, remembering to insert zhe and other forms of emphasis in the right places to make it sound natural, picking a more naturally sounding word vs a standard dictionary-recommended translation of what she would have said in English, without the fear of odd word forms that are particularly foreign to an English speaker, without the fear of using long words with several tongue-twister consonants in a row, etc. For the last 11 years she has fought the idea of learning to speak Russian like a native, but now the day has come. We are going to work on it. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:36, then 1.5 with Jenny in 11:55. Five Fingers - 1033.77 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.50 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 14.00 |
| A.M. Ran with Derek, dropped him off, then ran alone, then ran into Justin White and his friend Chris, ran with them a bit, then more alone. Decided to try race pace for 0.5. Hit 2:44 going down about 0.5% grade. Felt good. Carefully listened for the signals of neural fatigue, but heard none. At least over 0.5. Finished 11 miles, then ran with the kids. First 1 with Julia in 10:30. Then we loaded Julia and Joseph in the double stroller for me to push, and put Jacob in the single stroller for Benjamin to push. After the first 60 meters Benjamin said that Jacob was a lot heavier than he had thought. That sounded suspicious. I checked out the stroller, and sure enough, the break was on. We fixed that, and kept going. Benjamin did better than I thought he would. 12:54 for 1.5. That is 8:36 pace average. The combined weight of Jacob and the stroller was probably closely approaching Benjamin's own weight. Jenny, of course, had to take advantage of the chance to show off and pulled ahead in the last third of a mile finishing in 12:38. I stayed with Benjamin. Good to know that in case of emergency we could cover a 5 K at 9:00 pace without the aide of a motor with all of the five kids. When William is born, we will need one more seat in the stroller, but hopefully by then Julia will learn to ride a bike. I have been taking in a lot of Powerade lately, and it has been going in very well, never making me feel like I've had too much. Makes me wonder if the latest neural fatigue struggles were from a very subtle carbodepletion. Or another way to look at that - something happened that increased the brain demands for glucose, and not receiving enough the brain responded by limiting running performance. I've had this happen before. In any case, the practical implication is that the body needs to be fed a lot of carbs. Five Fingers - 1047.33 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Race: |
Top of Utah Half Marathon (13.11 Miles) 01:11:13, Place overall: 4 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.98 | 0.00 | 13.11 | 0.00 | 24.09 |
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A.M. Top of Utah Half. 1:11:13. 4th place. Got beat by Teren (1:06:38), Seth (1:10:37), and Josh Stefen (1:10:46). Held off Jon (1:11:40), and Paul (1:12:14). Better quality race than two weeks ago in Provo Half. Details to follow... Now details.... Stayed at Paul's house. Got to see little Seth. Got to race the big Seth as well. How do you get your shirt to finish 46 seconds ahead of you? Let Seth borrow it, of course :-) Warmed up with Paul. We saw two moose. Paul wondered if the plural of moose was meese. I thought it should be mooses. Turns out both of us were wrong. I did Googled it and found that the correct form is moose. Go figure. I've run TOU every year they've had it (9 times) without ever seeing a moose, and now two at once!
Paul invented a new concept. I think he should patent it. For every bathroom visit prior to the start of a race you get a star. For every stop during the race you lose a star. So at the start this was going to be a two-star race for me. With the latest neural fatigue problems I did not have firm expectations for the race. I told Paul the night before it could be as fast as 1:09 or as slow as 1:14. I figured the best way to work around the neural fatigue would be to run as unmotivated as possible. I noticed that neural fatigue often kicks in from an overexertion of some kind - a hill, a surge, or a pace that is a tad too brisk held for 10 minutes. It is easy to mistake it for the consequences of getting into oxygen debt, but overtime I learned to distinguish the two. If it is just oxygen debt, you will breathe harder for a minute or two afterwards, back off the pace a bit, recover, and then you are good to go again. Maybe 3 seconds per mile slower than what you would have otherwise. Neural fatigue is a different beast. You step into the red zone, and you are out for the rest of the race. The breathing slows down. The heart rate drops. The pace drops to as much as 20 seconds per mile slower and stays that way to the end. You keep telling yourself - I am feeling good, I am going to pick it up, you think you are picking it up, but the splits show otherwise. You try to kick in the last 50 meters, and you cannot. It is like a bad dream when you try to run away from a robber but your body is paralyzed for no understandable reason. Mile 1 - 5:27. Running with Josh Stefen. Teren and Seth did 5:19 - they are both jogging. Feeling sluggish. Mile 2 - 5:17. The downhill got steeper, I picked it up, dropped Josh, started closing on Teren and Seth. Got excited, and pushed harder hoping to catch up to them. Then there is this feeling - you get too excited, the neural fatigue will get you. Do not red line. So I eased off. Teren/Seth did 5:19. Mile 3 - 5:25. Josh caught up to me, and gapped me a bit. I thought for a while he was gone. Then there was a short steep downhill and I caught up to him. Told myself, ran with him to 4, you can at least do that. Mile 4 - 5:21. Drafting behind Josh changed from miserable to sustainable, I think I can make it to 5. Mile 5 - 5:14. More downhill, some tailwind, starting to feel good. 26:44 at 5 miles.
Mile 6 - 5:12. Even better. We are now ahead of the 5:20 guy. At the start it looked like averaging 5:30s would be a challenge. Thinking about gapping Josh. Mile 7 - 5:15. Happy to gap the 5:20 guy some more, will need that for sure later on. Tried to gap Josh as well, but was not successful. Now drafting behind him. Mile 8 - 5:25. Not enjoying it as much on flatter ground, but the pace feels sustainable. Mile 9 - 5:21. Cannot complain about that. Don't think the grade has changed, still about 0.5% down, and we are still ahead of the 5:20 guy. Did not expect that so late in the race.
Mile 10 - 5:29. Some headwind, but Josh has wide shoulders. 53:26 at 10 miles. Mile 11 - 5:46. Uphill started. At first it felt bearable, but the further we go, the harder it gets. I am feeling like I am carrying a bookcase that I am about to drop. Mile 12 - 5:57. Uphill continues. I cannot hold the bookcase any more, it goes down. I think the bookcase's name was Josh. He is gone, has about 10 seconds on me. I am thinking with the downhill on the last mile I can close the gap. Mile 13 - 5:39. Legs are just not moving. Here comes the neural fatigue with all of its ugly symptoms. I see Josh putting a gap on me. I see Seth within reachable distances. I am not breathing very hard. The legs do not hurt. Josh is worth some cash and circuit points. Seth is worth some cash and circuit points. I want to catch them and I want it bad. But there is nothing I can do no matter how hard I try. Last 0.1 - 31 seconds. A desperate attempt at a kick. My watch said 1:11:11. Official time was 1:11:13. Paced Breanna during the cool down/extra miles. Then went to find Bonnie, but missed her - ran right past her and did not spot her in the crowd. Ended up with 21 miles for the workout. Interesting how the hill knocked me out. This has happened before. In 2003 St. George I lost contact with the OTQ pack at 9 miles going up a long gradual climb, and never recovered. That same year I was running well in the first 6 miles of the Springfield marathon until we hit a hill about half a mile long. Afterwards I was not myself for the rest of the race. However, I've had good days when a long hill did not bother me in spite of taking it hard. Last year I did fine in the Provo River half, Salt Lake (Emmigration Canyon) half, and Park City Half. This year I did OK on the Avon pass in Wasatch Back.
My theory. The hill increases the amount of neural output. On a bad day this could put me in the red zone of neural fatigue. Something pops in the brain, and it stops working for the rest of the race. T4 Racer - 467.93 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:50, then 2 with Benjamin, Jenny and Jared in 16:39. Jared had a side ache and fell behind. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.34 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.34 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Derek. Dropped Derek off, dropped Jeff off. Ran 1 mile in 9:31 with Julia pushing Jacob and Joseph with Benjamin and Jenny riding along on their bikes. Then pushed Jacob and Joseph for another 2 miles. Had an accident. Head-on collision with a bike coming from under a bridge. The stroller did very well, no damage at all. My Walmart watch did not do so well - the strap broke. No other damage otherwise. We count our blessings. P.M. For our family home evening we decided to do Jenny's birthday present geocaching hunt. Sarah hid it some distance away from the house, got the GPS coordinates, and I ran to the location with Benjamin and Jenny. The distance turned out to be 1.72, which we ran in 15:00, 8:43 average. We found the present, Sarah picked up Jenny, and I ran back with Benjamin. During the run Sarah called us and told us VanGoGo would not start. I told her to get a jump start from Luz, as they were in right next to her house. We got home in 13:27, 7:49 pace average. I called Sarah, and she told me the jump start did not help. So Benjamin and I drove back to rescue her. It was dark, and I could not quite remember where Luz's house was exactly, and had a hard time finding it. So I turned on the GPS and used the stored waypoint location to navigate to it. This was going to be a humorous night, it seemed, and the further developments confirmed the suspicion. I got into VanGoGo to see for myself what was wrong, and it turned out that it was in the neutral gear. Once I moved it in Park it started just fine. To add more humor to the night, Sarah forgot her purse at Luz's house. So we had a good laugh. Five Fingers - 1063.67 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.50 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek and Jeff. Then some more by myself, and 2 with Benjamin in 17:26. Total of 14 miles. P.M. 1 mile with Julia around the soccer field during Benjamin's soccer game. Benjamin's team played much better than last time and won 5-1 against a team that did not appear as weak as the last one. Last time they lost 1-2. The team coaches are very good. In the first game they were kid-disorganized, and combined with the lack of exceptional soccer talent from any of the players this did not produce very impressive results. This time after some work in the practices each player knew his job and did it. I was amazed at the difference, and it showed in the final score. Ran 1.5 with Jenny later in 13:01. Five Fingers - 1077.67 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.88 | 0.00 | 3.12 | 0.00 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Started with Jeff and Tyler. Derek was not there for some reason. Tyler had to go to work, so he did not go very far before he turned around. Ran 6 very easy with Jeff. We finished almost 3 minutes behind the 8:00 mile guy. Then ran 6 more alone. Decided to do a shakeout tempo. Due to my course layout, 3.125 turned out to be a convenient distance. Ran it on the trail as usual. 1.5 out, 1.65 back. Decided to go by feel setting goals as I went along. Had a hard time getting into a rhythm. First 200 in 44. Then eventually started hitting 83 quarters. 5:35 at the mile. HR at 152. Lost steam, next quarter in 84, and then 85 with a 180. Accelerated after 180, but it was only good enough for another 85. However, got my payback in the next quarter - 82. HR got up to 158. After that I was hitting 82-83 quarters like a clock, but for the life of me could not go any faster. Second mile was 5:36, then 5:30, and 41 for the last 200. I tried to pick it up and bring HR to over 160, but for the life of me could not do it. 16:41 at 3 miles, 17:22 for 3.125, which means I hit the 5 K in 17:16. That is a PR for Five Fingers. Jogged some more, finished 12 miles in 1:32:07. Amazing how fast the 8:00 mile guy comes to you when you are going 5:30 :-)
Ran another mile with Julia in 9:45. P.M-1. We bought a van from Canyon Motors in Provo (610 W Center). They specialize in used natural gas vehicles - just perfect for us. We never buy cars on credit, which at least for now means we never buy anything anywhere close to a new car. And we wanted to help alleviate the US demand for foreign oil while saving a bit on gas as well. It is 1996 Dodge Ram B2500 CNG. 72 K miles. Seats 15 passengers. $8402.96 including the sales tax, registration, and other fees. $3K alternative fuel vehicle tax credit. 14-18 mpg at $0.86 a gallon. Right now it is more than twice as cheap to drive as Zhu (our 93 Ford Escort Wagon). And the best thing - I stuck my nose right next to the exhaust pipe while the engine was running, and could smell nothing. The official name of the new van is FRV - The Fast Running Van. One drawback is that now we would have to plan our fuel stops thoroughly while traveling. But there are quite a few natural gas stations all over the state. Flying J in Springville, there one in Orem around exit 272, a couple in Salt Lake, one in Ogden, and one even in Logan. Going south, Fillmore, and St. George. We will still keep VanGoGo - 4-wheel drive, spare vehicle in case FRV breaks down, and for trips in remote areas where natural gas may be unavailable. Also for short trips when we do not feel like parking FRV in a tight space, and for Van 2 in relays. Being a used car, FRV still needed some pre-sale fixing, and Sarah did not want to wait for me to finish the paperwork, so I did the paperwork and ran home - 0.7 miles. We should be getting the van today.
P.M-2 : 0.3 running errands, 0.5 with Benjamin in 4:21, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 12:38, total time for 2 miles was 16:59. Had fun running away from dogs. There were 3 dog incidents in the last half mile that resulted in accelerations. I was impressed with Jenny's top end speed. Kenyan kids run away from hyenas, ours have to settle for dogs. Five Fingers - 1091.67 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 16.50 |
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A.M. Big group today. Started with Jeff, Derek, Jeff's dad Don, Vern, and Michelle. Vern and Don ran 1 mile out, Derek kept on going to BYU at 6 while we turned around. Jeff turned around 8 miles into the run because he only needed 10. Michelle finished all 12 with me - she actually had run some before we even started - she was doing a 22 mile run. Had a VPB stop, then caught the pack afterwards. The quarters were 84 and 80, and I felt more energized than yesterday. At 6 Michelle started her end of long run death march tempo. Her splits were 6:42, 6:33, 6:22, 6:25, 6:27, 6:21. Her last 2 quarters were 94 and 87. I gave her a challenge to push my HR past 140. She reached it with about 1 mile to go for the first time, and then finally in the kick she pushed it as high as 149. Afterwards ran 2 miles with Benjamin in 15:39 including the lunch out qualifications 0.5 in 3:03, splits of 93 and 90. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:40, and 1.5 with Jenny in 13:13. Played soccer with some Latinos during Benjamin's soccer practice. Also shot basketball hoops. Five Fingers - 1108.17 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.10 |
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A.M. 12.1 in 1:33:00. Started with Jeff, Daniel, Tyler and Don. The group kept getting smaller. Then Derek who had a late start caught up to us. Ran with Jeff and Derek to 10.1, then 2 more mostly alone, but I did meet a runner, I think his name was Ken, ran with him and bit, and invited him to join the blog. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:09, with Jenny joining for the last 1.5 in 11:41. Julia ran with Sarah and Luz earlier in the morning. Then 2 more to the tennis court and back. Played tennis with Benjamin. Five Fingers - 1224.27 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 5.00 | 4.25 | 0.75 | 23.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek. We did a 2.62 warmup. Then I did a modified Lindgren tempo. This time I warmed up for 0.5 miles at a slower pace before trying to run 5:00. Derek joined me for the last 2 miles. Splits: 84, 83, 79 (jumped over a tree), 78 - 5:24 mile, 81, 85, 88, 87 (5:43), 86, 87 (14:01 at the turnaround), 89, 86 (5:47), 86, 84, 85, 86 (5:42), 82, 83, 84 (tree jump), 81 (5:30) - 28:06.2. HR: climbed to 162 during the attempt at a 5:00 mile, then dropped miserably. Sat around 155 between 1.5 and 3.7. Then with Derek's help got up to 158. In the last mile got up to 160, and hit 166 in the last quarter. Other observations: When running 5:44-5:48 pace HR was stuck at 155 but the breathing felt very labored. Once Derek joined me and I started running behind him, HR was higher, I was running faster, but the breathing felt a lot less labored. Possible explanation - breathing rate correlates with turnover. Earlier, the ground push-off power (which determines stride length) was reduced for some odd reason, so I had to turn over quicker to run a slower pace. Running behind Derek rebooted the push-off power computer, now I did not have to turn over as quickly. Jogged with Derek to 10.25, dropped him off, drank a large cup of Powerade, then jogged to 13.62 and ran another 5 mile tempo on the exact same course except this time I did not have to jump over the tree twice. Felt sluggish and unmotivated during that part, like I was ready to be done with the workout already. Very similar to mile 20 of the marathon. Was not sure what to expect of the tempo. Splits in the second tempo: 5:48, 5:46, 14:27 at the turnaround, 5:49, 5:49, 5:42 - total time 28:54.7. HR: Could not bring it over 150 in the first 2 miles. Then it hovered at 152-153 for the next two and a half. Then all of a sudden it shot up to 157 with no change in pace but there was a slight increase in the perception of effort. Was able to push it to 164 in the last quarter which I ran in 82. Subjective observations: felt sluggish at the start. Had to focus on high turnover to keep the pace. Was able to keep the pace but it required a lot of concentration. When HR increased at 3.5 miles did not feel a significant increase in effort. At 3.25 felt that my ability to concentrate has decreased, and it coincided with a slight let-up on the pace. However, focusing on high turnover allowed me to regain the momentum. Breathing felt controlled, it was rhythmic but not exhaustingly bothersome like in the first tempo after the surge. Analysis: the increased HR at 3.5 was probably the result of dehydration and rising temperatures - I was over 17 miles into the run, and it was already around 9:00 am. I was actually surprised earlier when I saw that I could maintain sub-5:50 pace with HR below 150 for so long that late into the run. Ran a cool down of 1.38 miles which gave me 20 miles for the whole run. I think I've got my marathon second half slow down figured out. Fuel shortage is nothing more that a conspiring catalyst. It is primarily caused by a weak nervous system. I've heard a cop tell me on several occasions that he got tired watching me run. This form of fatigue is somewhat similar to what that cop experiences. When the fuel is low the neural drive goes down. When the nervous system is naturally it may still be enough to maintain the pace. When it is weaker, this causes a problem. This explains why it is so common for me to let a competitor go between 13 and 16, and even as late as 18 feeling like I could not run even one more mile at that pace, have him gap me enough to be out of sight, but then pass him after 20 miles even though I have slowed down myself. I have plenty of fuel, he has plenty of neural drive. He is running lower than me on fuel, but he can keep the pace because his neural drive is strong. After 13 I have two issues - the neural drive goes down just from the stress on the nervous system itself, plus the fuel runs a bit low which acts as a drive reducing catalyst. No big deal yet for the competitor because his nervous system is strong, he feels good, and knows nothing of his impending doom. I used to be like that when I was running 2:40s. Now, I sense the trouble to the point that I am forced to slow down, I do not have a choice. Then the competitor with his strong nervous system but a less deep gas tank just slams into a wall and cannot break 7:00 while I am still plodding along at 6:00-6:20 pace. This works only for competitors that have not yet built up their gas tank. The moment their gas tank starts working the scenario changes. At 13 all of a sudden I cannot keep their pace. I slow down, they do not. They never run out of fuel and finish ahead.
Now running the second half of TOU with a better than before realization of why I am running slow (and likely why I am getting beat as well) would be quite frustrating. Is there anything I can do about it? That remains to be seen. T4 Racer - 487.93 miles P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:55, 2 with Benjamin in 16:26, Jenny ran the first 1.5 with us in 12:52. Five Fingers - 1227.27 miles
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. A miracle happened. I picked up a copy of the Ensign in the afternoon and started reading it. Normally my eyes start getting tired in half an hour of reading anything, I cannot read for more than half an hour straight. Given the way I was feeling around that time I was expecting my eyes to tire out in 15 minutes. But I read for almost 2 hours and the eyes did not feel tired. I learned a lot. I figure there was something important for me there so the Lord made my eyes strong enough to read it. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.70 | 0.00 | 0.30 | 0.00 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Paced the kids at Onion Days in Payson. Next year I want to have our own Fast Running Blog races. I am tired of supporting raffle jogs. Consider this - with some very rare exceptions every race around here gives away a prize of greater value in a raffle than it does to the overall winner. What kind of message does this send? "We are all winners" -:) ? Why do we even race? Why even bother paying a timing company a thousand bucks to time the race, and then hold an award ceremony? Just bring everybody to the start, fire the gun, jog, everyone is a winner, then go straight to the raffle afterwards. Yes, dealing with the reality that you are in a race you cannot win can be hard. At the start of the Minuteman 5 K it was announced that we would have an opportunity to win some cash. I knew that most of the crowd had a statistical zero chance of beating me, and yet I had a statistical zero chance of getting any cash. So much for the chance. There was no chance. Many runners approached me asking if I was going to win, or if I had won. They were rather shocked when I told them about the statistical zero, or, post-race, materialized zero. They could not comprehend the dreadful reality of that zero. Yet it is in those races if we choose to face our own inadequacy that we develop the strength to push ourselves and improve. Had I not chosen to face that dreadful zero earlier I would still be running 2:40 marathons.
So we went to the race. It was a 5 K. Benjamin ran by himself in 21:56, 20th place overall among men (out of 118 runners), chicked only 6 times (out of 134 runners), not bad for a kid. Splits were 6:45, 7:07, 7:22, 42. Won 1-9 division by over 6 minutes. Probably course record in his division, but they do not keep track of those. Beat everybody in 10-13 division as well. For some reason he was having a slow day. He ran 21:12 on a slower course 4 months ago. Two possibilities - his pants were too long and too moisture absorbing, and that slowed him down in the second half of the race when it started to rain. Or maybe he is just going through a growth spurt, and his cardio is lacking a bit. In any case, 21:56 is quite a respectable time for a 9 year old, so I am not going to worry about it. I paced Jenny while pushing Jacob and Joseph. She was doing well in the first mile and a little after, acting feisty, having fun passing people. First mile in 7:26, a slight downhill. The second mile was a mild uphill, and we started to get some minor headwind as well. She slowed down to 7:54. She caught up to a few adult girls in the third mile and that got her going a bit faster. Her next mile was 7:49. She ran 52 seconds from 3 miles to the finish, which I think was a little long. I ran the course two more times later for the mileage. First time around I hit that stretch in 51 seconds going about 7:20 pace, and second time around 49 seconds going around 6:30 pace (based on the split from 2 to 3). Jenny finished in 24:01, new PR by 1:03. 14th place among women overall. Won her age division (1-9), but the win was dimmed by the fact that there were only two girls running. However, she beat everybody in the 10-13 division as well, and set a course record I imagine - at least I have not seen a faster time in that division in the past. Only 43 out of 118 mostly adult men avoided the fate of being chicked by 8 year old Jenny. Julia paced Marion, sort of. That was a way of finding something productive to do for Julia during the race. I thought that if we gave Julia pacing responsibilities she would be able to mentally handle a 5 K better. They ran together, then Julia took off, then got tired and walked, then Marion caught up to her, then at the end after I had come back Marion picked it up, and Julia started to struggle and fell back a bit. Marion got 30:57. Julia ran 31:12, but she was not officially in the race. Sarah being 32 weeks pregnant ran 34:37, and finished 91st out of 131 women. That is a huge late pregnancy PR for her. She inspired me to create a new concept - virtual pregnancy. You do not have to be a woman to be virtually pregnant. If you are under 50, are not actually pregnant, and cannot break 34:37 in a 5 K, you are virtually pregnant. What is special about Sarah is that she is not a super-athlete. Her all-time 5 K PR is 24:19. So a 34:37 5 K can reasonably be used as some basic health test. If you cannot break it, it is a condition (virtual pregnancy), and it is probably time to make some life style changes. Ran some more mile afterwards to make the total of 12, including running the 5 K course twice. Second time around decided to beat Benjamin's time, picked up the pace a bit, and got 21:22. Had to run 6:30 pace at the end to do it. Noticed that the difference between 6:30 and 7:20 for me is mostly in the focus. 7:20 = light breathing while spacing out, 6:30 = same breathing as 7:20 but a lot more focus. Finished at Marion's house. A.M-2. Michelle had another 4 miles in her, so we plotted against Marion and convinced/tricked her into going with us on a bike for another 4 miles. Just as we got out the door it started raining very hard including hail. Hail always makes me think of a scripture in Helaman 5:12 in the Book of Mormon which basically says that the winds and the hailstorms of the devil have no power of those who build their foundation on Christ. At the end of the run I remember Ted telling me about Bill Dillinger coaching him at Oregon and the surprise challenges at the end of a workout. So I figured Michelle could use one of those, and I challenged her to run hard to the end. Then Marion challenged me to beat her, and that gave me a chance to turn my legs over a bit.
Five Fingers - 1243.27 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.00 | 2.50 | 0.00 | 2.50 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff. 2.62 warm-up. Noticed during the warm-up that I was running faster than normal and not as sleepy. Jeff and I speculated if taking a day off work made a difference. I've had this happen before - neural fatigue, then do not work for an extra day, and all of a sudden feeling the power coming back. And the opposite too - lots of work that requires mental focus, then neural fatigue symptoms full blast. Then 5 mile Vladmir Kuts tempo. Kuts won the Olympic gold in 5000 and 10000 in 1956. In the 10000 he wore out his main competitor Gordon Pirie with a sequence of hard quarter mile long surges. Thus I decided to name this workout in his honor. The plan was to run 90 seconds for the recovery quarters, and as fast as I could in the fast quarters given the recovery constraints. This workout serves multiple purposes: Work on race specific speed. Regular 400 meter repeats work on something else - they teach you to run 400 meters essentially fresh. Starting HR for me would be 100-120. In this workout, starting HR is 150-155, and even as high as 160 in the later intervals. Teach better economy in the marathon pace range. Something happens when you start thinking of 6:00 pace as something you do in between intervals to recover. You run more relaxed, and try to savor every step, and every gasp of breath as if it were your last one. Reboot the nervous system. We play a trick on it. We say, go fast for just a quarter, then it's break time. Somehow this works. All of a sudden it fires harder than it would have otherwise and does not quit. Yet in the end there is not much of a break. The brain just thinks there is going to be a break. And I think the constant jerking tends to wake it up as well. I thought the recent struggles maintaining 5:00 pace for as little as a mile would make consistently averaging 80 a challenge. However, I ended up doing much better than expected. Jeff was in charge of the recovery pace to keep it honest. That helped a lot. He also took charge on the fast quarters, which kept me honest as well. Splits: 89, 75, 89, 75 (5:28), 91, 74, 91, 76 (5:32), 91, 74 (13:45 at the turnaround), 94, 76 (5:35), 89, 77, 90, 76 (5:32), 91, 78, 90, 75 (5:34) - 27:41.2 for 5 miles. This was the fastest time for this tempo since DesNews. On Saturday all I could do running much more evenly paced was 28:06. HR - climbed to 163 at the end of most intervals, back down to 150 at the end of each recovery. On the last one Jeff was yelling at me with a very loud voice to give him five. I did all I could, and this drove HR up to 168.
Afterwards ran a cool down with Jeff to 10.5 total, then 1.5 with Jacob in the stroller, then 2 with Benjamin running and Julia in the stroller in 15:44. We were out of soy milk, so we ran to Albertsons. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:13, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:48 during Benjamin's soccer game at Wasatch elementary. Benjamin's team won 3-0. Jenny lost her bunny. Although she is fast enough to be an asset on your average high school cross country team, she is still only 8 and does get upset about her lost precious bunny. We have an idea of where it may have been left. When we came to look for it later Phil Olsen's son told us he had seen it, and showed us the approximate location, but it was not anywhere near. I looked for it this morning again, and I found just about everything of greater interest for someone to pick up except for Jenny's bunny. Jenny is very upset. There was a cross-country meet going on around that time as well. If you know anything about Jenny's bunny, send us a note. T4 Racer - 501.93 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.28 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.28 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Josse. Paced Josse through 3x2 miles. She ran 13:08, 13:34, 13:30. On the last one she wore my HRM. Interesting HR patterns. She started the interval with HR of 125. It climbed to 165 in 0.5. Then around 1.25 she hit 172. In the last quarter she was able to be consistently over 180, and maxed out at 187. During the cool down her HR hovered in the 145-150 range. So, assuming the HRM was working right, we are looking at a cardio/aerobic power limitation. At least over that interval. It would be interesting to see what her HR does when she crashes around mile 7 of a half-marathon. P.M. -1 Ran 1.03 with Benjamin, Jenny, and Julia to pick up our new van in 10:03. Julia fell back a bit and finished in 10:11. Fueling a CNG vehicle is a different experience. Definitely less convenient, and it takes longer - took about 5 minutes to pump 6.8 gallons, and we had to wait for two people ahead of us to finish since only one pump was working. However, cannot complain about the price. Filled up about half a tank for $5.83. This should be good enough for about 100 miles. And if you do run out of gas you have to be towed. P.M -2: 1 with Benjamin in 8:48 with Jenny joining for the first 0.5 in 4:39. Then 4 miles on the trail to the Utah Lake in the dark in 29:45. I could only hear crickets and my footsteps as I watched the very late stage of the sunset. It was beautiful. The reason I ran out 4 miles was that Joseph wanted to go for a ride in our new van. So Sarah drove to the Utah Lake to pick me up. Noticed how roomy the van was. All that room will come handy during relays. If only we can make sure we do not run out of gas, that is. On the way home we observed an interesting scene. Two cows were being escorted along the road by a pickup truck and two police cars with their lights on. We were stuck behind the procession for a few minutes. Finally the cows made it home, and we were able to resume normal driving.
Five Fingers - 1258.52 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 3.00 | 0.00 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek. The plan was to do 6x1 mile with 200 recovery in 5:20 each. Ran 2.38 warm-up. Did the first one alone in 5:22.0. Splits: 82, 80, 81, 79. HR maxed out at 159, avg. 145. Felt good at 5:25-5:30 pace, but felt like there was an impassable wall at 5:20 pace. Ran the next one with Derek in 5:20.1. Splits: 82, 80, 79, 79. HR avg 152, max 161. Same feeling as in the first one. On the third one (alone) - 5:22.4. Splits: 81, 81, 81, 79. HR - avg. 153, max 164. Same feeling. At this point I realized it was time to stop the workout. It became apparent that the nervous system was already tired at the start of the workout and making it work only made it more tired. Unlike the muscle the nervous system does not overcompensate during recovery. Maybe it would if you could truly rest it, but I do not have that luxury. I have to work to pay the bills, running does not do it. And I have other responsibilities as well. So in essence I should approach this like I would training an injured muscle in the circumstances that required me to use that muscle extensively during the day. The training would need to be of therapeutic nature. Ran some more with Derek to 8 miles, and then another 3 by myself. T4 Racer - 513.93 miles
P.M. 1.5 with Benjamin in 13:26 (he was not feeling well), 1.5 with Jenny in 13:17, and 1 with Julia in 11:00. Pushed Jacob. Five Fingers - 1262.52 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.50 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Tyler, Matt, and Nick McCombs. Total of 12 miles in 1:32:47. Picked up in the last half mile for a neural drive test. Ran 84,81 (2:45) flat terrain, HR got up to 152. Felt energized in the second quarter and felt like I could hold that pace forever. The breathing was deep and vigorous, but at the same time pleasant and sustainable. Did an experiment with Nick and Tyler. Tyler weighs about 140-145 lb, so essentially my weight. Nick weighs 115-120 lb. I arm wrestled both, and lost within 5 seconds both times. Asked both about their arm training activity. Tyler does push-ups once a week, Nick does not do anything. To add more data to this - last spring I arm wrestled Jeff (125 lb, no consistent arm training either) and lost in about 20-30 seconds. The results confirm my suspicion that there is something more going on than just untrained arms. Some more food for thought. Around the age of 9 and up until 11 I was tied with another kid in a group of 20 boys in the tennis ball throw. This was not just a one time thing - we threw the tennis ball about once a month in our PE classes. What is interesting is that while I was a skinny kid, the other was not that skinny. And he found himself at the rear in all forms of fitness tests. The average kid of my build would out-throw me by 50%, while there was one in that group that out-threw me by 100%. That same kid was number one in all fitness tests including distance running and cross-country skiing. So in short, the hypothesis is that Quality X correlates with the ability to produce a lot of coordinated quick force per muscle mass in any muscle in the body without having to train it. So you could predict somebody's distance running potential fairly accurately with the following tests: make sure they have enough slow-twitch fibers, then make sure they do not have any inherent cardiovascular weaknesses or defects, and then have them throw a tennis ball and prorate the throw distance for body weight. Crazy idea - yes. But I think one day it will be proven right.
Another twist on it. If you stipulate slow twitch fiber dominance among the competitors, and prorate the throw distance for body weight and arm size, my predictions is that guys like Wanjiru and Bekele would have a shot at winning the world competition in the tennis ball throw. You can run low 2:20s in the marathon off pure aerobic power with a below average neurological explosiveness, but to run under 2:06 you need to be explosive. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:48, 1.5 alone in 11:53, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:16. Five Fingers - 1278.52 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Race: |
Spanish Fork Half Marathon (13.11 Miles) 01:13:55, Place overall: 1 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 5.50 | 0.00 | 13.11 | 0.00 | 18.61 |
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A.M. Spanish Fork Half Marathon, 1:13:55, first place. Originally was planning on running Peruvian Lodge, but it conflicted with a church meeting in the afternoon which I did not want to miss. I figured a half marathon would be a good for marathon preparation anyway. And we had a comp that would have gone to waste otherwise. Plus I had not yet won any races this year. So I guess I was like an injured tiger that cannot catch quick antelopes anymore and goes for easier meat. Also, this half is a loop course, no downhill. I always wonder and estimate what my downhill performances are worth on a loop course. This would be a good chance to get a less disputable measurement. I say "less disputable" because race directors make no claim of course certification, and I do not have any knowledge of that course being certified. However, I saw some signs of a diligent effort to ensure correct length. All mile splits made perfect sense. I also noticed that mile 2 of the 5 K was at the exact same spot as mile 11 of the half, while the finish of the 5 K was marked a few meters before the finish of the half. This is how it is supposed to be - the distance from mile 2 of the 5 K to the finish is about 4 meters longer than the distance from mile 11 of the half to the finish. It was comforting to know that the race directors cared enough to pay attention to that detail, they were not rounding it off to 0.1 of a mile. But regardless, past performances on this course have established a standard. So in some respects it did not matter if the course was exact. We had the following benchmark times: Dennis Simonaitis 1:12:53 (2005), Mike Kirk 1:14:33 (2004), Chris Rogers 1:16:08 (2007), Chad Derum 1:17:42 (2007). The race website reports also that Trevor Pettingill ran 1:08:31 in 2003. I also know that Matt Harmer ran 1:11 in the same race. This sounds suspicious. Although both were in good shape around that time, neither of them had a performance of comparable quality. Trevor ran 1:09:57 a couple of weeks earlier in the Great Salt Lake Half, which has a net drop of 100 feet and a couple of short hills in the last 2 miles. Trevor that year hit what my predictor said he would within 20 seconds in every other race with the exception of St. George - the predictor said he would have run 2:19:23 while his actual time was 2:20:35, and Alta Peruvian lodge which is so weird of a race that the predictor is off quite often. Matt had run the Great Salt Lake half in 1:13:38 (I think), and was on the upswing getting into better shape, but I still find it questionable that he would have been capable of a 1:11 on the 2007/2008 course. Sounds like a different course, or a wrong turn.
The site also reports that Rolando Sanjinez ran 1:14:15 in 2006. That one is particular suspicious. That same year he ran 1:13:29 in Hobblecreek. An equivalent performance on this course would have been around 1:19-1:20. He also never in his entire racing history reported by Athlinks.Com produced a performance anywhere near in quality to that time, not even in a 10 K. There is no way somebody could gain a 5 minute improvement in the half in two weeks after racing consistently for a month at the same level in a 10 K. At the same time, Tony Vakaafi ran 1:12:55 in Hobblecreek that year, and 1:17:58 in the Spanish Fork Half, which does make sense. That sounds like Rolando may have taken a wrong turn. Dennis, Mike, Chris, and Chad appear to have legitimate times relative to each other and consistent with their performance levels that year. So I figured I'd use those times as a guide and dismiss the dubious ones.
Warmed up 2.5 some by myself, and some with Tom. With no surprise appearances at the start (aside
from myself) I was racing three virtual runners (Dennis, Mike, and
Chris) and one real - Chad was here to represent himself, and he was
in better shape as well leaving me no room for the neural fatigue
garbage. From Provo River Half and from the second leg of Wasatch Back I knew that when the neural fatigue hits me, Chad is faster. So it was important to avoid neural fatigue at least for the first half of the race. I had an expectation not to hit any based on how I felt and what I did the day before, but I was not 100% sure. Neurological Sasha Science is still very much in development and quite error prone. Ron Greenwood asked me how fast I was going to run it. I said based on my analysis I should be around 1:14-1:15. I came to the race with my home family in our natural gas 15 passenger van. With it being our recent purchase I am still quite excited about the idea of CNG. So when I smelled the fumes from the lead motorcycle I remarked that it should be converted to natural gas. We had a pack for the first 2 minutes or so, and then I started to pull away. However, while crossing a busy road about 0.5 or so into the race there was an incident. There was no police protection, and a bus was coming full speed. I waved to the bus hoping it would stop. The driver either did not notice me, or did not care and kept blasting full speed. So I had no choice except use the skills I learned in Moscow while crossing the Moscow Belt Route (a 4-lane highway) on a daily basis - run on the road in the direction opposite of the bus, and as soon as it passed me and I was behind it, dash across the road. This allowed Chad to catch up, but he did not stay with me. Mile splits are based on the race mile markers. Knowing those would be reliable from the last year race reports I did not bring a GPS. First mile split - 5:37. I think we climbed some, but it was subtle. I lost about 3-4 seconds on the bus. Chris had 5:52 last year. Not feeling overexerted, but neurologically just staying a little bit below the red line. I know something about that red line - you cross it, and the race is over. The challenge is to sense it since I could cross it without breathing very hard. But I think I am learning. Mile 2 - 5:40. More uphill. Happy to still have 3 seconds on the 5:40 guy. Knowing what's up ahead I knew I would need every one of those seconds. Good news - ran uphill breathing energetically, but without perceived neural overexertion. That is a sign of the neurological health and bodes well for the rest of the race. Mile 3 - 5:46. Still uphill. Not very steep. Still feeling good. Quick relaxed stride. Moving as fast as I can without crossing the red line. Mile 4 - 5:43. Not bad considering the steep rhythm breaking bump in the middle. But the rest of it was flat, that helped. Hit the red line briefly on the bump, but did not go over. The bump did not bother me very much otherwise, recovered quickly. Another good sign. Only 6 seconds behind the 5:40 guy after the bump mile, and based on what I heard the next mile is faster, looking forward to it.
Mile 5 - 5:33. The reports were verified. This was a good mile. Had a slight barely noticeable downhill for a portion. I did not notice it until I had to come back, though. Shows how biased the human mind is in the area of recognizing blessings vs adversity. I wondered why I was able to move my legs so quick without much effort all of a sudden. A church hymn came into my mind during this mile. My favorite one - A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief. I find it interesting how a slow tune can help a fast pace. The tune might be slow, but the message is deep, and thus it brings the power. Happy to be 1 second ahead of the 5:40 guy.
Mile 6 - 5:47. Started with a slight down (I think), but then there was a steep bump, and maybe it was more than a bump. There goes my lead over the 5:40 guy, but he better watch out because I am feeling good, and we'll be dropping elevation on the way back. Mile 7 - 5:54. Steeper climb. Slowest mile of the race, but I was expecting that from the race reports. Felt strong on the uphill. Hit the red line, but not for long enough to go over it. The 5:40 guy is laughing at me about his 20 seconds lead. I am shaking my fist at him in hopes of a quick revenge now that we are that highest point of the course. Mile 8 - 5:28. Downhill, finally. But too abrupt which made it too short. Now done with the loop, running the course backwards, and seeing the crowd going in the opposite direction. Recognized a couple of people in the crowd - Kim Lee, and Josse's mom. I am sure there were more that I should have recognized as people were greeting me by name. My face recognition ability does not work very well at race pace. The 5:40 guy now has only 8 seconds, but still is hoping to hold me off. Better give him a name - I think his name is Mike Kirk, aka Virtual Mike.
Mile 9 - 5:40. No downhill, that is my excuse for not closing on Virtual Mike. He is laughing at me, looking back, and poking out his tongue. In the meantime Virtual Dennis is feeling pretty safe.
Mile 10 - 5:39. Seeing the uphill in front of me, realizing what helped me run 5:33 going the other way, and being tired of Virtual Mike's teasing I pressed a bit harder, but still a tad under the red line. Then we did the mile 4 bump backwards, and I floored it on the down-bump to steal a second from Virtual Mike on a slow mile that he hoped to gap me on. Mile 11 - 5:36. Virtual Mike is concerned. His lead is down to 3 seconds, I am gaining momentum, there is downhill up ahead, and there will also be a kick. He is hoping for sudden neural fatigue which can happen, but we would need some uphill for that, and there is not much except for a little bump with about half a mile to go. Mile 12 - 5:35. Virtual Mike has been passed, and I think now has lost all hope. Virtual Dennis is out of reach, but sub-1:14 is not. If I finish in 1:13:something, he will not laugh so hard at me looking down from his 1:12:53 podium. Saw the 5 K crowd going the other direction. They started exactly 1 hour after we did. So the ones that are faster than 6:00 mile could possibly be catching some half-marathoners, the ones that are in that range could possibly be racing them, and the ones that are much slower will be getting passed by half marathoners. Interesting situation. So the 1:18 guys could possibly have some fun racing Holly Hagerman. She ended up chicking the field with 18:51, and she is a master. How about that - the entire field got chicked by a master! First time I've heard of something like this in any race anywhere. To add injury to insult, a good portion of the field got virtually impregnated (for lack of a better term) and strollered as well by Jennifer Hughes who ran 24:50 while 29 weeks pregnant (I think) and pushing a stroller. Fast ladies live in Woodland Hills, Michelle has some good company.
Mile 13 - 5:28. Trying to dip under 1:14. Spent most of the mile making a promise to myself to floor it no matter where I was once my watch said 1:13:00. Tried to shift gears several times, but there was not much of a movement. Lived true to my promise at 1:13:02 but still felt like there was not much of a go in the legs. Saw 1:13:26 at 13 miles. Need only 34 seconds for the kick. Not hard assuming mile 13 is in the right place, but if it is a little off it may be a challenge. Assume it is off and on the wrong side, pedal down the floor, but the engine feels maxed out already. Close my eyes, try to not be distracted. Also this mental game of seeing the finish line closer suddenly once you open your eyes works wonders. They have a tape stretched out and everything, full show. Benjamin comes to help and starts racing me towards the tape. Several thoughts go through my head - his 100 meter PR from last spring is 17.7, he is fresh, and I do not want to get beat to the tape by my 9-year-old son! So I was able to find another gear and pull away from him a little bit. The kick was 30 seconds by my watch (4:34 pace), which gave me 1:13:56, but my official time was 1:13:55. I am glad my stomach was empty and I did not take anything in during the race. After I finished I started making the throw up motions with my throat but nothing came out. Could not wait for anything, had to get dressed and get going ASAP to take Benjamin to his soccer game, and then help Curt with the Provo Marathon. Benjamin's team won 5-1. T4 Racer - 529.53 miles
P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:18, 2 with Benjamin in 16:45 with Jenny running the first 1.5 in 12:44. Five Fingers - 1281.52 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Caught up on sleep. My body really needed it after getting up at 5:00 AM the day before and no nap. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 11.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.50 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Ran 6 with Derek, then 6 alone. Total time for 12 was 1:29:48. Did a 0.5 pickup with the splits of 81,78 (2:39) to test neural drive. Got good feedback. The pace felt tempo-natural, I did not feel like I had to force it. The breathing felt energetic, but not out of control. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:34, 1 pushing Jacob in 7:57, 2 with Benjamin in 16:40 still pushing Jacob. Jenny joined us for the first 1.5 in 13:13.
Five Fingers - 1298.52 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.60 | 0.70 | 0.70 | 0.00 | 12.00 |
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A.M. 6 with Tyler and Derek, then 6 more alone. Was originally planning on 6x1 mile but did not get good sleep last night because of itching. Did not want to stress the weakened nervous system, so canceled the workout. But it must have been doing as bad as I thought. Towards the end of the run I started feeling edgy and picked it up to 6:00 pace for about 0.7 to calm down the neighing horses. Then I felt like another pickup and decided to do a tempo quarter. Hit in 82, still felt energetic, did another one in 81. The second one was rather obstructed - I had to go under a bridge, uphill around a corner, then a 90 degree turn and some rough road. Then with about 0.2 to go I was itching to do a stride. Once I started the stride it felt good so I decided to keep that pace to the end. This gave me an 86 quarter in spite of running slow in the beginning. Nevertheless, I still think not doing the mile workout was a good idea. Those neighing horses are often just on the surface. You push for a few miles hard, they stop neighing, and you feel flat. Save the energy for another day. Total time for 12 was 1:29:26. While I was itching last night and could not get to sleep I decided to call my dad in Russia. We had a good talk. We talked about many things including the perceptions Russians have of the United States. While talking to him a thought hit me. America has two faces. A beautiful face of service and an ugly face of greed. Our ability to get along with other nations depends on which one of those faces they are able to see. As a teenager I found myself on the side of America because I was able to see that face of service. The time was right and God's blessing was there. However, not everybody will live in that time and will have the same blessing. A sure way to improve our ability to get along is to completely get rid of the ugly face of greed. We must do in on an individual level. We must decide today to control our appetites, serve with all of our hearts, and do so consistently, without exceptions, excuses, or skipping. If we do that, everybody, not just select few, it will have an effect of solving most foreign policy issues naturally without even trying. If we do not, we deserve all of the problems, and it would not be right for us to expect those problems to be solved until we are committed to changing ourselves. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:52, 0.5 with Benjamin in 4:09. Then 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny. We found a potential running partner on the trail - Tyler Carr. He turned out to be a Russian speaker as well, so he and I chatted mostly in Russian. Benjamin needed to go the bathroom towards the end of the run, so he picked it up. This gave him 12:43 for 1.5 and 16:52 for 2 miles total. Jenny and I finished 1.5 in 12:53. Ran another mile with Tyler. Pushed Jacob in the stroller. Five Fingers - 1314.52 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 6.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.70 | 3.00 | 0.80 | 0.00 | 18.50 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Derek, Michelle, and Josse. Michelle did 4K - 3K - 2K - 1K workout with 200 recoveries. We took a longer recovery between 2K and 1K because she was losing steam a bit in the 2 K. Her times were 15:32.1, 11:12.7, 7:34.1, and 3:28.7. That longer recovery helped for 1 K. She still could not get her HR over 180 no matter what she did, and could not hold it consistently over 176. Yet as high as it is when she jogs, she should be able to push it into 185-190 range at least. Josse did a fun workout without a watch joining us for portions of the intervals. Total of 15.5 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:47, 2 with Benjamin in 16:22, first 1.5 had Jenny with us, the time was 12:43. Five Fingers - 1333.02 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.25 | 0.00 | 2.25 | 0.00 | 16.50 |
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A.M. Ran alone. Jeff and Derek were supposed to come at 5:30 AM, but neither showed up. The plan was to try 6x1 mile but back out if I sensed trouble. Warmed up 4 miles. Ran the first repeat in 5:20.8 and it felt harder than it should have. On the second one (5:22.5) it became clear the nervous system was not up to it. The lungs felt lazy, and the legs felt like cotton. It was still dark at that point. I jogged a couple of miles waiting for the sun to rise, and decided to see if maybe it was just the lack of light - start an interval, finish it if sub-5:20 pace started coming naturally, otherwise stop as soon as it became clear things were not any better. They were not any better - I ran a quarter in 82 and did not feel like going any faster. Ran easy the rest of the way. Total of 12 miles. Got home, and then ran 2 more with Benjamin in 15:47. He ran his standard 0.5 in 3:02. My normal approach in the past when I had a speed workout planned has been to force my way through it regardless of how I felt. I decided to make a change to that. I will reserve the heroic effort for races. If a workout is not going well, I will give it some time to make sure it is not a lack of warm-up, and once it becomes clear there is a problem, then bag it. My thinking is that if the body does not want to run hard it will not become stronger from running hard. T4 Racer - 543.53 miles P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:59, and then 1.5 with Jenny in 13:03 during Benjamin's soccer practice. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.25 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.05 | 0.00 | 4.00 | 0.00 | 16.05 |
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A.M. Ran 12 miles total, 6 miles with Tyler. Decided to test the neural drive and run a control mile. Ran the last mile of the standard 5 mile tempo course in 5:19.8. That one is a slow mile - direction difference is 7 seconds and I ran it in the slow direction. Felt decent. The breathing was energetic, but not bothersome. Legs felt some initiative. So I decided to do a 3 mile tempo towards the end of my run once I dropped off Tyler. Ran 3 mile tempo from 7.62 to 10.62 into the run. Out and back course - to 1.5 of the 5 mile tempo, and then back. So about 8 second terrain difference between first and second half, second half slower. Splits: 81, 81, 81, 81 (5:24), 82, 83 (pre-180 turn, 8:09 first half), 84, 82 (5:31), 82, 83, 82, 79 (5:26). Total time 16:21.9. HR: after the first mile hovered around 157. Then climbed up to 160. On the last quarter hit 168. Subjective: felt very controlled up until 1.5. The turnaround knocked me out of rhythm, but I recovered OK. Felt energetic, but could run a faster pace. Fast pace made the legs feel sour (cannot kick, but can hold the pace for a while) vs led (like at the end of an all out 800 meters).
Thoughts: I think the problem today was the muscles were not relaxing in time. Which made it hard to run 80 second quarters or faster. The power aspect of the neural drive was OK, I think. I could push HR to 168. However, that HR should have produced a 76 second quarter, not a 79, based on being able to hit 82s at HR below 163. Around 80 second pace I was hitting the limit of how fast the muscle could relax, which is why it was so hard. T4 Racer - 555.53 miles P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:22, 2 with Benjamin in 16:50, first 1.5 had Jenny with us (13:07), then 1.05 alone in 7:08. Five Fingers - 1337.07 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.00 | 7.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 19.00 |
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A.M. Went to our ward camp-out in the Hobble Creek Canyon. Did not get good sleep. My nose was cold. Decided to cut the run short and not push to hard to avoid putting the body over the edge and getting sick. Ran to the start of the Hobble Creek Half Marathon, then to mile 8, then back to the Cherry Campground. Total of 16 miles in 1:47:56. Picked up to about 5:45 pace from mile 1 of the half to 8. Then when I turned around and did not have the downhill anymore I did not feel motivated to push and just jogged at about 7:30 pace. Not surprising given only 3 hours of sleep in spite of 7 hours of attempted sleep. Saw a few runners, more runners than cars, that is a good sign. I think I even saw Michelle and Josse, they were going the other way with two other runners who I did not recognize in the dark. I would not have recognized Michelle and Josse either except by their voices. Afterwards had to hustle to Benjamin's soccer game. Little did I realize how long it could take to take a tent down, especially if you've never done it before. Fortunately I was wise enough to ask a more experienced fellow ward member for help early enough, so we were able to make it to the game on time. Benjamin's team played the team from our old neighborhood, and lost 1-3. T4 Racer - 571.53 miles P.M. Special occasion. Jenny got baptized. Sarah and I gave talks, and then I baptized and confirmed her. Remembered my own baptism in 1992. Interestingly enough it happened that I was baptized in a pond in Moscow that I used to circle during my runs. I did not choose the location, though.
Later in the evening, ran 1 mile with Julia in 9:42, and 2 with Benjamin in 15:32 with Jenny running first 1.5 in 11:51. Considered running a few more, but decided to play it safe and not fatigue the body excessively. I do not want to get sick. Five Fingers - 1340.07 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 3.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 4.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Went to church. Sarah spoke in the Sacrament Meeting, played the flute for a musical number, and substituted in Primary, all while 8 months pregnant. She thought she had a break compared to playing the organ. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.50 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.75 | 0.00 | 1.25 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Tyler. Did a control 1 mile in 5:19.2. Same stretch as Friday, last mile of the 5 mile tempo course. Felt good. Energetic breathing was not bothersome and felt sustainable. No sour legs. One concern - legs felt slightly weak at the end, would have needed to go longer to find out if this was a problem, but did not want to go over the edge. Plus to go further I would have had to hit some nasty segments - under the bridge, sharp turns, rough trail, and it would have skewed the measurements. Dropped Tyler off after 6.25, and went for another 3.75. Shortly before the turnaround saw a runner being pulled by a dog. Decided I wanted to get to know him, and also decided I wanted to have enough time to get to know him, so I needed to run pretty quick. So I hit a quarter in 78 to catch up. His name turned out to be Erny Perry. We had a nice chat. Five Fingers - 1350.07 miles A.M -2. Julia set a mile record - 8:17. Splits: 2:07, 2:08, 2:05, 1:57. She was conversational up until the last quarter. So I figure if she had the ability to focus she would have run a sub-8:00. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:09, Jenny ran first 1.5 in 13:10. Five Fingers - 1352.07 miles
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.88 | 0.00 | 1.62 | 0.00 | 12.50 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek and Tyler for the first 6 miles. Did my neural drive test/avoid taper cramp tempo. Decided a good distance would be 1.5. Derek ran it with me, Tyler went ahead while I visited a VPB and Derek stretched. We started at the start of the 5 mile tempo course.
We started out slow - first 200 in 41. Probably due to a short warmup, and still not much sunlight. Then we picked it up and hit half mile in 2:39, and the mile in 5:15 (2:36). The second half was definitely aided, not sure by how much, but not by a whole lot. Maybe 3 seconds. I know, however, that the whole mile going the other way is 7 seconds slower. Based on the 2:1 rule ( twice as much loss in the anti-aided direction than the gain in the aided direction, good rule of thumb to determine a flat equivalent) this would make it about 2 seconds of help and about 5 seconds of hindrance in the opposite direction. After that we eased off a bit and hit the next quarter in 80. Then we were confused because we still could not see Tyler. I suggested we run another 200 still on pace in hopes of catching him before the 3 mile turnaround from my house. So we did that. However, having to talk caused a bit of a loss of focus, and we ran the next quarter in 81. And then 41 for the last 200. I think both of us were still confused by Tyler's mysterious disappearance. We finished 1.625 in 8:37 (5:18 average pace), and soon found Tyler. Turned out he had stopped for a VPB. Ran back, then added 2 with Benjamin in 15:45, and 2 without him in 14:56. Pushed Jacob in the stroller during that part of the run. T4 Racer - 581.53 miles P.M. Went to Benjamin's soccer game. They won 3-1. Later, 1 with Julia in 11:47, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:52.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.75 | 0.75 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 12.75 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff this morning. It was supposed to be an uneventful run, but it was not so. The pace was very uneventful due to the darkness and the early hour of the day. The slow pace reduced the clearance between my feet and the ground which is naturally low to begin with, the conversation distracted me from paying attention to the footing, and the darkness compounded the danger. So I clipped a bump in the road and went down. Got up right away thinking no big deal, a couple of scrapes, and started running. However, a few steps down the road I noticed I started to feel dizzy and uncomfortable, like I could not get enough air, even though I was not hyperventilating. I told Jeff I needed to stop for a minute. He figured out right away what happened and asked me if I had hit the ground with my chest, which I did. He said this had happened to him before once when he was playing freeze tag. At the same time I remembered an incident a few years ago when a hockey player was hit in a chest with a puck and died on the spot due the heart stopping. This gave me a concern, but with Jeff's survival story, and the fact that I was still conscious and able to move and reason, I felt a measure of comfort and confidence that this would turn out to be no big deal. Things got a bit worse for a minute - I felt I needed to lay down, and I felt my heart doing one hard thump, and then an awkward pause. So obeyed my instinct and laid down. Then after about 20 seconds I felt an urge to walk, and I obeyed that instinct as well. After about 10 seconds of walking I felt ready to run. For about a quarter mile I still felt a bit nauseous but after that normal for the rest of the run. We spent a good portion of the remainder of the run discussing how fast Jeff could have gotten the ambulance to get to that section of the trail. Decided 20 minutes would have been very good. Had this been more serious by that time I would have been having a good time with my relatives in the spirit world. Dropped Jeff off at 7.25, and went for 3 more. Did a tempo pickup for a mile in 5:37. Could not get going until the last quarter - had the fear of hitting another bump on the trail and that made me too cautious to break 5:40 pace for a while. Finally I overcame that fear and hit a 1:20 quarter. Five Fingers - 1362.32 miles P.M. 1.08 with Julia in 10:29, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 15:04. We took it easy because Benjamin got hurt playing soccer and his shin was hurting.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.50 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 12.50 |
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A.M. Ran with Tyler and Derek. Tyler asked me about the conflict between Russia and Georgia. That got me thinking about my repertoire of Georgian/Russian interaction jokes, and they heard a couple. Then I went on to Brezhnev jokes. Then it was time for the fast mile. We ran it from mile 3Derek ran it with me. We did 81, 78, 78, 79 - 5:16.5. I felt strong, did not have to focus so hard on maintaining the pace, felt like I could probably hit the first half of TOU in 1:10-1:11 with favorable winds in the canyon. Dropped them off a 7 and ran another 3. Five Fingers - 1372.32 miles P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:38, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:10. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 9.25 | 0.25 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 10.50 |
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A.M. Ran 8 miles alone. Did my taper cramp prevention/neural drive test mile in 5:19.8. Ran it from 3 to 4 of the 5 mile tempo course. Splits were 79, 81, 79, 80. Felt OK, but not great. However, was holding 5:20 pace without too much struggle, and no sour legs. Just did not have the zap and neighing horses. Decided to do a quarter at marathon pace effort. Ran it from 200 to go to 200 past finish on the tempo course. This involves a sharp uphill curve coming from under the bridge under Geneva road. Thought from the zap feedback in the legs that I was headed for about 87-88, but was pleasantly surprised to see 84.6. Jogged home, and ran a mile with Julia in 10:46. P.M. 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:15.
T4 Racer - 590.53 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Race: |
Top of Utah Marathon (26.22 Miles) 02:33:47, Place overall: 3 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 5.30 | 26.22 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 31.52 |
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A.M. Quick report. Top of Utah Marathon 2:33:47, 3rd place behind Ezekiel Ruto (2:22:57), and Nick McCombs (2:28:42), who incidentally ran the exact same time I did last year, except last year we had good tail wind, but this year we did not. $250, back in the top 3 and real money (as opposed to $50 age division consolation cash). Nothing special I did this time except come to the race fit to run reasonably fast. Last year I put on a better performance, but it was not good enough. So in a way I cashed out on it this year. The run put me in the 10 year TOU club which consists of only 16 people. In those 10 years I won twice, took one second place, four thirds, one fourth, and two fifths. My average time has been 2:34:02 with 2:27:46 being the fastest, and 2:39:12 the slowest. My average place has been third, exactly 3.0. So I suppose today was as close to average as I could get. An interesting way to celebrate the tenth anniversary of running the race. Drove up alone in my Fast Running Van (Dogde Ram CNG). It was cheaper to drive than Zhu (Ford Escort Wagon). The whole trip from Provo to Logan and back cost me around $14. Stayed at Hotel de Petersen, my usual lodging place in Logan, thanks Paul and Stacey. Ran a short warm-up to the bus, and some more to shake up the bowels at the start, total of about 1.5. For stretching climbed the fence several times. This was going to be a multiple star race, according to Paul's recent definition. The temperature was great, maybe only too humid. The wind in the canyon was a mild head/cross. So I knew from experience we were headed for non-spectacular times, maybe 2:31 for me if I was on top of the game, 2:32-2:33 otherwise. Ezekiel Ruto took off and was gone. His first mile must have been around 5:00. I figured he was going after the sub-2:20 bonus and the course record. He would have needed a break though to pull it off today. So I figured maybe it is good that he is gone so fast, maybe he'd come back. But the hopes were slim. At least slimmer for me than for Nick. I had to worry about not coming back myself to a possible dark horse to keep my money. First mile was 5:31, then 5:40, then 5:30, 5:34, and 5:36 - 27:51 at 5 miles. The effort was the same. I was running with Nick, Eric Held, and our blogger Steve Cuttitta. Steve dropped back after about the first mile. Eric stayed with us until around mile 7. We chatted some. Nick and I showed Eric the backs of our shirt for the FRB commercial. Let's hope the effort was not wasted. Mile 6 was 5:39, 34:42 at 10 K. The pace feels just right, although the splits are quite slow. That's OK, who cares. The subsequent mile markers, at least some of them were in the wrong place. The pace was very steady, but the splits were very odd. Nevertheless we hit mile 10 in 55:36, 13 in 1:12:58, and made it to the half in 1:13:34. Next two miles were good - 5:29, and 5:35, 1:24:04 at 15. However, I started losing steam and lost contact with Nick at the aid stations at 15. This did not bother me too much since I was doing my best. I decided there is no such thing as a slow or a bad split in a race if that was your true honest best that day. Maybe slower than you expected, but you need to learn to be sufficiently humble to take what your body gives you and not get depressed. Next two miles were all right - 5:51 and 5:50. Nick gapped me by 22 seconds. Then mile 18 in 5:54, and now Nick is 40 seconds ahead. How did he do that? Now the hills. Next mile in 6:13. Not great but acceptable. Followed by 6:19. Now that was very non-spectacular, but that's what the body gave me. 1:54:10 at 20. Nick was around 1:52:50. Not surprising, as slow as I was running he should be gapping me fast. Hoped to run 5:55 on the next downhill (1%) mile. 6:06 instead. 2:00:16 at 21. OK, here comes Kot Bayun, a cat from Russian fairy tales that disables its would-be attackers by putting them to sleep with magic. I'll be fighting him for the next 5 miles. Next 5 miles are rolling, no net elevation drop, lots of turns. Bad place to have Kot Bayun around. Let's see if I can get Bayun off my back with a surge. Try running hard for one minute. No, does not work. He has a death grip on me. I am feeling OK, but the legs just do not want to move. I try to move them quicker only to be lulled by the soothing songs of my enemy Bayun. It feels like a dream when you try to run away from danger, you are not tired, but for the life of you you cannot move your legs. Saw Paul, Cody, and Jon on their way to pickup and escort Andy. Next two miles in 6:30 each. 2:13:16 at 23. This is embarrassing. At least not as bad as in 2005 when I was slower than 7:00 on the downhill mile. Got a short outburst of rain. I liked it for 10 seconds, then I did not like it any more. However it seemed to shake Bayun up a little bit. Maybe in St. George I should ask somebody to stand at the top of the Winchester hill with a twig, or better, some freshly picked nettles, and whip me. Did not feel power loss on the uphill at the end of mile 25. That is a good sign. Missed my splits at 24 and 25, 26 miles in 2:32:30, 6:24.7 average. OK, now press hard, break 2:34, beat the 40:00 guy for the last 10 K, in general minimize the bummer. As I was coming in through the chute they announced, and I remembered that I had this race 10 times by now, and I also remembered that my worst performance both in terms of time and place had been 2:39:12 for 5th (2005). That put things in perspective, and cheered me up a bit. 1:17 for the kick, 5:52 pace, not bad for the uphill with Bayun on the back. Life after death: Walked around a bit, chatted with Nick, drank some Gatorade, ate a banana, then started walking towards Paul's house. Realized it would be a long walk, so I started jogging. Cheered Steve Cuttitta, Albert Wint, and Eric Held as they were finishing. Great race for Albert - 2:42:25, a new PR. Albert has a challenge. He is missing a flap in his aortic valve. Shows that a respectable marathon is possible even with a bad heart. Eric PR'ed as well, and was the first finisher from Logan, hopefully a treadmill for him if NordicTrack did not back out. Then cheered Ben VanBeekum and Bill Cobler. Jason Shoenfield was right behind Bill, so I used that to scare Bill into a good kick. Jogging started to feel better, the back was a bit stiff at first, but then I warmed it up. Saw Andy being escorted by the crew, considered joining them, but felt too lazy, too wet, and too anxious to get changed. My watch was still going. Got to Paul's house about 2:56 into the race, and a devious plan entered my mind. I wanted to qualify for Boston! I will be clocked by the time I get out of the shower. I've qualified before (Rocket City 2003) by the time I was driving, but I did not shower then. And I did not have to run very far to get changed - my clothes were at the finish, and I changed in the bathroom of a nearby hotel. And I did not shower. My time then was 3:02 (2:37:25 in the actual race), did not get the seconds. The reason for the hurry was that I needed to get to the airport. So this one would be a lot more challenging, I like long showers, especially after a marathon. So I hurried as fast as I could, and made it out of the shower by 3:05:37. I even beat my first marathon time (3:05:51). Another challenge. Can I BQ by the time I am driving? Hurried again, gathered my stuff as quick as I could, and ran out to the van. 3:09:33. I was up for another challenge. I remembered than now that I am 35 they give me extra 5 minutes to qualify. Well, if they give that, I am not going to waste it. Decided to try to BQ by the time I pull up to the pump at LW's gas station. A small traffic jam and a couple of red lights made it a real challenge, but I made it by 3:15:53. T4 Racer - 619.05 miles P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:45, 2 with Benjamin in 17:44, Jenny ran the last 1.5 in 13:16.
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Night Sleep Time: 6.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Caught up on sleep. A neighbor knocked on our door and wanted to come to church with us. So we took him. It was his first time since he was 11. He had a good time. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 11.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.71 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 15.21 |
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A.M. Easy 10.1 this morning in 1:14:51. Was supposed to have 4 training partners, but none showed up. I told Sarah this is exactly why I can win money in marathons. If everybody I ever invited to run with me showed up every time to train, and then showed up at a race, I'd have no chance without some serious Quality X fixes. Legs felt slightly stale, but the neural drive was good. Around 6 miles into the run I heard neighing horses and decided to let them loose until they stopped neighing, but no longer than half a mile. Ran a quarter in 81 followed by 79, 2:40 for 0.5. They were still neighing to go more, but I told them to be quiet. The breathing was energetic. The legs were slightly stale but not sour. I heard that the Eskimos have 50 different words for snow. Well, runners should have about as many words to describe different feelings during a run. If everybody ran a lot, maybe the vocabulary would be richer, but for now I have to settle for inventing my own terms - stale, sour, snappy, zappy, energetic breathing, attacked by Kot Bayun, etc. P.M. 1.06 with Julia in 11:15, 2 with Benjamin in 17:50, Jenny joined for the first 1.5 in 13:18. Swimming at Provo Rec, then ran back (2.05 in 15:54). Five Fingers - 1387.53 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.02 | 1.00 | 4.00 | 0.00 | 16.02 |
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A.M. Ran with Tyler and Derek. Total of 12 miles. Did a 5 mile tempo alone on my standard course after 5.38 warm-up. Splits: 5:44 - 5:38 - 5:43 - 5:42 - 5:43. Total time 28:30, out in 14:12, back in 14:18. No staleness in the muscles, but some serious issues with the neural drive. In the last 3 miles the legs utterly refused to run any faster than 5:42 pace. Kot Bayun had his day and kept me under his spell. Probably still out of fuel from the marathon. Total time for 12 miles was 1:21:29. Immediately afterwards added 2 with Benjamin in 17:15. I wish I could run a marathon so that I would not be able to run for a week afterwards. Why? Because it would be 2:10. T4 Racer - 633.05 miles A.M-2: 1.52 with Jenny in 15:08 with Julia running the first 1.02 in 10:41. P.M. 0.5 to Steve's Crest to get the Fast Running Van. It had a problem with power windows that got fixed under warranty.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 16.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.10 |
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A.M. 12 miles in 1:31:49. First 7 with Tyler, Jeff, and Derek. Quite a crew for 5:15 AM. Thought of the day - you have to have a license to fish, and to drive, but you do not have to have one to buy alcohol. Even in the Soviet Union, an exceptionally bureaucratic state (wow managed to spell this one right on the first try, and just thought of a mnemonic rule to remember - if you pronounce it phonetically, the first part sounds like the Spanish word burro which means donkey, so bureaucratic = ruled by a donkey, easy to remember), you had to get a medical certificate to run a 10 K, but you did not have to have anything except money to buy vodka. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:59, 1.5 with Jenny in 12:42. Matt joined us have way through. Then 1.5 more with Matt in 11:56. Pushed Jacob for the entire run. Benjamin did not run - injured from soccer. He was supposed to run the BYU Triple Crown Mile, but was unfortunately side lined. We decided from now on we would play soccer in a less formal arrangement - just friends and family. Five Fingers - 1403.63 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 2.00 | 16.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Tyler. Did a warm-up, then 8x400 on the trail with 200 recovery. The purpose of the workout was a nervous system reboot. It has worked in the past in some cases, and my body was suggesting it was time for this particular workout. The focus was to learn a smooth but powerful and wide stride and how to maintain it with the anaerobic bear on the back. The value comes from being able to apply the wide stride skill when the anaerobic bear is not there, but you have to run longer. Usually with a lot of tempo runs the skill carries. Ran all on the same stretch alternating direction. Tyler did a few 200s with me. Times: 73.1, 73.0, 72.0, 70.0, 71.6, 71.2, 72.6, 69.4. Felt the stride was choppy in the first two, and somewhat in the third. Then it got wider and more relaxed. Lost concentration on the 7th trying to get around a group of walkers. Could not go any faster, but was recovering very well. Felt ready to go again after 100 meter jog, but gave it more rest anyway. Was originally planning on taking 400 meter rest at times to encourage more sub-70s, but realized it was not going to help. Decided I needed to let the times happen naturally, not force them. On the last one coasted through the first 200, then pushed the last 200. Ran a long cool-down, total distance 12 miles. The excitement of the day was seeing two police cars on the trail and some teenagers getting arrested. Instead of handcuffs they had some form of a strait jacket around them. T4 Racer - 645.05 miles P.M. 1.5 alone in 11:37. 1 with Benjamin and Julia in 10:46. Benjamin's knee is still hurting from soccer, he would not even try running with Jenny. Then 1.5 with Jenny in 13:10. Went to the temple with Sarah. I told her on the way that somebody was going to ask us if she was pregnant with our first child. She was skeptical. Sure enough, the sealer did. Five Fingers - 1407.63 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.88 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 16.38 |
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A.M. Ran alone. The run started with some excitement. Just like yesterday it involved police and juveniles. I ran out about 0.14 and saw Sarah. She got a cramp. We stood there together trying to decide what to do. In the meantime a police car pulled up and a cop asked us if we'd seen anybody. He told us somebody called and reported that some juveniles were causing trouble. I think he thought for a moment we were the juveniles. Finally we decided to get the van and give Sarah a ride home. So I ran back another 0.14. Then ran 12.1 in 1:32:44. My body said I needed to slower than 8:00 pace in the first 3 miles, and I did not force the pace to be any faster. Then it agreed to run around 8:00 pace. After 6 miles 7:00-7:20 pace felt right, so I ran it. With half a mile to go I felt like picking it up and ran 2:56 for the last 0.5. Quote of the day: Those teachers, they just don't understand. They expect something from a guy that has just run a 20 K. It is as if he had just had 100 grams of vodka! A Russian distance coach. Joke of the day: An Eskimo from Chukotka is sitting by the Bering Strait and looking in the direction of Alaska. He is in tears. They ask him what's wrong. He responds: "The Queen sold Alaska, but she did not sell Chukotka!" P.M. 1.5 alone in 12:40, 1 with Julia in 10:43, 1.5 with Benjamin and Jenny in 13:15. Pushed Jacob for the last 2.5 miles.
Five Fingers - 1420.01 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 7.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.85 | 0.25 | 4.75 | 0.00 | 16.85 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and little James (Ted's son). We warmed up 5.62. After that James continued to the house, and Jeff and I ran the 5 mile tempo. I was not sure what to expect, so the plan was conservative - go out at around 5:40-5:45 pace, pick it up if I felt good, just try to hold it otherwise. First quarter was sluggish - 87, then I was able to get into a rhythm. Splits by the mile: 5:36, 5:29, 5:32 (with a 180), 5:29, 5:30 Total time 27:36.6, first half 13:52, second 13:44. Was happy to beat 5:30 average coming back. 53.5 seconds faster than Tuesday.
Jeff was feeling very conversational and energetic. During the first mile I thought he was going to burst into a song. Throughout the run I had to ask him a few of times to back off because I could not hold his pace. In the last three quarters he let his horses loose and ran 76,76,75 to finish in 27:16, and hitting 5:10 in the last mile. Drafting behind Jeff I could hit 83 quarters fairly relaxed, they almost felt like a jog. However, 82 quarters required concentration, and when it got to 81 it was sufficiently unsustainable for me to have to ask Jeff to ease off. Once Jeff left me, I struggled through a couple of 84 second quarters, and then was able to speed up to 80 on the last one. The struggle may have had something to do with running 81, and then 82 uphill earlier as well as with running alone. Overall the tempo went better than I expected. I thought it would have been good to just dip under 28:00. Nothing spectacular, but after Tuesday I was prepared for much worse. Cooled down 1.38, then ran 2 miles with Benjamin in 17:35 in Five Fingers. T4 Racer - 657.05 miles Five Fingers - 1422.01 miles P.M. 0.35 around the block with Joseph pushing Jacob in the stroller accompanied by Julia running and Jenny on a bike. 1 with Julia in 11:03. My ESL student's son Moroni joined us half way on a bike. He was quite surprised that Julia was running and not getting tired. I told him she could go faster and challenged her to show off. She picked it up, but it was not too far away from the finish and she ran the rest of the run pretty slow, so a slow overall time. Then I told him I had another running daughter, older and faster. 1.5 with Jenny and Moroni in 12:12. Jenny cranked it up to about 7:40 pace in the second half, and Moroni said, wow. Then I told him she had more in the tank, and challenged her to show off. She sped to about 7:00 in the last 0.14.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.09 | 1.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 11.34 |
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A.M. 1 with Julia in 10:49. 8 mostly alone in 59:31. Shortly before the turnaround saw Luz, then decided to run a bit faster to catch up after the turnaround, and then a little bit with her whatever pace she was going. Ran the fast portion (1.25) in 7:06. Felt good. Five Fingers - 1431.01 miles P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:01. Jenny ran 1.5 with us in 12:42. 0.34 with Joseph in 3:58 pushing Jacob in a stroller. He ran the whole way without stopping. This is his first official record for a distance longer than 100 meters. Then Jacob wanted to run to. He did a "speed workout" - 2x100 first in 1:10, second in 1:04. First time I was able to get a 2 year old to run without stopping for that long. I think running is going to be more natural for the younger children as they watch the older ones.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.34 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 11.34 |
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A.M. Easy 8 in 1:03:31, first 4 with Derek. Felt good. Five Fingers - 1431.01 miles P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:21. Jenny ran 1.5 with us in 13:05. Benjamin decided he wanted to play the last soccer game of the season after all. So we went. 1 mile with Julia there in 10:58. Benjamin's team won 2-1. The players were smaller, and Benjamin was also more careful. No injuries this time. 0.34 with Joseph in 4:12. Jacob did 2x100 - 1:06 and 1:07. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.84 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 9.34 |
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A.M. Relaxing 6 with Jeff early in the morning in 53:59. We beat the 9:00 girl by 1 second! I think if you go slower than 8:30 your virtual competitor is not a guy anymore. We were not trying to go slow, it just happened - it was dark, early, and we were deeply engaged in a conversation about Jeff's Spanish test at BYU to get credit for some classes. My three most recent training partners (Jeff, Tyler, and Derek) are fluent in Spanish, and are also young enough to where I can say : "I ran a 10 K at 6:00 pace before you learned to walk". Anybody who learned to walk after the end of September of 1985 fits into the category. But at the same time today somebody called me an Elder at the temple again, which would imply he thought I looked like a 19-year-old missionary. P.M. 0.34 with Joseph, Jenny, and Julia running, and Jacob in the stroller in 3:57. 1 mile with Jenny and Julia in 10:56 pushing Jacob. Jenny got hurt on the playground, so she ran less and slower today. Jacob then did 2x100 - 1:02, and 1:06. He is the best focused 2 year old we've ever had. He just runs - does not get distracted at all. He put a pair of running shoes on Sleeping Beauty this morning and said something to the effect that she should go for a run. 2 with Benjamin in 15:56. He did a fast 0.5 in the middle in 2:57, splits of 90 and 87. That is his new record for 0.5,and a PR for 0.25 as well.
Five Fingers - 1431.01 miles
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.72 | 0.62 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 9.34 |
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A.M. 6 alone in 44:39. Started out slow as usual, the 8:00 guy had 32 seconds on me at 1.25. Then I was cruising along at a little bit faster than 7:30 pace. I was wondering if I was going to catch the 7:30 guy today. With about 1 K to go I remembered a Russian joke. A bus driver was watching an old lady run towards the bus. He kept wondering if she'd make it. Finally he said to himself, no she won't, closed the doors and drove away. So it was just like this joke, except I decided the old lady was going to make the 7:30 guy bus. With 1 K to go I sped up to about 5:50 pace, ran it in 3:38, and she made it. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:56, 2 with Benjamin in 16:52, Jenny did 1.5 with us in 13:07. 0.34 with Joseph in 3:52. Jacob did 2x100 in 55 and 57.
Five Fingers - 1437.01 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 5.44 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 6.44 |
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A.M. Ran 3.1 with Kory in Provo in 22:29. Did a mile pickup in 5:25. 1 with Julia in 10:56, 2 with Benjamin in 17:35, Jenny did 1.5 in 13:07. 0.34 with Joseph in 3:46. Jacob did 2x100. P.M. Drive to St. George. Five Fingers - 1443.45 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Race: |
St. George Marathon (26.22 Miles) 02:34:43, Place overall: 10 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 1.00 | 26.22 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 27.22 |
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Quick report. St. George Marathon, 2:34:43, 10th place. Bad weather. Rain all the way, headwind. The times were probably around 6 minutes slower for the same effort. Feet got soaked, misjudged my fuel levels, and did skipped too many aid stations. Ran out of fuel, hit the wall, increased the fuel intake, was able to recover some, but still the last 10 K in 39:48. Live and learn.
Interesting that many others were having similar problems. Blog did well - we captured 5 out of the top 10 spots. $100 cash for being first from Utah County + $150 for winning the age division last year and finishing this year + $100 travel certificate. Not bad for a mediocre performance, makes up for getting nothing (except the come-back travel stipend) last year for a 2:23. Sometimes you have to come back next year to collect for the unfairness of the prior year. Details: The start was wet, but it did not look too bad at first. However, after the first mile in 5:56 I knew that something serious was up. Even though I hid myself in the pack the best I could it felt hard. I would have normally blamed this on my fitness, but the pack with the exception of a couple of rabbits was in no hurry to speed up. Even after that mile when Nick and Clyde tried to pick up the pace, the next mile was 5:49, and it did not feel like a jog at all. On the third mile Dave Holt tried to pick up the pace. Knowing Dave I knew what he was thinking. "I do not care about the rain and the headwind, if I just believe in myself I can get my goal time!" But the laws of nature cannot be ignored.This would have been bad for him and every blogger in the pack. I warned him to not even think of racing for time and not to break the pack that early. Ideally I wanted to see everybody together at 20 even if that meant that some would have to run a bit faster, and others would have to hold back.
My feet were wet from the start, and I was running very tense. We made it to 5 miles in around 28:15. I started to feel a bit better. The pack was composed mostly of bloggers, but there were some dark horses in it. Too many dark horses for my taste - I wanted to see 1-10 blogger sweep with no gaps. One of them looked particularly troublesome. He had a perfect collegiate runner form. This could be both good and bad. If he is a typical collegiate runner, no worries, he'll blow up after 20. But if he's done his homework, he could be full of trouble. I learned his first name at the bottom of Veyo from the cheering. It was Mark. I wondered about his last name for the rest of the race, but he had taken off, so I could not ask. I learned his last name at the finish. It was Currell. Indeed he was a recent college grad. He ran for SUU. His collegiate times were good enough to run for college but nothing exceptional. 4:25 mile, 3:59 1500, 14:31 5000, and 30:51 10000. However, he had run a remarkable race after college winning Seafair 8 K in 24:30, ahead of Mike Sayenko (24:39), and our Sean Sundwall (25:03). Seafair is not a fast course. Mike ran 2:18 at the 2008 Trials, and was fifth at TCM with 2:19 in tough conditions this year. Sean around that time ran 2:22 alone on an honest course. Anybody who can beat Mike and put a 30+ second gap on Sean over an 8 K can rock in the marathon when properly trained. And Mark sure did. Once Veyo started he literally disappeared into horizon. Jeff commented - "If he is going to come back, he would have to crash pretty hard. Otherwise, he is not coming back." I did better than I expected going up Veyo. First Dave Danley and Nick got an little antsy and tried to go after Mark. I got concerned, and tried to go with them in fear of losing contact. But then I realized I needed to ease off. Jeff McClellan and Dave Holt passed me and gapped me, but then I worked my way back to them. Soon we had a pack again - Nick, Dave Holt, Jeff, and myself. Dave Danley was about 20 seconds ahead, and we maintained the distance. We lost Clyde and the rest of the dark horses.
We plodded along at around 6:00 pace up the Dameron Valley. Got to the half in 1:15:22. Reeled in Dave Danley, and he joined us briefly. At around 14 Dave Holt's horses started to neigh, he pushed and broke the pack. Jeff went after him, Nick stayed with me, and Dave Danley fell back. The cold weather messed with my senses. I felt I had plenty of fuel, and being as wet as I was I did not feel like either drinking or (side effect) spilling Gatorade on myself. So I was missing a lot of aid stations, and not getting very much in me when I actually bothered to grab a cup. As it turned out I would pay for it later. Had it been dry and warmer the chills would not have obscured the readings of the fuel gauge. But I was clearly unprepared for the conditions. I had not factored in the altered perception effect. I had also underestimated that my body would be heating up the air for 26 miles, and had not dressed properly, nor was I taking in the extra fuel for warming up the environment. You would think that in over 45 marathons I would have learned better. Some people are just slow learners. Nick made a move, and dropped me as if I were standing still. It was almost like he was a lead vehicle cop that accidentally hit the accelerator. I was running alone, but feeling fairly strong as we went up a small hill. But then there was Winchester. Based on how I felt at Veyo and on that small hill maybe half a mile before Winchester I thought I'd scale it no problem. But once we got there the head wind picked up and I started to lose steam. I never regained for the rest of the race. Nick stopped to tie his shoe, and I passed him. Clyde, Nick, and Pepi Petersen went by me as if I was standing still. I then caught up to Jeff, and he told me he was not feeling good. I told him to tough it out. I began to realize that I was running out of fuel. Unfortunately my hands were shaking and I was spilling half of the Gatorade into my eyes. The eye contact with lemon acid (I think) in combination with the already low blood sugar was causing a fuzzy vision. This was annoying, but provided food for thought. Lemon acid drop in the eye could possibly act as a blood sugar test on the run. 20 miles in 1:54:55, but who cares about the time. Running just to finish and hopefully stay in the top 10. Josh Steffen went by me as if I were standing still around mile 21. Jon Allen would be next, I thought, of the people I knew. Fortunately I understood the nature of the problem, and started slowing down at the aid stations, taking double dozes of Gatorade, and making sure all of it went in. But it would take another couple of miles for it to start working, and during that time I would have to jog. I began to experience a loss of will power, typical when blood sugar goes down. I did not care about the race, and did not even want to finish. There were several motivators that kept me going, though. The first one I thought of was that the quickest and the warmest way to get to the finish was to run as fast as I could. The thought of having to wait for the DNF bus for a couple of hours in the cold was absolutely terrifying. I also thought that I needed to set a good example for the blog. I was still in the top 10, and needed to stay there. I wanted to see as many bloggers in the top 10 as possible. But the more noble reasons were an afterthought. I thought of comfort first. Mosiah 3:19: For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of
Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings
of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a
saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a
child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to
submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even
as a child doth submit to his father.
Got passed by Chan Yee Woo from Iowa as if I were standing still. Hit the Diagonal. Barely passed some girls that were out for a jog. Saw Lybi with a huge banner cheering for the bloggers. Around mile 25 heard another runner approaching. Thought for sure it would be Jon and got ready to congratulate him on a great race. But it was not Jon, it was Motoharu Fukunaga from Japan. Negative advertisement for the blog, but it worked. He asked for an FRB card afterwards. He quickly put 20 seconds on me.
With about 0.8 to go the Gatorade kicked in, and a portion of my strength returned. I picked up the pace, started to feel some power in my legs, and my racing mindset returned. Motoharu started coming back, but the gap was already too big.
I did not know what place I was in, and was relieved to find out that I finished 10th.
Had an interesting fuel economy learning and faith building experience on the way back. The pressure at the CNG station in St. George was low, so we were able to fill up the Fast Running Van only half way. Cedar City was even worse. So we left Cedar City, and as far as I knew we were going to run out of gas 30 miles or so away from Fillmore, and then have to call for a tow truck. That did not sound exciting. I said a silent prayer. At first I asked the Lord to help the van make it. Then I thought I needed to be more specific and pro-active. I asked the Lord to show me what I needed to do so the van would make it. I was already driving 55 mph and getting passed by trucks. I had considered drafting, but the trucks seemed to me to have been going too fast to make it worth it. The moment I finished the prayer another truck passed us, but not as fast as the other trucks. I thought, try drafting. The truck was going 62 mph. I asked Kory and Jeff what they thought about that. They both agreed that drafting at 62 mph will give you better fuel economy than 55 mph alone. So I drafted behind the truck the whole way, and we made it with 1/8 of a tank left. The pressure in Fillmore was low again, and again I was able to fill up only half way. But this time I knew what to do, and we made it to Provo with a little bit less than 1/4 of a tank left. T4 Racer - 684.27 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 6.25 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.25 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Listened to General Conference. Legs still sore from the marathon. All in the quads. This one has beat me up pretty bad, almost as bad as a regular DesNews. May have something to do with the combination of downhill running and the cold muscles. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 9.34 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 9.34 |
| A.M. 6 miles alone in 44:38. Quads still sore, but runnable without a limp. 1 with Julia in 10:56. 0.34 with Joseph in 3:53. Jacob did his baby speed workout - 2x100 - 1:07, and 1:03. Joseph calls my Five Fingers "The Running Feet".
P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:39. Jenny joined us for 1.5 in 12:56. Five Fingers - 1450.79 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.34 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 11.34 |
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A.M. Slept in and was lazy. Sarah had to take Joseph to the dentist at 7:00 AM, and I did not feel like finishing my run before then in the dark. So figuring I since I was in the time-off phase I decided to get more sleep and run when it was warmer. P.M. 8 miles alone in 57:10, 1 with Julia in 10:56, 2 with Benjamin in 17:16, Jenny joined us for 1.5 in 12:55, 0.34 with Joseph in 3:57, and 2x100 with Jacob - 55, and 54. Five Fingers - 1462.13 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 11.00 |
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A.M. Was going to run with Jeff, but he was still sore. But I had already gotten up when I found out. So I ran at 5:30 AM alone. It was dark and cold. It took me until the end of the run to kind of get going, but that's OK. I'm taking time off. 8 miles in 1:06:46. Then 1 mile with Julia to Reams and back to get toilet paper in 9:37. P.M.2 with Benjamin in 17:29, Jenny joined us for 1.5 in 13:12. Five Fingers - 1470.13 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.34 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 11.34 |
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A.M. 8 with Derek in 1:01:38. Talked about steeple chase in the middle, and US economy towards the end. We both found it rather odd that in our economy significantly more people market, sell, advertise, write legal contracts, sue, manage money, etc, than engineer or manufacture products. So perhaps what we are experiencing is a natural consequence of the imbalance, and it is just things going back to where they should have been in the first place. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:56, 0.34 with Joseph in 3:46, 2 with Benjamin in 17:15, first 1.5 with Jenny in 13:14. Jacob did 2x100.
Five Fingers - 1478.13 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.34 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 11.34 |
| A.M. Ran early in the morning. Cold and dark. Jeff and I were asleep. I ran the first 4 with him. Then not much faster afterwards. 1:07:40 for 8 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:00. 0.34 with Joseph in 4:17. Jacob ran 200 in 2:02. 2 with Benjamin in 16:53 with the first 1.5 with Jenny in 13:15. Five Fingers - 1486.13 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.34 | 2.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.34 |
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A.M. Ran 6 with Jeff in 47:54. At least we beat the 8:00 guy today, that is progress. A.M-2. Paced little James in the Cougar Run 5 K in 18:58. His goal was to break 19:00. The course was accurate, but had no mile marks, I forgot to bring my Garmin, so I paced him by feel. I estimated speed-wise he was capable of a low 18:00 and tried to not undershoot figuring if he dies he dies. Undershooting was a concern because it was cold, I was wearing a jacket and tights, I had just eaten breakfast, and I was in the mood to jog. James was making me work in the first 1 mile, a little less in the second, and the last mile I was just yelling at him the entire time, so he must have slowed down. Mike West, who recently joined the blog helped me in the effort, and Adam R was out for a run and joined us in the last half mile as well. Derek Taylor won in 15:34. When I came back, I ran with Jacob (200 in 2:03, not counting towards mileage), and a mile with Julia in 9:57. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:24, had Jenny with us for the first 1.5 in 13:18. 0.34 with Joseph in 3:36. Five Fingers - 1492.13 miles. T4 Racer - 689.27 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.34 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 12.34 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek. Total of 8 miles in 1:00:29. Ran into a couple on the trail and they joined us. Their names were Stephanie and Tim, a brother and a sister from Burley, Idaho. Both BYU students. They ran with us most of the way. We also briefly ran with a lady from New Zealand, I think her name was Debbie if I heard it right.
A.M -2. Julia got busted for sucking her thumb in a sneaky way when she thought I was not looking. We do not tolerate this type of behavior - when a child knowingly does something wrong thinking he can get away with it because nobody can see him. Her punishment was a multitude of jobs around the house, but she could always cancel the remainder of the list with a sub-10:00 mile including the very first job. She cleaned the living room, then cleaned two toilets. After that she decided to go for a sub-10:00 mile, and we ran 9:21. I pushed Joseph in the stroller. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:51. 1.5 with Jenny in 13:05. We saw a girl running ahead of us. I challenged Jenny to catch her before we got off the trail. She hesitated, then said she'd do it for a carob bar. I agreed, she picked up to about 6:00 pace for 0.1 mile and accomplished the task. 0.34 with Joseph in 4:07. Jacob ran 200 meters in 1:58. Five Fingers - 1503.97 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.84 | 0.00 | 2.50 | 0.00 | 13.34 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek. Jogged 4.125, ran 2.5 tempo (second half of my standard 5 mile tempo on the Provo River Trail) in 13:51, then back to Derek, then back to the house with him, then some more to make it 10. Not sure what to think about the tempo. I was holding 5:30 pace on flat parts, a little slower on the mini-rollers, felt like I could sustain it for some time, maybe if I slowed down a bit, but definitely could not go any faster because I tried and nothing happened. It was cold. I was wearing Five Fingers, and I ran alone. One thing for sure, no spectacular results. But at the same time it could be and it has been worse. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:53. 2 with Benjamin in 17:12. Jenny ran 1.5 with us in 12:53. 0.34 with Joseph in 3:52. Jacob did 200 in 2:12.
Five Fingers - 1513.97 miles.
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.34 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.34 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff and Michelle. Total of 10 miles in 1:22:27. It was dark and cold. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:30. 0.34 with Joseph in 4:07. Jacob ran 200 in 2:08. 2 with Benjamin in 17:35, Jenny did 1.5 with us in 13:24. Five Fingers - 1523.97 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.34 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 11.34 |
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A.M. 8 miles with Jeff. Did 4x400 with 200 recovery in the middle. 74.4 - 73.4 - 74.9 - 72.2. Did not feel the power and had a hard time pushing myself into the zone where I have to breathe very hard. But it will come in a few weeks. I observed about a year and a half ago that "lactic intolerance" for me has a negative effect on the "threshold pace". I put those terms in quotes. After studying and pondering the issue, I realize now there is no such thing as "lactic intolerance" or "anaerobic threshold". Lactate is fuel, the more of it in and of itself will not slow you down. They say acidity of the muscle can slow you down, but there is some evidence that in and of itself it does not. I saw a study where they demonstrated a muscle immersed in acid could actually contract better when activated with an electric stimulus. Threshold pace defined as the pace when lactate levels stabilize does not exist - there is always a gradual drift. There was a study where a group of Kenyan runners pushed their lactate levels very high to where the conventional wisdom would indicate they should not have been able to continue to run like this for long, but they kept going and were comfortable. To say the runner slowed down because he had too much lactic acid is like to say he slowed down because he was breathing too hard, or because his VO2 went up too high, or because his RER stayed above 1 for too long, or, the plainest of all but equally meaningful explanation - because he was running too fast. All of the above happens when you start running really fast, but what really is the driving cause rather than an accompanying phenonemon? And is there really just one cause? I suspect it is not as simple as we would like it to be. Nevertheless, there exists a reality that when a trained runner starts pushing much harder than his half marathon race pace, he cannot sustain it for long, and the harder he pushes, the harder he begins to breathe, and the less he can sustain the pace for. When we say "too much lactic acid", even if we are wrong, it could still be useful for practical purposes. There is some inhibitor X, and regardless what substance we believe it to be, and even whether it is just one substance, or maybe just a certain perception of fatigue that results from a combination of substances, does not really matter. The purpose of training is to overcome the inhibitor X. So my theory goes like this. When you run at your half-marathon race pace, the inhibitor X levels constantly fluctuate. When they reach a critical level during that fluctuation you will slow down. The faster the pace, the higher the peak of inhibitor X. When you do fast quarters you have higher levels of inhibitor X. If you do them fairly regularly, you learn to fight inhibitor X for a minute or so. But that minute is critical when trying to sustain a slower pace if the inhibitor X peak at that pace spikes once in a while too high. Then using the ability to deal with the spike you developed during quarters you can go through it without slowing down and then it drops, and thus you maintain a faster pace. However, this is only applicable if you have a solid aerobic base. Otherwise, inhibitor X cannot go down if you keep running the same speed for too long. The peak will last longer than a minute and you will slow down with out of breath and "I want to puke" symptoms. T4 Racer - 697.27 miles P.M. Helped Jeff pace his wife Kimia through her first 5 K time trial in 55:47. She did it essentially untrained, off a sedentary life style, and with zero athletic background or mindset. So it was quite a challenge for her - mostly mental. Both Jeff and I agreed that if a trained runner's brain were driving her body, she would have run under 40:00. After some thought, now I believe as fast as 33:00. The problem was that she was afraid to throw up, while an experienced runner even completely out of shape will push to throw up so he can relieve himself and keep going feeling better. 0.34 with Joseph in 4:17. Jacob ran 200 in 2:25 - slower today because it was getting dark. 1 with Julia in 10:45. 2 with Benjamin in 17:16, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:16. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.84 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.84 |
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A.M. Started the run with Jeff and Derek. Ran with them for 8 miles. Then was planning to run 2 more, but ran into Brandon Ashcroft, and he was going a little further, so I ran with him. We went to Geneva road and then came back to my house. He stopped briefly to meet my family. I joked that I went for a run and found a Russian-speaking souvenir - Brandon served a mission in the Ukraine (Donetsk), and interestingly enough had served near my birth place. I was born in a little town Rubezhnoye near Lugansk, but did not stay there long. Three months later my mom brought me to Moscow where I lived until I was 20. I think this is about fifth time in the last two years that I ran into somebody during a run that was a Russian speaker. Total time for the run was 1:20:50 - 10.5 miles. Five Fingers - 1547.47 miles.
P.M. Jacob ran 200 in 2:08. 0.34 with Joseph in 4:08. 1 with Julia in 11:03. 2 with Benjamin in 17:32. Jenny ran the first 1.5 with us in 13:11. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 7.34 | 9.75 | 0.25 | 0.00 | 17.34 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Tyler, and Brandon. We did a 2.62 warm-up, then a tempo run. I went 10, Jeff and Brandon did 5, and Tyler did 3 because he was concerned about the shin. The plan was to go not slower than 6:00 but not much faster. I put the not-much-faster clause in it because I knew from how I felt this week that much faster would be difficult. The course was the standard 5 mile tempo twice, so the same 2.5 mile stretch 4 times, 3 180 turns. Total time: 58:59.7 Splits by the mile: 5:56 - 6:00 - 5:46 - 5:54 - 5:57 - 6:01 - 5:49 - 5:56 - 5:57 - 5:47 Splits by 2.5 - 14:49 - 14:44 - 14:47 - 14:38. I felt OK, though not great in the first 5 miles. When Jeff pushed the pace a bit, it felt harder, but not miserable. When Brandon started struggling I was able to cheer him in Russian. Russian is better suited for getting somebody to go faster when he is in pain. There is a rich variety of powerful two-word phrases that can motivate a struggling runner. To communicate the same idea in English you would need four or five words, and your sentences are at least twice as long. Most of those phrases start with the word nado which is often translated as "you must" or "you need", but the original word has no "you" in it. It just means there exists an abstract need or requirement that is above you or anybody else. You are not a part of it, it is above you, and you'd better meet it or else... Felt OK for another 2 miles, about the same as earlier, but then all of a sudden 88 quarters started feeling very difficult. I was not breathing very hard, but I felt like I had a tongue in my quads and it was tasting concentrated lemon juice the entire time. That feeling is not there when everything is normal until I start hitting 82 second quarters. So 5:55 felt like 5:30, except for the breathing. At 5 miles I thought that going under 59:00 would be easy. At 7.5 I thought it would be difficult but doable. With a mile to go I was not so sure. With a quarter to go I thought it would be a miracle. So I gave it all I had. My mom used to say "I see Paris" when she tasted something very sour. Well, the last quarter was only 82, but I still saw Paris. The "Paris" effort got me a little bit under 59:00, so a small victory. Ran 1.38 cool down, got home and took the kids to do the trail cleanup. I noticed that the most common type of trash was cigarette butts. Then ran with Jacob and Joseph. Jacob ran 200 in 1:54. Joseph did his 0.34 loop in 4:08. P.M. 1 mile with Julia in 10:48. 2 with Benjamin in 17:20. Jenny ran the first 1.5 with us in 13:20. T4 Racer - 711.27 miles |
Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 10.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.63 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 13.13 |
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A.M. 10.1 alone in 1:16:43. Did 8x100 around 18-19 seconds in the middle. Felt fresher, but this could be deceptive as I never went long enough fast enough to really test. But today was not the day to test, the day is tomorrow when I am going to run 2.5 tempo. Five Fingers holes on the right shoe are slightly bigger, I think, but my skin over the holes is getting rougher as well. Last week, I felt blister pain in the hole area after the runs. Today it was just a minor irritation. The left shoe is still intact, although the sole is getting thinner. So far no performance improvements from running in Five Fingers. But I like the feel of it. And it helps preserve the socks. Training in Five Fingers - the Ultimate Blister Protection! P.M. Jacob did 200 in 2:01. 1 mile with Julia in 8:49. She did a progressive negative split: 2:30, 2:15, 2:09 and 1:55. 2.03 with Benjamin and Jenny to the library via scenic route in 18:03. Five Fingers - 1557.57 miles. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.19 | 0.00 | 2.50 | 0.00 | 13.69 |
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A.M. 10.1 alone. Did a 2.5 mile tempo after 6.2 miles of easy running. Again had a hard time running 5:30 pace. First quarter was 83, and it felt hard. Bad hard, not "I am going to warm into it", but rather, "I do not know if I can maintain it". Pretty much exact duplicate of last week's tempo with splits differing by no more than a second at every point, and the total time being 0.7 slower. Total time - 13:51.9. Splits by 0.5: 2:45, 2:46, 2:46, 2:48, 2:46. Tried to kick in the last quarter, but there was zero kick. Could not speed up above pace. Legs felt sour. Could not make myself breath energetically no matter how hard I tried. Afterwards took Jacob for 200 in 1:51. P.M. Fast Running Van had a problem with the brakes. Took it to Computune. Ran back with Benjamin , and Jenny - 2.25 in 19:58. 1 with Julia in 10:03. Decided to give my body a chance to take a nap, and it did. Felt very good after the nap. 0.34 with Joseph in 4:18.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 9.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.38 | 0.00 | 0.62 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Ran 8 with Jeff, then added 2 to finish off 10. Total time was 1:14:28. Was feeling energetic, especially for the dark conditions. Decided to test the effects of yesterday's nap. The plan was to run a tempo 0.5. We got to 0.5 and I was concerned about being able to see the mark, so we went further to 1 K. Felt very good. The time was 3:20. The stride felt good - wide, relaxed, powerful. Felt like I could run like this for a while. A positive change from yesterday. A.M - 2: Took Jacob for 200 in 1:48. 1 with Julia in 9:43. 2 with Benjamin in 15:06. Pushed Jacob in the stroller. Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 11:46. P.M. Took another nap. |
Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.59 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 13.59 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek. He went 7, I did 10. Did 4x400 in the middle with 200 rest. 75.1, 73.5, 73.2, 72.6. The last one was uphill (1% grade). Felt much better than a week ago, but the times did not reflect it. I was not sure if this was due to colder temperatures and leaves on the ground, or due to no change in fitness. I wondered for a few miles, then was tired of wondering and decided to run a tempo mile from DI bridge to where I get off the trail. It has a slight net downhill, but it does roll enough to make it fair. Did the splits of 84, 82, 82, and 78 for the total of 5:26. First quarter was up, second was flat, third was net down, but you had to go under 800 N bridge and the last one was a steady 0.5% down. Felt strong, did not want to stop. A.M -2 : Took the Fast Running Van to Computune to investigate the ABS light. Ran back with Benjamin and Jenny. 2.25 miles in 19:50. Ran into a girl that had served a mission in Rostov-na-Donu in Russia. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:54, 0.34 with Joseph in 4:09. Jacob woke up from a nap and was crying and being difficult. I asked him if he wanted to go for a run. He calmed down, and went. He ran 2:00 for 200. Got points for this from Sarah. |
Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.89 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 10.89 |
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A.M. Sarah woke up with contractions around 2:00 AM. We figured it was real labor, called the midwife, called Luz, she came and got the kids, and filled the inflatable pool. After some work on Sarah's part, William Alexander Pachev was born at 4:34 AM this morning. Birth weight - 8 lb 8 oz, height 19 inches.
Jeff got a special privilege from being my running partner this morning. He was the first non-family/non-midwife person to see William. That's his PR for the youngest person he's ever seen. Then we went for a run with a stop at Luz's house to drop off the soy milk for the kids' breakfast. Jacob is allergic to cow's milk. Then Sarah called me on the cell phone and said she was bleeding. So we ran back. Checked on her, she said she was still not feeling good, so we went around the block with the plan to check on her once a mile. She called again after a mile, and this time she had a strong contraction, passed out a couple of large clots, stood up too fast and nearly passed out, and got really scared. So I stayed with her. Her midwife came, gave her some medicine, she is now taking a nap, and William is taking one as well right next to me. Pictures:
![](http://www.asksasha.com/william-web-4.jpg)
P.M. Jacob ran 200 in 2:17, ran 0.34 with Joseph in 4:19, 1 with Julia in 9:34, 1.5 with Jenny in 13:17, 2 with Benjamin in 17:52. The blog now has the long awaited shoe manager.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 6.05 |
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Night Sleep Time: 4.00 | Nap Time: 2.00 | Total Sleep Time: 6.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.34 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.34 |
| A.M. Ran with Jeff. We did a total of 10 miles in 1:14:26 with a couple of breaks in the middle to check on Sarah and to change Jacob's diaper. Then 1 with Julia in 8:42.
A.M-2. 200 with Jacob in 1:51 (not counting towards mileage), 0.34 with Joseph in 3:56, 2 with Benjamin in 17:32 with Jenny running the last 1.5 in 13:07.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Managed to get the kids ready for church. Not without accidents - got some shampoo into the eyes of Joseph and Jacob at the same time, so they screamed in unison. But we got to church on time. The kids were very good in church. The biggest behavior problem I had to deal with was Joseph flipping pages of the Book of Mormon reader during a prayer.
The highlight of the day was the dinner that Josse and her sister Erica brought us. Whole wheat pasta with sauce, chicken, salad, it was great. At night Joseph has been getting stories the Daddy Way (TM). I ask him what he wants to see, and then we find it on YouTube. Usually it is some kind of a big machine - dump truck, fire truck, tractor, freight train, garbage truck, etc. I've been learning a lot. For example, I learned what they do to get a tractor out of the mud - attach special poles to the side of the wheels so the tractor in a way walks out of the mud. |
Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.34 | 0.00 | 1.10 | 0.00 | 13.44 |
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A.M. 10.1 alone in 1:09:56. Did a mile pickup in the middle in 5:30
from the fishing parking lot in the direction of Geneva road. This has
a slight uphill in the last quarter. Did not feel the greatest, but did
not feel too bad either. Afterwards took Jacob for 200 in 1:55, and Joseph for 0.34 in 3:43, which is his record. Ate leftovers from the dinner Josse made for us last night for lunch. Sarah was having a hard time with William and finally was convinced to try Daddy's (TM) method - alternate 15 minutes off, 5 minutes on if needed, and it worked. He was happy after the first round. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:45, 2 with Benjamin in 16:40. His time was 16:42. He started singing BINGO towards the end, and I asked him he would be willing to try daddy BINGO pace for the last 0.1 miles. He was OK for the most of the pickup, but fell back a bit at the end. Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:13 with us.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.17 | 0.00 | 2.50 | 0.00 | 13.67 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek. After 4.12 warm-up ran the standard 2.5 tempo in 13:49.6. The first mile felt very easy, the stride was wide and relaxed, and I did not feel like I was pushing. Got 5:26 vs a very strained 5:31 last week. However, after that I started struggling and slowed down to 5:36 pace. There was a slight uphill in the last mile. Not sure what was happening. I was slightly overdressed because I was afraid of catching a cold, which would be bad at this time. Derek thinks the jacket was acting like a sail and slowing me down. I also got warm. But at the same time, those things could really be non-issues, and the fatigue might have been natural, or in other words the slow-down would have happened regardless. Assuming the worst, I would have to conclude that the neurological power is coming back, but the acidic resistance (the term I just made up for the ability of the brain to push the muscle in spite of increased muscle acidity) is still lacking. Which is actually encouraging. Acidic resistance can be improved with anaerobic work (quarters), but improving the power is more difficult. So I'd rather lack the acid resistance. Nevertheless, I was happy that the overall time was 2 seconds faster than last week. I'll take any improvement I can get. Derek ran 8, I ran some extra and got 10.13. P.M. 200 with Jacob 1:50, 1 with Julia in 9:35. P.M -2: 2 miles with Benjamin in 16:14 with Jenny running the last 1.5 in 11:56. Jenny actually was not planning on getting her Lunch With Daddy qualifier for the week, but then she started feeling good half way and picked up the pace to sub-8:00. She had 8:29 at the mile, and then with 600 to go she asked if she had a shot for LWDQ. I told her if she floored it she'd have a chance, so she did. Her last two quarters were 1:46, and 1:41, and she made it with 4 seconds to spare.
Took Joseph for a run to set up my home teaching appointment. 0.27 out, 0.27 back with a short break to chat in between - total time 6:50. Following a very established tradition in our church set it for 8:00 PM on the last day of the month. This reminded me of a joke: Two elders are discussing the subject of home teaching. One says - "We take our responsibility very seriously and always go the first day of the month." The other responds: "We do even better than that - we go one day before you do!"
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.13 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.10 | 2.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.10 |
| A.M. 10.1 alone in 1:09:48. Did a 2 mile pickup from 7.1 to 9.1 in 11:55. Considered running all 3 at that pace, but decided to remain on the side of caution. Noticed that at 6:00 pace I am barely breathing, but it does not feel easy because of the muscular strain and the need for focus. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:23 with Jenny running the first 1.5 in 13:17. 1 with Julia in 9:28. |
Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. 10 miles in 1:17:04, first 8 with Jeff. It was dark. Contemplated the matter of who to vote for in the presidential elections. I have always voted Republican. Not so much because I like the Republican party but I did not feel it was right to vote for a candidate that supports abortion. In 2004, I liked the Republican presidential candidate for other reasons. This year I do not like either one. The two major party are giving me a choice between a guy that supports gay marriage and abortion, and a guy that has an number of extra-marital affairs on his record and left his wife to marry his lover. Both candidates are engaged in bad mouthing each other. I am sick and tired of this farce. What kind of choice is that? This is almost like the Soviet Union where you had only one candidate. Fortunately, in the US we can do a little better than that. So I looked at others. I like Chuck Baldwin the best. Clean record in the extra-marital affair department, rarity nowadays. Firmly against abortion and gay marriage. Also rarity nowadays. Interestingly enough, up until 1980 he was a Democrat. Then he became a Republican. In 2000 he left the Republican party. I do not believe his positions have changed much since he was a Democrat. He did not move, the major political parties did. This does tell us something about the times. One major plus - he is the only politician I've heard of that suggested some form of compensation for home schooling families. I have written about the subject to a local Republican state senator, but received no response. I read in a DesNews article a few years ago that public education costs the government at least $8K per year per child. Three of my children are school age. We make some significant sacrifices to home school. This currently saves the government $24K a year. In 5 years when William becomes school age it will be $48K a year. We do not even get a note of thanks from anybody, much less a financial incentive. So while I do not 100% agree with all of his views, and realistically he cannot win this time, I'll cast my vote for him anyway at the very least to send a message to the two major parties that I want a real candidate, not a TV show character. I did not become an American citizen to vote like you did in the Soviet Union. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:52, 2 with Benjamin in 17:16, Jenny ran the first 1.5 with us in 13:06. Julia for the first time was able to ride her bike for a short distance - about 100 meters or so. She still cannot ride straight, but give her a week and she'll be bike-fluent. This is big help because once she can I'll be able to take as many as 5 kids on a run - three on bikes, and two in the stroller.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.93 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.25 | 14.18 |
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A.M. Ran alone. Did a warmup of 3.62 miles, 5x400 with 200 recovery, then a long cool down to make the total of 10.5. The quarters went better than last week. I did them on the standard stretch this time alternating directions. 75.1 - 72.1 - 72.3 - 70.0 - 69.8. All of them felt rather odd. On one hand I felt like I was slacking off, on the other hand I felt like I could not go any faster. However towards the end I was able to force my way through the sour feeling in the quads and get myself to breathe harder. During the cool down ran with John Borget, the brother of Rich Borget, and his friend Dixon Holmes. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:25, 2 with Benjamin in 17:26, Jenny ran the first 1.5 with us in 12:54. 0.34 with Joseph in 4:09. Took Jacob on the same loop as well, he did it in 5:51. |
Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.50 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 5.55 | 10.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 15.55 |
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A.M. Took Benjamin to the Utah State Cross Country championship. He started out conservatively, moved into 3rd by around 2 K mark, and look like he was going to hold on to it, but then took a wrong turn on the course, lost about 32 seconds just on the extra distance + whatever from the mental aspect, and ended up in 6th place with 13:51. P.M. Tempo run with Jeff. Ran a warm-up of 2.67. Then the standard 10 mile tempo. Splits: Total time: 58:53 5:43 - 5:56 - 5:53 - 5:52 - 6:05 - 5:53 - 5:53 - 5:56- 5:52 - 5:48 Splits by 2.5: 14:35 - 14:55 - 14:45 - 14:38 HR: average 152, observed median 153, max 164 at the very end when I tried to push. Subjective: Felt acceptable in the first mile, worse later, and terrible from mile 3 to the end. At 5 I seriously considered just stopping. But then I weighed the alternatives - next 5 miles in about 30 minutes in a trance, or next 5 miles in 40 minutes with full ability to reason. 30 minutes in a trance appeared to be a better alternative. Plus Jeff needed full 10 at tempo pace to build his gas tank, and I did not want to make him either cut it or do it all alone. After 3 miles any time we ran faster than 5:52 even for a quarter, it would put me in a very miserable state. However, I was able to zone out drafting off Jeff, and as long as he was not breaking 88 on a quarter I could keep plodding along. He yelled at me in the last mile, and that helped with a faster split. Last quarter was 84, and it was one miserable quarter. I gave it all I had. Jogged down with Jeff and another guy named Scott who we found on the trail, split ways with 0.46 to go, finished off 14.05 at the house. Lay on the cough for about 10 minutes, then felt good enough to run with Jenny and Julia. 14:33 for 1.5 miles with Julia running the first mile in 10:15. The time was 6 seconds faster than two weeks ago. The effort was very hard. I'll blame it on the worn out nervous system.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 16.05 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Slept nearly 11 hours. This shows the severity of the neural fatigue yesterday. Went to church. Had a meeting afterwards. Went to a baptism in the Spanish branch in the evening. |
Night Sleep Time: 10.75 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.75 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.47 | 0.00 | 0.63 | 0.00 | 13.10 |
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A.M. 10.1 alone in 1:09:58. Yes, I like to beat the 1:10 guy when it is close. The sleep and a day of rest yesterday seemed to help. Felt energized from the start. Decided to measure the depth of it. Ran 1 K in 3:22 over a fairly thick layer of leaves in the middle. Ran 200 with Jacob in 1:44. For some odd reason I got interested in the demographics of Denmark. I think if I had the patience to deal with the academic bureaucracy and our cost of living relative to income had not been so high I might have even become a sociologist. But I am somewhat satisfied with programming for a living and studying sociology as an amateur. In any case, I found this link: http://www.denmark.dk/en/menu/About-Denmark/The-Danes/Population/ThePost1967Period/ And the following statements: The last 30 years of the 20th century showed a far-reaching change in
the demographical characteristics of the Danish population. The decline
in fertility accelerated from 1967, and the lowest level so far was
reached in 1983 when the average number of children born per woman was
1.4.
As
c. 2.1 births per woman are necessary to avoid a fall in the size of
the population, fertility rates are thus below the level needed for
reproduction. Corresponding declines have been noted in most western
European countries, in North America, Australia and Japan. ... It has become more difficult for both practical and financial reasons to have many children... As a father of 6, I can sure tell you about financial difficulty. I make quite a bit more than the average, and we still have to pinch every penny to live without debt. The big question I have is why in the world has it become so difficult for a family to have the needed 2.1 children to maintain the population size when we have experienced such huge advances in technology and can do just about everything a lot more efficiently that we used to. With everything we have now the average family should be able to afford 10.5 children, not 2.1. Something somewhere has gone fundamentally wrong, something somewhere is being dumped into a huge black hole. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:52, 2 with Benjamin in 17:00, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:14. Jacob wanted to do a double today so we did another 200 in 1:58.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.84 | 0.00 | 2.50 | 0.00 | 13.34 |
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A.M. Tempo run with Derek and Tyler. During the 4.12 warm-up talked about the economy, what affects the cost of living, and to what extent is the government regulation of the free market necessary. My thoughts. Comparing free market to a race. No individual competitor should be unfairly aided or hampered by the race officials. However, strict rules are needed to make sure nobody cheats. If you trip or punch somebody, cut the course, ride part of the race on a bike or in a car, use roller blades, poison a competitor before the start, or do something of that nature you are disqualified. If a famous runner is struggling and falls behind we do not give him a ride to catch up to the leaders or to be back on pace. Then we ran the 2.5 in 13:42.1. The rough plan was 5:30 pace and we beat him by 3 seconds. I drafted behind Derek and Tyler most of the way. The splits were mostly unavailable due to the trail being heavily covered with leaves. We got our first split at 0.435 - 2:28. About 4 seconds off pace, no wonder it felt too manageable. I told Derek to speed up. He took us through the rest of the mile at 5:20 pace on the dot, so we had 5:28 at the mile. At this point my HR was 165, and I started to feel uncomfortable. So I asked Derek to back off a bit, and he did hitting the next two quarters in 81 each like a clock, 8:10 at 1.5. My HR was 163, and I felt balanced but very tenderly - a slight surge could do me in and the pace, even slower pace, would become unsustainable. This stretch had the fewest leaves, which I think is why 81 quarters felt more sustainable than at any other point in the tempo.
The last mile was uphill and covered with leaves. The next split was at "3000" - 10:16, so the uphill "600" at 5:36 pace. It felt hard but not miserable. Next "600" in 2:03, 5:28 pace, not noticeably uphill, but still uphill, I know because I had cross-country skied it several times timing it in both directions. On the last quarter it felt like we picked up the pace, HR got up to 168, but we only got 83 for the quarter. I wonder if it had to do with the increased amount of leaves while on a slightly higher upper grade. My HR never spikes that high unless I am running a sub-80 quarter. If I am too tired to run a sub-80 quarter, I just cannot push it that high. Total time for the last mile was 5:32. Average HR 160, max 168.
I was pleased with the run. The time was the fastest for that stretch since St. George. But I was more pleased with the following: HR could get to 165 in 5 minutes of running, life seemed bearable at HR of 163, and I felt like I still had a little bit to give when it was as high as 168. Cooled down with Derek and Tyler for 1.38 discussing no state income tax in Washington, then 2 more by myself to make the total of 10. Sarah and I voted today. It felt good to vote for neither McCain nor Obama. I felt relieved that there was a candidate that represented my values much better even though he could not win. P.M. 1 with Julia in 8:59. 2 with Benjamin in 17:10, Jenny did the first 1.5 in 13:08. Julia rode the bike during Jenny's run. This is a big breakthrough for Julia - she learned to ride less than a week ago. 200 with Jacob in 1:54, and 0.34 with Joseph in 4:09.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. We got our first snow. However, it started during the run, and I was wearing Five Fingers. Got to experience the snow. It was rather cold, but not as bad as I anticipated. Ran the first 6 miles with Jeff, the rest on my own. Discussed politics. 1:25:12 for 10 miles, got beat by a boltushka, I suppose we deserve that since we've been talking the whole time. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:05, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:09. Took the Fast Running Van to get the the tail blinker fixed, they found literally a hornet's nest under the light cover. Wasps made a nest there. P.M-2. 1 with Julia in 10:03. 200 with Jacob in 2:08. |
Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.09 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.25 | 13.34 |
| A.M. Ran with Derek. Learned from him that M-16/AK-47 effective range is 500 meters, but a stray bullet can kill you from as far away as 800 meters. This made me remember some dark Russian humor: The optimist is studying English, the pessimist is studying Chinese, but a realist is studying AK-47. We did 5x400 with 200 jog rest. Splits: 71.8, 69.9, 69.3, 69.1, 71.1. Derek hit around 67 in the last 3. I was happy with how it went. Even though it was cold, and we had some leaves on the ground, this is the fastest I've done this workout since St. George. Dropped Derek off at 8 miles, ran 2 more to make it 10. Then ran/walked with Jacob - 200 meters in 2:01. P.M. 2 with Benjamin and Jenny in 17:50. 0.34 with Joseph in 3:39. 1 with Julia in 10:29. |
Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.94 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 13.44 |
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A.M. 10.1 alone in 1:14:32. Did a 0.5 pickup in the middle in 2:42 (82,80). Felt decent. P.M. 200 with Jacob in 1:56, 0.34 with Joseph in 3:44. 1 with Julia in 9:49. 2 with Benjamin in 17:19, Jenny ran 1.5 in 13:09 with us. |
Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 0.00 | 20.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Tyler, Michelle, and Julie Esplin. Jeff and I did the standard 10 mile tempo. Tyler and Julie ran easy. Michelle did some mile repeats with us during the tempo. The tempo went better than I expected. 56:38.9 for the whole thing, which is actually a 3 second course/workout PR. Splits: 5:47 - 5:42 - 5:40 - 5:46 - 5:44 - 5:37 - 5:40 - 5:31 - 5:37 - 5:34 By 2.5: 14:20 - 14:19 - 14:04 - 13:55 By half: 28:39 - 27:59 Subjective/Descriptive: Started out slow on purpose to not kill Michelle. Too slow - 91 the first quarter. I warned Jeff about overcorrection, so the next one was 87. After that Jeff just let it loose, but Michelle made it with us to 1.25 in 7:13. After the first 2.5 I thought I'd be lucky to keep the pace. But then 4 miles into it things did not get any worse. During the second half of the tempo Jeff pressed harder, but I was not too miserable at first. I just tucked in behind him and tried to zone out. He had an non-gentleman-like moment by serving Michelle an 83 quarter after 5.5 when she tried to join us for a mile, followed by another in 85. Michelle was still hanging on, after that she fell back. From 7 to 8 it was my turn to suffer. Jeff served me a 5:31 mile with a 180 turn in the middle. I asked him to back off, and was hanging on to dear life. Michelle saw us go by and decided it was hopeless to try to hang on. Perhaps not without a reason as we still hit a 5:37 for the next mile. At the end, all I wanted to do was catch the 5:40 guy, but Jeff had higher ambitions. So he dropped me on the last quarter and finished 8 seconds faster in 76 vs mine in 84. I did not have much more than 84 left in me at that point. Felt like I could push through fatigue better. The breathing was harder. Did not wear an HRM. I think my quarters have helped. I've seen this effect before - quarters at mile race pace or faster helping all distances up to the marathon. Felt much better after the tempo that a week ago. Ran a long cool down. Total of 17 miles. 200 with Jacob in 1:53 afterwards. P.M. 1 with Julia in 8:56. 2 with Benjamin and Jenny in 17:07.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 17.20 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 1.50 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Went to church. Counted the kids during the Sacrament meeting to make sure everyone was still there. Then I thought of the hymn Count Your Blessings and realized I was literally counting my blessings. Every child is a blessing and I now have 6 of them. Then a short while later one blessing (Jacob) escaped and I had to chase him. As luck or perhaps God's will would have it, I got to teach both in Sunday School and in the Elder's Quorum. The lesson in Sunday School was on the plan of salvation, and in the Elder's Quorum on knowledge. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.10 |
|
A.M. Easy 10.1 alone in 1:09:55. The temperatures were cold, but not freezing. Very runnable, although my feet started getting wet towards the end. Almost ran into an uncovered drainage opening in the last mile. Somebody had lifted the cover and had not put it back. So this gave me a chance for some small weight training exercise putting it back on. Surprisingly it did not take me very long - handy tasks, even very simple, often take me a lot longer than they should. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:03, 2 with Benjamin in 17:06, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:14. |
Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.00 | 0.00 | 5.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Tyler, Derek, and Dustin Williams, Derek's friend and athletic trainer at BYU. Tyler and I did the standard 5 mile tempo. Derek and Dustin ran the warm-up with us. My original plan was to do only the second half of the tempo, but Tyler persuaded me to do the whole 5. Total time: 27:46.4 Splits: 5:30 - 5:30 - 5:37 - 5:34 - 5:35. By half: 13:48 - 13:58 Subjective/Descriptive: 5:30 pace for the whole 5 was rather ambitious given that last week I barely managed 5:29 for 2.5, no nap on Sunday or Monday, leaves, and a wet road. Nevertheless we decided to go out at 5:30 and see what happens. We hit every half mile on the dot for the first 2 miles. The first mile felt a bit aggressive. Second mile felt good, just perfect. Third mile at first felt too good and then it started feeling hard, about 0.25 before 180 turn, and even harder afterwards. I tucked behind Tyler, and the fourth mile felt a bit better, but still not enough to take a turn upfront and lead pursuit of the 5:30 guy who was gradually slipping away. The first quarter of the last mile felt too good, and for a good reason - we slowed down to 85 on it. It was uphill, so it was more like an 84 effort, but still the quarter before that was 82. I took the lead after that, and Tyler started falling back. But I was not doing that much better - hit quarters in 83, 84, and 83, and that was all I could do. Tyler finished 2 seconds behind me in 27:48. Overall happy with the tempo.
P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:20, 2 with Benjamin in 17:07, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:08.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Easy 10, first 7 with Jeff. Total time 1:21:11. Of all things discussed civil unions. My argument is that if we do allow civil unions with benefits, then two or more people living together should not have to engage in the "alternative behavior" described by Leviticus 18:22 in order to form the union and receive the benefits. E.g. two guys finish running for college and decide to try to run professionally. One year one trains full-time, the other works and trains when he can, then they trade. They share an apartment and kitchen duties to save costs. One should be able to put the other on his health insurance. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:26. 2 with Benjamin in 18:00. Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:23. 200 with Jacob in 1:52. |
Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 7.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.75 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.25 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek and Dustin. We did 5x400 on the trail. Times: 70.1 - 67.8 - 67.8 - 67.5 - 69.0 Recovery: 200 jog between the first three, after that 400 jog. Subjective: Compared to last week, the effort was the same, but was able to hit faster times. Decided to increase the rest after 3 repeats to make sure the remaining two would stay faster. However, I still faded on the last one. Regardless of how fast we went I had my breathing back to normal in 30 seconds. The intensity of breathing during the repeat appeared to correlate with how fast I ran it, but the perceived effort did not. The last 200 meters of the last repeat felt very similar to the last half mile of the tempo run on Tuesday. Ran a cool down to make the total 10 miles. My original plan was to increase to 8 repetitions once I am able to do 4 averaging under 70, which I accomplished today. However, I decided to revise the plan. Instead, work on getting those as fast as possible. First under 67, then 66, 65, 64. Once I can do all under 64, then maybe do 400 to warm up, then 800 under 2:20, then if that is not too hard, another 800 under 2:20, otherwise, go back to 400. Work on being able to run the whole mile under 4:40. Once I am there, work on doing mile repeats under 4:40. Then 2x1.5 at 4:45 pace. Then a sub-15:00 5 K. Once I can do that, I can start thinking about an OTQ in the marathon. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:04. 2 with Benjamin in 17:06. Jenny joined for the first 1.5 in 13:02.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.10 |
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A.M. Ran alone. 10.1 in 1:08:53. A little faster today for a rather odd reason. I was feeling stoked about the economy, of all things. Yes, I am excited. Hard to explain the reasons, but I am just stoked. I feel I know something to be excited about even if I cannot quite formulate it. Maybe I should try and it will come out. Our economy has been a huge wasteful behemoth . Collectively as a nation we produce mostly junk. Junk food, overpriced cars, frivolous law suits, overcomplicated laws most people cannot understand without the help of a professional whose sole expertise is in studying those laws, multi-level marketing schemes, over-hyped gimmicks of various kinds, you name it. Only maybe 10-20% of our collective what we do goes towards something that truly honestly contributes to life quality. The rest we would not only be able to do without, much of it we would be better off without. So with the recent "crisis" we are being forced to normalize the economy. If all of our car makers produce no new cars (extremely unlikely, but let's consider the worst possible case) I won't miss it for another 20 years as long as the spare parts are available and some car shops are still in business. First 10 years I will drive what I have now. 10 years later I will buy a 10 year old car and drive it for another 10 years. People are spending less, I say good for them. Learn to live on what you have, learn to sacrifice, get a small taste of what it's like in other less affluent countries. I have to say I have no clue about going without. I've never been hungry for too long because the food was not there. I've never had to sleep outside or on a dirt floor. Yet I know a lot more about going without than most Americans. I remember in the 90s when the food shortages hit Russia that I wished they had a store out in the middle of nowhere so that to get there you'd have to take a train, and then walk or run a mile, and that the train would go there only once a day. I would have never had to wait in line. Those memories make me thankful for what I have now. I live in a 2050 sq ft. home with my wife and six children, and to me it is a mansion. We have three cars! The line for food is rarely more than 5 people. You can buy fresh exotic fruit like bananas all year round. I own several computers and they are connected to the internet. With the "crisis" those things do not appear to be going away. It is not a crisis, it is a little bit of a reminder to put your wants/needs head back on your shoulders. P.M. 1 mile with Julia in 10:20. Then 2 miles with Benjamin, and Jenny joining for 1.5. No time taken - the watch broke during the run. It was the prize from Ogden - Suunto T4.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.34 | 15.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 23.34 |
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A.M. Ran with Nick. This morning all of my watches were not functional. Suunto T4 died - probably dead battery. Garmin 305 refused to boot. So I had Nick tell me the splits. We did a warm-up, 15 mile tempo, then a cool-down. Total of 20 miles.
I think Nick accidentally stopped his watch during the first quarter, so I am going to add 7 seconds to adjust for that to the relevant splits and total time. Total time - 1:27:10 (5:48.67 avg). Splits by 2.5 (yes we did it on the standard course, 6 times on the same stretch of the trail from Geneva to the Utah Lake turnaround): 14:33 - 14:29 - 14:05 - 14:25 - 14:28 - 15:10 Subjective: At first it felt hard. Then I tucked behind Nick and he mesmerized me with his rhythm. He picked up the pace, and I was able to handle it. We were going faster than 5:40 and it did not feel unbearable. Then around 8 miles into it I started struggling and asked Nick to back off. Was able to hold around 5:45 pace for a while until 11. Then I started losing it. Nick took off at 12.5 and closed with 13:42 last 2.5. After he took off I did not have any splits. I felt that I was sprinting, but at the same time I could tell my legs were moving slow. But there was nothing I could do. Overall happy with the tempo. I think it is the fastest non-aided 15 mile tempo I've ever run in training. Now if only those 2.5 mile splits were 5 K splits :-) P.M. 1 mile with Julia, no time taken due to the lack of functional timing equipment. Then tried the Garmin and it booted. Ran 2 miles with Benjamin and Jared in 17:05. Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 12:31. 200 with Jacob, 0.34 with Joseph.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 20.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Went to church. The sacrament meeting talks were on living the gospel of Jesus Christ vs following the rules of the Church as part of the culture. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 10.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.44 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.44 |
| A.M. 10.1 with Derek and Dustin in 1:11:53. Discussed a number of subjects - mainly automaker bailout, and cross-country racing. My thoughts on the automaker bailout are that they have been making way too many cars and have been overpricing them on top of it. I think we would all benefit from a law that would force the insurance damage payouts limited to $20K or so on any car. If somebody wants to have a luxury car, and it gets totaled, let him absorb the cost. Also, tax anything above that really high, e.g. 100%. Basically, pass a set of laws that encourages meeting the needs while punishing excessive wants. Good luck with that in our culture of "I want the best, and I want it now", but I think that would help the automakers in the long run a lot more than the bailout. They WILL find ways to make most cars so that they sell for less than $20K. Of course, the market might force them to do that anyway if we just do nothing to bail them out.
Took Jacob for 200 meters - untimed. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:26, 2 with Benjamin in 16:56, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:05. We played leap frog. 0.34 with Joseph in 3:44.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.15 | 0.00 | 2.85 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Ran alone. Did the 2.5 tempo run. Ran a 4.12 mile warm-up. Tempo run: Course: As usual, from Utah Lake gate to Geneva. Slight net uphill, mostly in the last mile.
Total time: 13:46.5 Splits by 0.5: 2:43 - 2:44 - 2:44 - 2:48 - 2:47. Subjective: At 1 mile felt the legs were moving quick, but not quick enough. Some components of quickness were present, but others were absent. Felt stuck in the 84 second per quarter gear on the last mile. Did not feel too bad, but just could not go any faster. In fact, the pace felt hard from the beginning, but I hoped it was just cold weather, that I would warm up eventually. The run went on, it did not get any harder, but it did not get any easier either. On the cool down I saw a runner moving at a decent speed, and ran about 0.35 at a tempo pace to catch up. Got to meet him - his name is Drew Johnson. I remembered that I'd run with him once before, and I correctly remembered that he was a math major at BYU. I gave him my standard geek test. He set a record for correctly computing 2i while running - it took him about 100 meters. Then I also discovered that he had served a mission in Korea. You meet all kinds of people while running in Provo - math geeks, Russian speakers, Italian speakers, Korean speakers. Spanish speakers - well it is almost a given. Most of my training partners over the years have spoken Spanish.
Afterwards, 200 with Jacob in 1:43, 0.34 with Joseph in 4:25 (slow today because his pants were falling down), and 1 with Julia in 10:35. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:52. Jenny joined us for 1.5 in 12:38.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 11.34 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.00 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 12.00 |
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A.M. 10 miles in 1:18:28, first 7 with Jeff. Ran a tempo mile in 5:29 just because - the legs felt a bit feisty and I decided to give them a shake. Discussed a new economic concept I have thought of. Perhaps it is not new, just plain common sense, but I do not see it discussed very often. They talk about inflation, price index, GDP, (un)employment rate, etc, but I find those measurements rather removed from real life. Example - we say that creating new jobs is good, but removing jobs is bad. By that definition, if one could completely automate the production of life necessities and conveniences that would be bad because a lot of jobs would be lost. We are producing and buying from each other a lot of gimmicky junk, this raises our GDP. If increased GDP is what we are after, producing more junk is good. When we try to spend less time producing the gimmicky junk and more time with our families, GDP goes down, so that is bad. So I wanted to have a different set of metrics and came up with this rough idea: Each individual at any point in his life contributes and withdraws economic value. E.g when he eats he withdraws. When he produces food he contributes. When he helps somebody in some way he contributes. He may get paid for his contribution, he may not. He might have to pay to withdraw or he might not. We create a withdrawal-contribution model by assigning a value to every action. Granted, you can debate the values, but I believe you tried hard enough you could create a reasonable model. We already do it with money, and it works more or less OK, at least enough to keep us doing things for each other even when we do not feel like it. But we could do much better if all we are doing is a mathematical analysis - e.g we can assign a teacher much higher contribution value than a tobacco sales exec, and we do not have to pass any laws in the Congress, raise taxes, or mess with the free market otherwise. Throughout an individual's life, the deposits and withdrawals add up to a net total. The key to our survival and progress is to have the net total of the whole population as high as possible. Definitely a non-negative, ideally highly positive. To make that happen, we need to maximize the net total of each individual. Some will have to be negative. E.g someone is born with a handicap. Others will be highly positive - e.g a scientist that invents a process for feeding millions off a small portion of land. We want to help each individual arrive at the end of his life with a positive balance. We are born with a negative balance already - our parents had to sacrifice just for the pregnancy alone. As children we continue to accrue the negative. Then hopefully we eventually get to the point where we are starting to deposit more than we withdraw, and begin to eat away the negative balance. At some point it hopefully becomes positive, hopefully positive enough to where when we get old and need care, we have enough positive to still stay positive all the way through. The cause of the current economic crisis could be explained in traditional economic terms and complex discussion of cash flow, assets, borrowing, etc, but I believe it is much simpler. As a society we have been withdrawing more than we have been contributing. Again, referencing the thoughts above, not necessarily just the money, but rather in terms of true value which correlates with money maybe 50-70%. For a while we were OK because the previous generation has build a positive balance of value. But now that we've squandered some of it things are starting to get a bit tougher. The solution is to start contribution more and withdrawing less.
So with that vision in mind our education should be reformed. Right now we have a system when a lot of people do not reach the level of a positive economic existence until they are 30, and I would guess net zero is often not reached until 45. While education is very important, we need to do something to help people become productive contributors while they are being educated. Less pure academic learning and more learning on the job in other words. In my area (computer programming), for example, most jobs require a BS degree. Yet every good programmer I've ever known acquired most of his skill either on the job or hacking on his own. If he went to school at all he did so to prove that he was good more than to become good. Classroom instruction would not hurt, but political issues aside, if somebody asked me to train a good programmer, I would spend 10% of the time instructing him, and 90% of the time throwing him in the water to see if he would learn to swim. While learning how to swim he could produce something useful and end his education with a positive net value balance.
P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:41, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:08. Julia was sick, so no run for her.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.09 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.25 | 13.34 |
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A.M. Ran alone. I got a feel of what it's like to not have the trail. A portion of the trail was blocked due to construction, so I had to take a detour for about 1.2 miles and deal with cars on 820 N and Geneva Road. This reminded me that I should be thankful for where I live. Did 4x400 on the trail - 70.9, 70.7, 69.8, 70.0 - 200 recovery between the first three, then 400. Was originally planning the 5th 400 but because I was hitting them so slow and could not go any faster decided to break the last one into 2x200. Did them in 33.1 and 33.4. Fast speed was not happening today, but it was not as bad as a few weeks ago when I could not break 72. Felt like the stride was not explosive enough and did not feel good control over the legs in general. Like if I had to write with my feet it would have produced the doctor's level of illegibility even if adjusted for the expected hand-foot legibility gap. 200 with Jacob in 1:41 (new record), and 0.34 with Joseph in 4:09. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:05. 2 with Benjamin in 17:32, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:18.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
| A.M. 10 miles in 1:12:33, first 8 with Dustin and Derek. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:05, 2 with Benjamin in 16:49, Jenny ran 1.5 with us in 12:45. |
Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 9.70 | 2.00 | 9.00 | 0.00 | 20.70 |
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A.M. Tempo run with Jeff. Did some bushwhacking on the warm-up trying to find a alternative route to having to run on 820 N and Geneva road. Found a one-way solution of sorts, but it was not viable - too much hole crawling and fence climbing. Total of 2.75 for the warm-up. Tempo run. Usual course - the 2.5 mile stretch between Geneva Road and the Utah Lake, out and back twice/(three times for Jeff). The plan was 10 for me, 15 for Jeff. After I am done with my 10, join Jeff at his 13.5 and try to run as far as I could at his pace. The workout had different purposes for each of us. For Jeff - develop fuel storage capabilities. For me - learn to fight neural fatigue. Total time: 55:59 - new course PR by 39 seconds. Splits: by mile: 5:43 - 5:36 - 5:38 - 5:34 - 5:38 - 5:28 - 5:41 - 5:33 - 5:31 - 5:37 by 2.5: 14:08 - 14:01 - 13:54 - 13:56 by 5: 28:09 - 27:50 Subjective: This was a breakthrough run. I was not expecting it. I have difficulty understanding where this strength came from. I cannot think of any regular physiological reasons. This whole week has not been that great. The only thing I can think of is my conversation with Hobie Call the day before. As we talked about training and other things something happened. I got off the phone, and felt different. I did not think much of it although I did wonder with a measure of hope in the back of my mind if it was a real physical change, not just a feeling. Once I heard that the Japanese believe in learning by osmosis, or in other words, assimilating a skill or a capability by virtue of merely being around a person who has that capability. The person telling me about it was mocking the notion, but as he did I thought to myself, and ever wondered since, if there was some merit to this concept. I think today I observed the strongest material witness that learning by osmosis has something validity. Hobie and I have opposite strengths and weaknesses. His neural drive is superb. He can run a 5 K so hard that his muscles will hurt for a week. I cannot run a marathon that hard. But at the same time, I can put my body through all kinds of abuse and never get injured, while he has to watch every step. I have wished I could borrow a portion of his neural drive for a long time. Well, it appears like I was able to do it, and all I had to do was talk and listen. I did not do any mental games, or visualization before or after, except briefly thinking 2 miles into the run about how the leaders ran a suicidal pace in the Olympic marathon. If anything, I doubted the entire time that I could keep the pace. But something got reprogrammed on the subconscious level and I just kept doing fast quarters one after another.
The entire run after 0.5 miles felt like a long long quarter. I noticed my legs wanted to do a quarter, and I just let them. For some reason I had no fear. The odd thing is that I've tried this many times in the past, but it was the top-down decision. I would say to myself, go this pace until you cannot, or push yourself into pain and see how much pain you can take. And it never really worked. The conscious will was there, but the subconscious will was lacking. Today the conscious will was lacking, but the subconscious will was there. So after the first mile I started pushing the pace and breathing hard not quite sure of where I was headed with that. 2 miles into it I gave myself a reassurance that if this worked for Wanjiru, it could work for me. But I was still skeptical thinking build a gap, the longer you go, the less you will lose when you crash because there will be less left. At 2.5 I thought - it would be nice if I could keep this, but I know I can't. Nevertheless, I tucked behind Jeff and just kept telling myself, one more quarter at this pace. It hurt, but surprisingly never got worse. By 5 miles I began to believe that I could finish ahead of the 5:40 guy given a decent star alignment. Then Jeff at 5.75 got confused by his watch and thought we had slowed down to 5:50 pace. So he "corrected" it and our next quarter was 79. That hurt, but the fact that I could do it at all was very encouraging. Taking the next mile easy in 5:41 allowed me to recover, and I began to believe that 56:30 was a possibility. At 7.5 we were 3 seconds behind the 5:36 guy and I thought it would be good to get beat by 10-15 seconds, so 56:10-56:15. But Jeff kept pressing the pace, and I managed to stay with him, and to my utter amazement with a mile to go we got 2 seconds ahead of the impossible-to-beat-for-10-miles-on- that-course-56:00-5:36 guy. When I finished 1 second ahead of my virtual elusive nemesis and started jogging I realized how mentally drained I was from the effort and was not looking forward to any more running, much less fast running. But I needed miles, and I wanted to do what I could to support Jeff. I said to myself, just 0.5 miles, that's better than just leaving Jeff in the hole to run alone. I was able to make it to the mile, in a great degree thanks to the fact that Jeff was hurting. But it was still a decent mile - 5:29. Jeff had a great run - 1:23:02 for 15 miles, in my estimate worth 2:25 in Ogden if he does not blow up. Right now he probably will, but with those tempos done consistently he likely won't when it is time to race. We cooled down, this gave me 17.8 for the whole run.
P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:18, 2 with Benjamin in 17:38, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:23.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 17.80 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Went to church. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
| A.M. 10 miles alone in 1:11:56. Still feeling stoked about the economy. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:29, 2 with Benjamin in 17:47, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:27. |
Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.75 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.25 | 13.00 |
| A.M. Ran with Tyler. He is a business/finance major so it was fun to talk to him about the economy. We did quarters. I did 5, he did 10. 200 meter recovery between all.
Times: 69.4, 70.3, 69.4, 69.8, 69.4 Subjective: Consistent, quick recovery, faster than last week, but still slow. They all felt hard, like in all honesty I could not do them any faster even with infinite rest. Question - is the problem in the power, or in the turnover? If turnover I need to run downhill. Otherwise uphill. Total distance - 10 miles. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:42, 2 with Benjamin in 17:35, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:15.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Dustin, and Derek. Dustin and Derek went 8, Jeff and I added 2 more. Total time 1:14:47. I overdressed at the top. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:32. 2 with Benjamin in 16:50. Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 12:49. |
Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Race: |
Earn Your Turkey 4 miler (4 Miles) 00:21:22, Place overall: 10 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 7.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 4.00 | 11.00 |
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A.M. Earn Your Turkey 4 miler in Orem. 21:22.6, 10th place. Today was a special day. Everybody in our family except Sarah and William ran. I ran first. We had a fast field. The start was very fast. I worked through the pack until I found Stephen Clark pacing Shaine Kirtright, and tucked in behind them. The mile markers were off. For the record, my time at the first mile marker was 5:06, but it was short. 5:30 at the official 3 mile mark which we would hit on the next lap again, and the it was really supposed to be 3 miles, but I knew already it was in the wrong place. I caught a split at the four triangles for 1.25, and it was 6:40. Now that made sense. 2 mile split officially in 10:41, I think that one was right. Then around 2 miles Shaine started struggling, Stephen started yelling at him, and I passed them and surged to catch Gamechu, a high school runner that immigrated from Ethiopia. Caught him, he surged and dropped me, but I was able to pull back up. Tucked in behind him as tight as I could. 15:55 at the official mile 1 the second time around, 16:06 at the triangles, I think this was the actual 3 mile split, and 16:19 at the official mile 3. My natural tendency to association cannot help but remind me of the standard Soviet propaganda line when they spoke about America: "According to the official, obviously distorted, data ..." With about 1 K to knowing that Gamechu had a close to 11.0 PR in 100 meters I tried to break him, but could not. He ended up gapping me instead, but I closed with a quarter to go. But then it was too late. He turned on his kick and pulled ahead. He eased off, I closed some, but could not catch him. I timed the last quarter in 76. Ahead of me: Sean Sundwall 19:55.3, Nick McCombs 19:59.8, Jeff McClellan (our Jeff) 20:02.1, Reagan Fry 20:13.8, Aaron Robison 20:30.1, Shin Nozaki 20:33.0, Danny Moody 20:45.1, Thatcher Olson 21:11.9, and Gamechu Goesse 21:21.9. 1-2-3-7-8 for the blog. Not bad in that field. Bloggers beat BYU, not bad at all. Of course, not sure how to count Thatcher - he is both.
Overall the race went better than I expected. 5:20 pace felt good when tucked behind somebody. Felt like I could run a 10 K like this. But not any faster. Did not handle surges well, they hurt bad. On the positive side of things ran strong all the way, did not fade in the last mile. So while the neural power is lacking the neural endurance is not doing too bad. Now the fun begins. Kids races. Men 0-2 - 100 meters. Jacob won with 35 seconds. This is our family record for the diaper division. 9:20 pace while wearing a diaper, how about that? We've tried to win that division ever since we've had kids. It took 5 tries (as in kids, not the number of runs). Men 3-4, 400 meters. Joseph ran 2:34 for 7th place. A new PR, and not bad for a 3 year old. His stride is still developing though, he shuffles. No big deal, he'll outgrow it. Jenny used to shuffle at his age as well. Women 5-6. 800 meters. Julia crushed the field with a 3:51 winning by more than 40 seconds. New PR. Splits of 1:51 - 2:00, quarter PR en route as well. She pushed hard, which for her is remarkable. She is not developed mentally to the level of Benjamin and Jenny at her age yet. Women 7-8. 800 meters. Jenny won coming from behind. Her time was 3:21, splits by quarter 1:41 - 1:40. There comes Jenny the Fire Breathing Dragon, better watch out. Men 9-10. 1 mile. Benjamin finished second with 6:14, 4 seconds behind his arch-rival Jacob Blackburn who is a year older. New mile PR. Last quarter in 1:30. He gave it all he had. Interesting enough, in all of the races our kids ran the Pachev-Blackburn combination did a 1-2 punch. The main Blackburn family has 10 children, and they have cousins as well. It is fun to race them. All of the children performed according to my expectations. After having worked with my kids for probably 7 or so years I can appreciate the significance of this. This is a true miracle. I do not set my expectations low. I do not tell a kid he did a good job to make him feel good when he performed poorly. When he runs below expectations I am honest with him, we analyze what went wrong, and make plans on how we are going to improve. You can train, you can prepare, you can make plans, and things still go wrong. They go wrong even with adults. With all the experience I have I still have bad races. With kids it is much worse - kids can run into issues adults never will (hopefully), like a temper tantrum at the start, or half way through the race. To have all five run with no glitches was something special.
Ran a cool-down with Jeff, total of 11 miles for the day.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 11.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.25 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.25 |
| A.M. 10.25 with Jeff in 1:22:59. Felt tightness in the left hamstring. I actually like it when the hamstrings hurt. I had tight hamstrings after my best races. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:44, 2 with Benjamin in 16:46, Jenny ran 1.5 with us in 12:55. Julia rode along on a bike. |
Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.25 |
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 15.00 |
| A.M. 12 miles with Jeff in 1:34:35. Stomach has not worked since yesterday afternoon so I have not been eating much. This entire run felt like the last 6 miles of St. George. 8:00 pace was a challenge. Focusing on the positive, stomach flu helps save on food. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:47, 2 with Benjamin in 17:47, Jenny ran 1.5 with us in 13:18.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 12.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
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Day of rest. Went to church. Looked at our missionary board. We have 10 full-time missionaries in the field from our stake. What is interesting is that three come from one family, and three more come from our Spanish branch. I cannot help but think it means something, but I cannot quite figure out what this means. Church average is about 20 per stake.
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Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.10 |
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A.M. 10.1 mostly alone in 1:15:01. Caught up to Yvonne, an old friend of ours from our BYU ward 12 years ago, slowed down to chat, we ran to our house so she could see Sarah and the kids.
P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:19, 2 with Benjamin in 17:15, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:16 with us. Julia rode along for part of it on a bike.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.50 | 0.00 | 2.50 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Total of 10 miles. Ran the warm-up with Dustin and Derek. Then they turned around and ran back. I went a bit further, and then ran my 2.5 mile tempo.
Total time: 13:43.9 Course: From Utah Lake to Geneva Road.
Splits by quarter: 81, 82, 82, 82, 82, 82, 83, 83, 84, 82 Subjective: Probably the most even I've ever run this adjusted for the terrain. However, for the life of me could not go any faster. Felt that my power was coming from what I would describe as a compact stride. This made me think of a Russian math joke. First, some definitions. A set is considered closed if every sequence in that set that converges to a limit contains that limit. A set is considered bounded, well, if it has boundaries specific to the nature of the beast. In a one-dimensional space (a line of real numbers) the boundaries would be a lower bound number and an upper bound number. In a two-dimensional space (XY plane) the boundaries would be a rectangle. In 3-D a rectangular parallelepiped. Speaking of the parallelepiped. In my informal polling, I discovered that most Americans do not know what it is. In Russia, this geometric object is sufficiently familiar to the general public that it is mentioned in a popular song. But we have digressed. A set is called compact if it is both closed and bounded. Now the joke. A mathematician says to his girlfriend - "you are so compact". She asks what that means. "Well, you are so closed and bounded". In running I would describe stride compactness as the amount of control you feel over your legs. The metaphor I like to use is if somebody stuck a pen in between your toes you'd be able to write small letters legibly with your foot. The control over your legs and feet allows you to generate maximum push-off power with minimum effort.
Well, I felt while hitting the 82s that I was able to maintain some semblance of compactness in my stride. After that I began to lose it. I still managed to maintain the pace (adjusted for the terrain, the last mile had a small uphill), but it took a lot of effort. I think next week I willl replace this tempo with 10x200. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:03, 2 with Benjamin in 16:35, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 12:44.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Jeff must have slept in this morning. So I ran alone for a while. Quiz: What are my chances of meeting a Russian speaking running partner at 6:00 AM in Provo on a December morning? Answer: You might think they are pretty dismal. Provo is a small town in the depth's of a supposedly ignorant, non-diverse, narrow minded, prejudiced, bigotted, and you name it, state of Utah which somehow managed to place 5th among all of the states in a recent national health survey. Number one rating on low smoking rate, and number one on low cancer deaths. Only number three on low binge drinking, Latter-Day Saints need to do a better job on home teaching, activation, missionary work, and opening their mouth in general when they know they should even though the world might think they should not. Number three on low cardiovascular deaths. Not dismal, but we can do better than that. Need to do a better job following the principles of the Word of Wisdom rather than just the letter. 4th place on low infant mortality. Not bad considering that our women have more children than anywhere else in the nation and that they push the envelope and will have a child against the odds more often than anywhere else. But with healthy diet and exercise we might be able to do even better and be number one. 7th place on the low prevalence of obesity. Good bye the myth that LDS people are fatter than the rest of the country. But they are still fat. 22.4 % with the BMI of more than 30. That means a guy my height (5-10) weighing over 208 lb. And no, we cannot blame this on those outside of the church :-) 8th place on low poor mental health days. Good bye the myth that LDS women with everything they have to do are any more depressed than the rest of the nation. But more sunshine in the soul would not hurt. We can be number one.
One place where we got unfairly hit in my opinion is the number of primary care doctors per person (45th), and the public health spending per person (32nd). Doesn't the scripture say the whole need no physician? The healthier we get, the fewer doctors we need, and the less money we need to spend on health care. We also got slammed on the geographic disparity (45th) which measures how equal the counties are on the health parameters. I'll blame that on the fact that smoking and binge drinking are much higher in the Salt Lake County than in the Utah County and rural areas. You can see the data at http://www.americashealthrankings.org/2008/states/ut.html
Well, this morning the Russian speaking partner chances ended up being 100% (if something already happened, the chances are 100%, if it did not, then just 0%). Half way through the run I met Scott Hillman. Total of 10 miles in 1:21:33. Too early and too much talking in Russian. P.M. 2 with Benjamin and Jenny in 17:27, 1 with Julia in 9:50.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 7.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 10.60 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 2.50 | 13.10 |
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A.M. Ran with Derek and MaryAnn. For the sake of protecting MaryAnn's privacy will not mention her last name. Yeah, right :-) If you are a female, and you can hit a 70 second quarter in a workout, do not do it after you've robbed a bank. This will most certainly lead to a positive identification.
So we did a warm-up, then a speed workout on the trail. 2x400 69.3 - 69.8 with 200 recovery. MaryAnn was about a second back on the first, and ran 72 on the second. Then 8x200 with 200 recovery for all except the last. 32.9 - 33.1 - 32.8 - 33.1 - 32.8 - 33.3 - 31.6 - 31.4. Derek was feeling tight so he skipped the 200s. MaryAnn did them in around 34. On the 5th one I told her to back off and coast so she'd be recovered enough to give me trouble in the next two. On the 6th I had her run with me until she could not then coast to the finish. She made it to about 130 meters. But the holy fear of being chicked made me go 1.3 seconds faster. On the last one we took 400 rest to make MaryAnn faster. She was able to stay with me for the whole interval and finished maybe only a step or two behind. Again the holy fear of being chicked played a role. I ran 1.7 seconds faster than the fastest previous time in that direction. And I discovered something. The mechanism of running faster. I reach my top power and MaryAnn is still with me. I need to drop her, but I do not have any more raw power left. In fact, it feels like I am not going to be able to sustain the power I am exerting right now. But I do not want to get chicked. Amazingly, I am able to find another gear. Not through more power, but by using that power more efficiently. I have tried to find that gear on all the previous repetitions telling myself, come on, go faster, she is only a few steps behind you, you'll get chicked, etc. But it did not work. Deep down I knew she was far enough behind, and there was nothing I could consciously do about it. The fear had to be real for it work. Cooled down, total distance for the run was 10.1. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:50 - Joseph rode in the stroller and ran portions. 2 with Benjamin in 17:04, Jenny ran 1.5 in 13:16 with us.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. 10 miles alone in 1:11:34. It was cold, so we got some inversion/air pollution. Could tell that Utah ranks only 25th on the lack of air pollution. My plan on improving that. Get as many people as you can running regularly, and especially during winter. If we can do a good job, it could get the public thinking about what we can do to improve our furnaces, and eventually we will have a solution.
P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:39, 2 with Benjamin in 16:44, Jenny ran 1.5 in 12:44.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.10 | 14.50 | 0.50 | 0.00 | 23.10 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff. We did a 2 mile warm-up, ran our standard 15 mile tempo, and then 3.1 for a cool down. Total of 20.1 miles. Tempo - total time 1:26:52.0. New course record by 18 seconds. Splits by mile: 5:51 - 5:50 - 5:52 - 5:49 - 5:54 - 5:46 - 5:49 - 5:47 - 5:52 - 5:48 - 5:46 - 5:45 - 5:43 - 5:45 - 5:35. By 2.5 segment: 14:39 - 14:37 - 14:30 - 14:32 - 14:24 - 14:10 By 5 mile segment: 29:16 - 29:02 - 28:34 By half: 43:46 - 43:06 Analysis: The plan was to go 5:50 pace without major speeding even if I felt good for the first 10 miles, and then do the best I can after that. Jeff was under the constraint of not being allowed to drop me. The reason was to make sure Jeff would not run himself into the ground. He still has a discrepancy between fuel storage/muscle resilience and a neural drive favoring the neural drive, or in more plain terms he can run hard for 15 miles but he pays for it for a week afterward. 6:00 pace felt hard from the gun, but then I got warmed up. We did quite a bit of surging into the 86 quarter zone, then overcorrecting to an 89 or sometimes even 90, then repeating the cycle. Which I think was not necessarily bad since it happens a lot in tactical races and it is good to be ready for it. Part of the reason we surged so much I think was that 5:50 pace felt not much harder than 5:40, but 6:00 felt much more relaxing. So once we'd realize we earned some relaxation points instead of taking a short nap (an 88 quarter), we would go to a spa (90 quarter), and then it was time to pay the bills.
The good news is that as the run progressed the pace did not feel harder. I did not have to draft behind Jeff through most of the run except a couple of surges and the last 0.5 which we did in 2:44 (83,81). Had to do a VPB stop at mile 7.
Compared to the previous course PR which I set drafting behind Nick for 12.5 miles, we trailed that schedule the entire time and did not pass virtual me until the last mile. However, it was Abraham sacrificing the ram caught in the thicket - virtual me ran 15:12 for the last 2.5 so even though we were still behind at 14, we ended up 18 seconds ahead at the finish. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:56, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 12:34. Benjamin was excited about playing with Jared, so he ran 6:44 pace in the last 0.5 to get the run finished quicker. 1 with Julia in 9:47.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 20.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
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Day of rest. Went to church. Had the privilege to bless my son William. We do not baptize children until they are 8 (age of accountability), but we give them a special blessing soon after they are born. Julia gave a talk in Primary. Usually if the child is not a fluent reader or if he is just too nervous a parent goes up to help. But I was holding William and Sarah had not yet come in, so I had an idea - send Jenny to help Julia instead. That's part of what the families are all about - older children helping their younger siblings. Julia ended up needing help with only a couple of words.
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Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
| A.M. Ran 7.5 with Derek, Dustin, and Mary Ann, and then 2.5 alone. Total time for 10 was 1:11:07. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:08, Jenny ran 1.5 with us in 13:03. 1 with Julia in 10:07. It is getting colder.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.12 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.25 | 13.37 |
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A.M. Derek and Dustin did not show up, so it was just me and Mary Ann. She had a tight hamstring, so I did my workout alone. We warmed up 3 miles. The plan was 10x200. I did 4 alternating directions; 33.3, 34.1, 32.9, 33.3. Then I decided to do a couple of quarters to see what would happen. 70.3 (high 33 split half way), and 72.6 (35). Was fading badly for some reason especially at the end of the last one, the legs felt heavy, like at the end of all out 800 meters. However, my breathing recovered to normal in 20 seconds after each interval. Did another 2x200: 34.4, and 35.1. Same problem as in the last quarter. One difference today is that it was 27 degrees. Here is what's odd. If it is just a cold muscle problem, wouldn't you think that you'd have problems in the first few repetitions, and then they would go away as they warm up, and you will not be fading as much in a longer repetition? It was exactly the opposite today. But at the same time it does not surprise me. I know from experience that starting out fast is a lot more forgivable in 60 degrees than in 25. I still have no clue why. Finished the run, then added another 2.25 running back from Computune. The Fast Running Van had a break fluid leak. Total distance 10.37 for the workout. P.M. 2.25 with Benjamin and Jenny to Computune in 20:03. 1 with Julia pushing Jacob and Joseph in 9:58. Joseph got out a few times and ran for portions of it.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.37 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.10 |
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A.M. Jeff must have slept in this morning. Ran 8.1 with Mary Ann, and then 2 more alone. Total time 1:22:00. Went with the missionaries to visit a Mexican family in the afternoon. I do not think most people realize how much the church is doing to reach out to the Latinos. P.M. 1 with Julia in 9:54, 2 with Benjamin in 17:29, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:09.
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Night Sleep Time: 7.00 | Nap Time: 1.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 11.85 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.25 | 13.10 |
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A.M. Ran with Dustin and Mary Ann. Decided to wear tights to see if they will make a difference in the speed workout. Warmed up for 3 miles. Mary Ann had a tight hamstring, so she just jogged. Dustin did the workout with me. Workout on the trail, usual spot.
We started with 3x400: 68.4, 70.7, 69.8. Took 400 recovery. Dustin was a step ahead on the first one, even on the second, and a step behind on the third. Then 4x200: 32.1, 32.0, 31.6, 31.0. 200 recovery. Dustin was a step ahead on all. The workout went a lot better than on Tuesday. What was different: Dustin's presence, wearing tights, and hanging upside down on the inversion table before the run. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:21, 2 with Benjamin in 17:07. Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:09. Read on the news in a headline that the total amount of American debt was down for the first time since 1952. The headline made it sound like Americans were starting to be serious about getting out of debt. Decided to read the article to see what was up and was laughing for the rest of the day, and still laughing. The cause of the reduced debt was an increase in foreclosures. Mind-boggling, but true nevertheless. When you lose a house, you also lose the debt. Along the same lines, there is an ad as you drive east on Center street in Orem from the I-15 exit. It says: "Live debt free! 801-BANKRUPT". And recently I got the following in the mail, kept me laughing for a few days, and I am still not over it: "Title loans. Any make, year, or model. Go from 0 to $5000 in 20 seconds!" I could not believe it. Somebody is spending time and money to advertise something as idiotic as going into $5K of debt in 20 seconds, that fast! I was have a conversation about religion with a friend in 2002. He asked me: "So what is your prophet telling you to do now?". The first thing that came to my mind was to get out of debt. My friend was rather skeptical and wondered what was so special about that. Valueable advice often comes in the form of an invitation to wash yourself in the Jordan river seven times. We are tempted to disregard it as being too simple. Yet this inspired simplicity can make a big difference, and I have seen it so in this case.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Total of 10 in 1:18:29. First 4 with Daniel and Mary Ann. Wore Five Fingers. Feet felt fine. They are OK if there is not a lot of moisture even if it is cold. The left one is finally starting to develop a hole. The right one has had two holes for about 600 miles already. But my feet are getting used to it.
P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:00. 2 with Benjamin in 17:00, Jenny ran 1.5 with us in 12:55.
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 8.34 | 14.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 | 23.34 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Daniel, and Mary Ann. Daniel and Mary Ann did the warm-up (2 miles), and ran the first mile of the tempo. Mary Ann additionally did another 0.75 or so of the tempo starting at our 2.75 mark. Jeff ran everything with me. Tempo. 15 miles, 1:26:59, same course - 3 times the standard 5 mile tempo from Geneva Road to the Utah Lake and back. So 6 times on the same 2.5 stretch alternating directions, 5 180 turns, tedious, but I like being able to compare the splits. Conditions - the road traction was ideal, but it was windy. So some miles were slower than the effort we put into them.
Splits: 5:50, 5:55, 5:52, 5:54, 6:01, 5:54, 5:52, 5:46, 5:43, 5:52, 5:42, 5:40, 5:42, 5:42, 5:34. By 2.5: 14:44 - 14:48 - 14:39 - 14:28 - 14:17 - 14:03 By 5: 29:32 - 29:07 - 28:20 By 7.5: 44:11 - 42:48 Details: First mile felt great. Then we started dealing with the wind. Decided to ignore the splits and just go by the effort of the consensus. Meaning that both Jeff and I agreed we were putting in an honest 5:50 effort. The effort was producing splits about 10 seconds per mile slower than what we felt we deserved. Finally I got tired of this and suggested we trade quarters. Up to that point we'd been running side by side. This led to a pace increase. The surging to pass also agitated Jeff enough to where he started to want to run faster, and it was wearing me out. Sensing this I decided it was time to start drafting.
The last 5 miles I was following Jeff hanging on to dear life as he tried to bring us under 1:27:00. 5:40 pace for me at the end of a 15 mile tempo is hard even in ideal conditions, and with the wind gusts it was particularly tough. I moaned the last 3 miles. Moaning helps me deal with the pain and exert more effort. With 1.25 to go Jeff gapped me and then challenged to give him five. I made an effort to humble myself and feel Christ-like love in my heart. It was not easy. I think I learned something. You cannot learn this just sitting in Sunday School or reading the scriptures. But at the same time I do not think you will learn it as well if you had not been taught this in Sunday School or from the scriptures. You need the right balance of theory and practice to learn effectively. Jeff had just raised the bar on me after I had reached what I thought was my limit. I had to humble myself, not let my pride turn my focus to the pain, but rather hush that pride and believe that I could go faster. Truly believe, not just in my mind, but in the very depth of my heart.
So I made an effort to believe in my ability to run the last mile in 5:35 as much as Jeff believed it. It is easy for him, he is not getting my pain signals. But it is good that he is not. This allows him to believe naturally and lead the way. We grow when we lay our pride aside and allow those who are stronger to show us what we need to do. The last three quarters were 85, 83, 84, and 81, and we reached a time I thought was impossible in those windy conditions. This seems to be a common theme in those tempo runs lately. When we finished I felt nauseous and would have thrown up had there been anything in my stomach. After about a minute of my attempting to vomit we ran a 3 mile cool down. Total of 20 miles for the run. P.M. Snow on the roads. 0.34 with Joseph while pushing Jacob in the stroller in 4:11. 200 with Jacob in 1:47. 1 with Julia in 9:51. 2 with Benjamin in 17:50. Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:27.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 20.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Went to church. Went home teaching in the evening. It was cold. I missed Al Gore, thought he could warm up the air with his talks about global warming. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 0.50 | Total Sleep Time: 9.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Daniel, Dustin, and Mary Ann. Daniel went 4, Dustin 8, Mary Ann 7. I did 10 in 1:14:51. Mary Ann was late, but then she drove around and found us. This was a great investigative feat. I think she could land a job with FBI. With the temperatures of 21 F at the start I missed Al Gore and the global warming convention again. I think they should have had it in Utah instead of Poland. Or even better, somewhere in the US Northeast, maybe Maine. Dustin looked at my hip imbalance and suggested some exercises. He thinks my right hip rotators are weak/deactivated. His suggestion was to work on the hip rotators on both sides with the 2:1 right/left repetition ratio. I am excited - something new to try. During the run I presented an argument that Mary Ann could possibly have a 2:30 marathon in her. Both Dustin and Mary Ann herself were skeptical. I presented my reasoning: my PRs up to 800 meters are slightly slower than hers (59.5 vs 58.0 quarter, 2:12 vs 2:11 800), when I ran 40 miles a week I ran 4:26 in the 1500 vs her 4:29, and 16:38 5 K vs her 17:30. My mileage even then was more consistent than hers ever. So who knows what might happen at 80 miles a week over 5 years. Here is the funny part. Dustin says - well, you are still 20 seconds faster than her in the 1500. I am puzzled. He says - your 4:26 is for the mile, right? No, Dustin, for 1500! If I could run 4:26 for the mile I would have had no worries about the new OTQ 2:19 standard! P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:16, 2 with Benjamin in 16:58, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:03.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Ran with Jeff, Daniel, and Mary Ann. Jeff and I went 10, Daniel 4, Mary Ann 7. Lots of snow on the road. Slow run. I fell twice. Total time was 1:24:46. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:46, 2 with Benjamin in 17:50, Jenny ran the first 1.5 in 13:31.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.50 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.50 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Started with 2 miles with Benjamin in 16:23. Continued with Chauncy and Mary Ann. Dropped Mary Ann off after 7 miles. Ran another 1.5 with Chauncy. Chauncy served a mission in Russia, so he got some practice in the language today. Total time for 10.5 was 1:20:36. Roads are still slippery. Mary Ann has finally been converted to the "true religion". She is now on the blog. P.M. 1 with Julia in 10:25. 1.5 with Jenny in 13:22. Slippery roads.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.50 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
| A.M. Snowed in today. Tuesday was nothing compared to today. But I know it could be worse. Ran 7 miles with Chauncy and Mary Ann, then added 3 alone. Total time for 10 was 1:26:35. Effort-wise I did about 7:30 per mile, but it produced 8:40. Saw Sarah Jarvis (a triathlete) pushing her two kids in the double stroller. Knew it was her from far away even though I could not recongize the face or the stride. Nobody else would run with a double stroller in this kind of weather. When I got home Julia wanted to go for a run. I wondered if she'd able to break 12:00 on those roads. She did - 11:46 for the mile. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 19:44. Jenny ran 1.5 in 15:02. Not enough traction to go faster.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 11.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 15.00 |
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A.M. 7 with Daniel and Mary Ann. 3 more by myself. 1:24:38 for 10. Broke 8:00 average in the last 3 miles, but had to hit 5:30 pace when I had traction. There were not many of those parts. Added another mile with Julia in 11:25. Ran into Marion and her husband Dave at Costco.
P.M. 2 miles cross-country skiing at Jolley Ranch in the Hobble Creek Canyon with Benjamin. Everybody else was sledding. 2 miles with Benjamin in 18:59, Jenny ran 1.5 with us in 14:28.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 11.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Race: |
Provo Christmas Run (3.1 Miles) 00:17:01, Place overall: 1 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 3.10 | 18.10 |
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A.M. 5 miles with Daniel and Mary Ann in 44:46. 3 more miles alone in 26:34. 2 miles with Benjamin in 18:19. 1 with Julia in 11:26. 1.5 with Jenny in 14:52. Total of 12.5 miles. Still slippery, 8:00 mile is a dream pace. P.M. Ran Mary Ann's 5 K. Won it in 17:01. We had a small group. Ted came to help with the race. The course had a net downhill of 57 feet, but the last mile was uphill and into a small headwind - started at the Rock Canyon Park and finished close to the north end of the Timpview drive. I have plotted a rough version - $Provo Christmas Run. After the crazy grade correction the Course Tool says the effort was worth about 5:24 flat pace, which I am willing to believe. It was cold, there were occasional patches of snow on the road, there was about a 5-10 mph headwind on Timpview, and I ran alone start to finish. Chauncy was second in 18:19. The warm up was very short, about 0.2 miles, the cool down was about 1.5 miles or so. A plug for Mary Ann's races. This is exactly what I wanted for the Fast Running Blog racing circuit. Bare essentials for a low entry fee. No nonsense, let's have a race. The Fast Running Blog is seriously considering becoming a title sponsor for those races. But in any case, I would like to encourage everybody to support Mary Ann in her efforts. The next race is on December 31, 2008 at 2:00 pm in Provo. This time it will be on the Provo River Trail starting at the Geneva Road parking lot. The tentative plan for the course is out-and-back on the Provo River Trail following most of my standard 3 mile tempo. P.M-2: 1 mile running errands.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 17.10 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day off. Went to Church. Maurine (Tarzan) came over to pick up Sarah's pants and to visit with us in the afternoon. |
Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 14.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 14.00 |
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A.M. 5 with Daniel and Mary Ann in 40:56. Then 2 with Benjamin and Mary Ann in 17:53. 4 more alone in 33:57. Still slippery. Less slippery at the start, more later on. 3 VPBs, one more non-virtual. And no, I do not consider this a health abnormality, I felt fine except in moments of urgency.
P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:54, 1.5 with Jenny in 15:51. 0.5 running errands.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 11.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.50 |
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A.M. Still slippery. 5 miles with Daniel and Mary Ann in 46:07. 2 more with Benjamin and Mary Ann in 17:54. 4 alone in 34:32. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:31, 1.5 with Jenny in 14:58.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 11.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
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A.M. Still slippery. 5 with Daniel and Mary Ann in 44:47. 5 more with Chauncy and Mary Ann in 43:55. Interesting dreams. I dreamt that Jacob was 10 years old and I was trying to catch up to him. I was pushing as hard as I could but could not close the gap. Jacob so far has shown more running talent and motivation than any other kid in our family at his age. He is 2. So this dream may very well come true and not because I get slow. Sarah had a dream that a drunk defecated on our front porch. I hope her dream does not come true literally. However, according to a Russian tradition, her dream means we are going to get a significant amount of money from an unexpected source. I hope that part will come true. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:14, 2 with Benjamin in 18:58, Jenny ran 1.5 in 14:25. Slippery.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.00 |
| A.M. Merry Christmas to everyone. We got a Merry Christmas from Provo City as well - they have finished the construction project on the trail and everything is back to normal. Not counting the slippery roads, of course. Now the fish are happy and so are the runners. Both can travel through their natural habitat.
Ran 5 with Daniel, 5 more alone. Total of 10 miles in 1:27:31. I could go 8:00 on better parts, but there were parts where 10:00 pace was all I could do. Soon after I finished, 2 with Benjamin in 19:33, Jenny did 1.5 in 15:03, then 1 mile with Julia in 11:34.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 13.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 15.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 15.00 |
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A.M. 10 miles in 1:26:22. First 5 with Daniel. Still slippery. Did some sprints in the middle whenever I had traction. Cheating like this allowed me to run the last 2.5 at sub-8:00 average. P.M. Cross-country skiing with Benjamin in at the Jolley Ranch in the Hobble Creek Canyon. 2 miles. I did laps, and so did he, so we could be together while going our own speeds. On the way back I managed to drive VanGoGo into a snow drift. The snow stuck to some parts inside that affected steering and breaking. So I thought I was stuck pretty bad, when in fact I just did not think to turn the wheel hard enough. With some guidance from people that were kind enough to stop and help I was able to steer it out. However, steering and breaking was very difficult the entire way home. I tried to clear out the snow, was able to make things better, but it is pretty deep. The breaks seem to work fine, but steering is still difficult. Will hope the snow melts over the weekend. P.M.-2 1 with Julia in 11:11, 2 with Benjamin in 17:31, Jenny ran 1.5 in 13:25.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 20.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 20.00 |
| A.M. 17 miles in 2:23:14, first 5 with Daniel. The road kept getting more and more slippery as the temperatures rose. So I decided to try something new - spikes. For a while it was better. I was able to average 7:00 pace on my magic 2.5 mile stretch. But then I went on a less traveled portion of the trail going along the lake, and it was very bumpy. Plus the rising temperatures kept increasing the slippage. So I slowed down to around 9:00-9:30 pace. When I got out I sped up to around 9:00. The last mile was 7:51 - hard packed snow helped. I learned that good traction is only a part of being able to go fast. Little snow bumps on the road can be a very serious factor in slowing you down. The long run was not that long distance-wise, but I think effort-wise it was just right - I was out there for about as long as it takes me to run a good marathon putting in a decent effort. P.M. 1 with Julia in 11:43, 2 with Benjamin in 19:01, Jenny ran 1.5 in 14:37.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 5.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 0.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 0.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Day of rest. Went to Church. Our home teachers came for a visit. We had a good time. |
Night Sleep Time: 9.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 9.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 13.05 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 13.05 |
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A.M. 10 miles in 1:24:06. First 5 with Daniel. Still slippery, but there are a few clear patches. Did sprints there. Finally broke 8:30 average for this run. Progress...
P.M. Measured the 5 K course with the help of Benjamin and Jenny for the race on the 31st, and also for the tempo runs. It is a very good out and back flat course mostly on Boat Harbor Drive, which is a paved farm road that does get frequently plowed but does not have much traffic. Ran 2.05 on the course with Benjamin and Jenny in 18:26. Later, 1 mile with Julia in 11:46. Had friends over and had Family Home Evening with them. 12 children, 4 adults, oldest child was 10. Managed it just fine, no behavior problems. Nobody had to do push-ups, squats, or go to the corner. In fact, even no verbal warnings.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 10.00 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 9.00 | 9.32 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 18.32 |
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A.M. Ran with Daniel, Mary Ann, Michelle, and Tyler S. Non-English language fluency of the group: Icelandic, French, Spanish, and Russian.
The workout was 3x5 K on the Provo New Year Run course that I measured yesterday. Lots of recovery in between due to the need for VPBs and the closest opportunity about 600 meters away from the workout headquarters (start/finish of the repeat). Only Michelle managed to do the workout in its entirety. First one was 18:58. Mary Ann stayed with us through the first mile, Tyler made it to 2 miles, but finished OK in 19:08. Perfect even split by half. Second was 18:47. Negative split by one second. Third - 18:43 with a negative split of one second. We hit the first mile in 6:00. Then Michelle was struggling so I eased off the pressure. With a mile to go I challenged her to break 6:00 in the last mile. She did a steady 91 second quarter pace for the next three quarters. Then I accelerated, opened a gap, and challenged her to give me five. She did it quicker than I thought, and I realized I had to accelerate quickly to make sure she kept the momentum after she had caught up. We hit 3 miles in 18:09, I figured Michelle would have a kick, so I accelerated pretty hard and got ready to play the give me five, but Michelle stayed right on my tail the entire time. Our last quarter was 84, and our last 0.107 was 34 seconds, 5:18 pace. What's odd is when I tried to go 6:00 (90 quarter) with about 1 K to go I was opening a gap so I had to ease off to 91, but Michelle was able to shift gears and run as fast as sub-5:20 when it came time to kick. Which makes me think she should be able to do this workout at 5:45 pace after some aerobic, neurological, and psychological conditioning.
I figure given the conditions and how I felt the workout was marathon pace effort for me. At least even in shorts and warm weather I am happy when I can break 19:00 in the last 5 K of a marathon. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:46, Jenny ran 1.5 in 13:27. Julia did not run - not feeling well. Getting better, but we decided to give her a day off just to be sure.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 16.32 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Race: |
Provo New Year Run (3.107 Miles) 00:17:03, Place overall: 1 | Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 12.00 | 0.00 | 3.11 | 0.00 | 15.11 |
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A.M. 8 miles in 1:03:51. Broke 8:00 average! The trail is much better. Ran the first 3 with Daniel and Mary Ann. P.M. Ran Mary Ann's 5K. We had a bigger crowd. 17 people in the 5 K and 8 in the kids race. First, Joseph took 4th overall and won the age division in the 200 with a new PR - 59 seconds. Then we ran the 5 K. Since it was I who measured the course, I had the comfort of knowing it was accurate. With the exception of a little bit of back support from Adam in the first 200 meters I ran the race alone. The road conditions were good, no slippage. It was cold, around 30 degrees, and there was a little bit of wind, which was head most of the first half, and tail most of the second. My splits were 5:24 - 5:38 - 5:30 with a kick in 31. First half in 8:29, second in 8:34. Last quarter in 78. Total time 17:03. Wanted to break 17:00, but lacked the juice. Legs did not feel a whole lot of power. Not a surprise - I was expecting it. I ran long and brisk the day before, and had not done any 5 K speed for several weeks. So I was happy that it was at least a low-17:00 on an honest out-and-back course, and that I managed a not too positive of a split. Daniel was second with 18:37, then Chauncy 18:48, and Adam Rogia in 19:06. Adam has lost some weight (I did not have a clue he had 15 lb that he could lose, but I guess it was well hidden), and this is a major improvement for him.
Paced Benjamin after I finished. He ran 22:41. I think the cold tricked him into going slower because once I got to him he was able to speed up to a 1:36 quarter at the end. Then took Jenny with me and we went to pace Maurine. Maurine ran a PR of 27:54. Then ran another mile with Jenny and Chauncy, and one more with Julia. Julia's time was 10:16.
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Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 15.11 |
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Night Sleep Time: 8.00 | Nap Time: 0.00 | Total Sleep Time: 8.00 |
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| Easy Miles | Marathon Pace Miles | Threshold Miles | VO2 Max Miles | Total Distance | 4642.68 | 441.67 | 263.47 | 86.80 | 5434.62 |
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Vibram Five Fingers Miles: 187.10 | Brooks T4 Racing Flat Miles: 487.82 |
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Night Sleep Time: 2468.67 | Nap Time: 145.16 | Total Sleep Time: 2613.83 | |
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