Breaking the Wall

A.M. Total of 12.3. Most with the kids. Benjamin did 7.3. We ran a little bit with James Tracy, a BYU steeplechaser. We had to catch him. When we I said - there is a 90% chance that you have served an LDS mission. I was basing my estimate on my perception of the Utah County demographic and on his running speed and form. Do not ask me how that works, but over the years running in Utah County to my memory I've never encountered a young man over 21 with good running form moving at a good pace that had not served an LDS mission, and I made sure to ask everybody who I had a chance to talk to for long enough. Although Utah County has a large number of return missionaries, by far not every young man 21 and older had served one. Just among those whose parents are active in the Church the rate is only around 40%. But for one reason or another I only find return missionaries among the ones that are running and can keep up with me.

Turned out he had served a mission - in San Antonio, TX speaking English and Spanish, 2009 to 2011. Then I asked him if he had found his new companion without delay. Sure enough he had - got married last November. November is a good month to get married - that is when Sarah and I did. In fact, I do not think there is a bad month to get married - the best one is always the current or the soonest you can arrange it, I think, if you are not married yet.

 Jenny and Julia did 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Usual run with the kids. It was cold. Benjamin did 7, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Total of 12 for me.

A.M. It keeps getting colder and colder. 2F at the start of the run today. Ran with the kids as usual. There is a Russian saying - "in this weather a good dog owner will not take his dog out for a walk". So I say that, in Russian for full effect, adding that we are taking the kids out. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Total of 12 for me.

A.M. Usual run with the kids. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. 12 miles total. Most with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny did not run - had a sore throat,  Julia ran 2 - she also got a sore throat, but hers got better, but we still decided she should run only 2 as a precaution, Joseph did 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Benjamin and I did a couple of pickups.

Day of rest. Went to church. Sarah stayed home with Matthew, then when I returned with the kids she went to the Sacrament meeting of another ward. The kids were very good. Our schedule changed to 9:00 AM start, and I had a ward council meeting at 7:30 AM, but when I got home at 8:35 or so they were all almost ready, and by a miracle we made it to church on time.

A.M. 12 total. Rob joined us today and ran 4 miles. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 2, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, and William 0.5.

A.M. 12 total. Ran with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Ran with the kids. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

P.M. With the help of my friend Brock I bought a 4x4 ATV with a snow plow for $1200. I got tired of getting stuck in the snow on the runs and decided to do something about it. Otherwise the purchase is quite a bit out of character for me. I do like to do any of the wild man things such as camping, fishing, hunting, water skiing, shooting, rock/mountain climbing, etc. I had never been on an ATV before even as a passenger and overall have tried to stay away from them as far as I could. So Brock had to teach me how to drive it. I asked him if there was a learning curve. He said at first that there was not if all I wanted to do was plow snow. After watching my first attempts he adjusted that with "Some have more of a learning curve than others".

When I got on the beast my first reaction was - where is the seat belt, and where is the turning signal? I quickly realized that ATVs do not have such safety features, and that gave me some understanding why some car drivers do not wear a seat belt and do not use their turn signal.

Finally I got used to the beast enough to try plowing some snow with Brock's supervision. It was a good experience. 

A.M. My last pair of Crocs made it to 2147 miles before the strap broke. So I put on a new pair today. Ran total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Benjamin and I did a pickup for 0.5.

P.M. Plowed snow. The ATV died and would not start in the middle. I called Brock for support, which ended up being more of an emotional that technical support because it is difficult to troubleshot a vehicle not starting without being there. However, knowing what not to worry about helped me start it eventually and it all ended well. I felt a sense of accomplishment in having subjected a wild man thing such as a 4-wheeler and having done with it something useful. If anything, learning something new at an older age protects you from Alzheimer's disease.  

Also got another gadget, this one is also out of character somewhat but not as much. It is a GPS/Footpod watch. I generally despise common market devices that tell you how far you've gone and how fast you are running because their accuracy is frequently worse than my own sense of pace. So when I am wearing I fluctuate between being frustrated when the numbers are obviously wrong and wondering if they are really correct when they are reasonable. However, this one is different. It is a MotoACTV (8 GB variant). For the average user it appears no different than a multitude of Garmin-like watches. However, for someone with technical skill there is a world of difference. MotoACTV has an ARM v7 processor with Android and an easy way to replace the boot image. So I put it in the Fastboot mode, replaced the boot image with a custom one I found already prepared by a hacker that had ADB daemon, connected to it with ADB, installed the HoneyComb launcher, removed the default one, installed a couple of my own Android apps to see how they would behave, loaded strace, and started researching the running processes. My goal is to write an app that would use GPS, foot pod, and HRM at the same time along with some knowledge about the runner. E.g if GPS says he was going 12:00 mile, but his HR, his leg turnover, and his ground contact time are following the pattern of 8:00 mile, adjust or even throw away the GPS data and just assume that he was going 8:00 for that period. Or if the GPS pace is fluctuating, but the ground contact time, the leg turnover and the HR are steady, do not trust the GPS. I am wondering if we can throw away the GPS altogether assuming we can get good data on leg turnover and ground contact time. Will have to play with it.

The good news is that once it is ready, the app will run on any Android with ANT+. 

A.M. Plowed snow before the run. 12 total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 2, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

P.M. Plowed snow again. Feeling like the ATV was a good investment. 

A.M. Total of 15. Chad joined me. We ran most of it with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 2, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Met some runners on the trail and they joined us. Their names were Chad, Caleb, and Steve. Caleb was converted to the true religion immediately and join the blog after he got home from the run.

It was good to run on the self-plowed trail. I felt a sense of accomplishment. 

Day of rest. Went to church. Sarah stayed home with Matthew, but later decided to come to Relief Society and bring him with her. So I ended up with him during the Elder's Quorum. He was crying. I took him out in the hallway, and he was loud enough for Jenny and her Young Women's class to here him. Jenny was not expecting to hear Matthew, but she recognized him nevertheless and said to her class - this sounds just like my little brother, but he should not be here.  Well, it turned out out that he was nevertheless. 

A.M. Ran with the kids and Rob, then 1 mile with Sarah. Total of 13. Benjamin did 6 (recovering from the stomach flu), Jenny 2 ( same problem), Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Matthew broke 8 lbs in weight reaching his weight goal. We now have a baby scale. I weigh him several times a day. The girls decided to call him Mo-Mo. I think they picked a good nickname. I do not mind at all if he has Mo Farah's speed when he grows up.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. 12.5 total. Benjamin did 8, Rob 4, Jenny 3, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 13. Did 8 with Benjamin and Caleb, then ran with the other kids. Jenny and Julia did 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Then did a mile with Sarah

A.M. 12 total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. 13.5 total. 8 with Benjamin. Jenny, Julia, and Joseph did 3. Jacob 1. William 0.5. I did some pickups with Benjamin, and ran the last mile hard as well. It is actually a bit more than a mile, hilly, snow covered in most parts (I could only remove so much with my snow plow), and has a 180 turn in the middle. With a pretty hard effort that I would expect to give me something around 5:20-5:30 on a good road without the hills I got 6:09.

P.M. 0.5 with Sarah. She ran 4:57 on the first part of the mile that I earlier ran fast. My split for that part was 3:01. She is starting to slowly work her way into shape after delivering Matthew. The idea is this - we run for as long as we can at the pace 10:00 or faster. Even if it is only half a mile. No more plodding at 12:00 pace. My theory from observing various runners throughout the years is that if you can run 10:00 or faster you should work on increasing the distance up until you can run 8-12 miles at once comfortably on a daily basis, and only then introduce speed work. But if you cannot, you should increase the pace rather than the distance. It is better to run 10:00 pace with frequent walking breaks than to run 12:00 continuously. The basic idea that very slow running is almost walking, and there are a lot of overweight and otherwise competitively unfit people that walk long distances every day but would not be able to run sub-10:00 pace even for half a mile to save their life.

You could, of course, argue that  we might be confusing cause and effect here - some people just cannot run sub-10:00 pace no matter what they do, and that is why they walk or run at near walking pace, while others are more naturally fit and choose sub-10:00 pace from the very beginning. This argument does have some merit, but I would like to forget about it and approach the matter like this - get yourself out of the dead slower than 10:00 per mile zone immediately and to the greatest amount that your body will let you and see if that lifts you out of the mire. The longer your head is above the water, the more oxygen you can get, the higher your chances of not drowning.

Day of rest. Went to church with the whole family. Took a nap in the afternoon.

A.M. 12 total. 8 with Benjamin, then ran with the other kids. Jenny and Julia did 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1. William was throwing up and did not run. 1 mile with Sarah. She got 4:52 for the first half, then walked/jogged  the second half with the 11:14 total.

A.M. Ran with the kids. Did 8 with Benjamin. Jenny and Julia did 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1. Then added a mile with Sarah. Total distance was 12 miles. Tested the Fast Running Friend . My GPS correction algorithm is very naive - maintain a window of 8 most recent points sampling 2 times a second. For each new point, calculate the average coordinates of the first 4 points and the the second 4 points. Calculate the distance between the two average points, divide the resulting distance by 4 and add it to the total. That was the first thing I thought of that I could code really fast that had some promise of defense against mild GPS randomness.. No attempt is made to judge the validity of individual points which is my next project. No attempt is made to deal with the lost GPS signal. But anyway aside from the bug that lost some distance (about 0.04 miles) at the start due to the GPS signal acquisition delay, and the algorithm deficiency in handling a 180 turn (lost about 0.01 miles) all of my marks were spot on. That is encouraging.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Did a mile with Sarah, actually the distance is a little more than a mile, she did it in 10:00, good progress for her. Tested the Fast Running Friend. Found a bug - the back button should be deactivated when the timer is running to avoid accidentally terminating the timer.

A.M. Today was the record of slippage on the road. After running with the little kids (Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1), I decided to wait to run with Benjamin and Sarah until later. Working from home permits such luxury. Even then, Benjamin and I took 1:11:06 to run 8 miles. The Fast Running Friend had its first test under cloudy skies and the naivety of its algorithm showed. Near the end of the first mile it spuriously added 0.08 to the distance while the immediate pace went crazy. Then it drifted another extra 0.04 miles over the next 3. On the way back it behaved. Bugs discovered:

• Pausing the timer should not turn off the GPS signal because it takes some time to regain it when the timer is resumed.
• When the time is paused, the back button should be disabled. Enable it only if the timer has been reset.
• 00:13:14 pm for the time of day meaning 12:13:14 pm is wrong. Surprise from Java Calendar class.

A.M. Got a stomach bug. As an interesting coincidence I happened to read Pres. Bensons talk on missionary work from the 1974 General Conference shortly after getting it. This helped me feel thankful for my afflictions. The missionaries in the early days of the Church would have gladly traded a few months of my stomach bug for their illnesses and other forms of adversity.

Dragged myself through 12.5 miles. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 1, Julia and Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5, Sarah 1. At the end of everything I was running with Benjamin and he heard lots of groans. It was just easier to deal with the pain if I groaned. Have not eaten anything today except an apple, and I am still not hungry, although I am feeling weak.

Coded up the battery usage feature in the Fast Running Friend, made version 1.1 release, and got to test it. Some observations:

• Battery life of Fast Running Friend on MotoACTV with GPS and Bluetooth on is around 2:30 h. So I would have to do some tricks to make it usable for racing a marathon.
• When the battery drops to 5% the GPS signal first becomes low quality (I got 1:28 per mile pace at the end)  and then the GPS is shut off by somebody outside of the application control (kernel or firmware, I imagine). With the GPS off the battery life is much longer, and it can go at 5% for some time.
• The current Fast Running Friend distance algorithm needs fixing to deal with a cloudy day and other bogus GPS data. I do need to gather the data to a file to be able to come up with a good one, though, and I really did not want to do it in Java. So I learned how to use JNI with Android build, and started writing a C implementation of periodically flushing my circular GPS data buffer into a file. 
• I am very pleased that aside from GPS signal and battery issues the Fast Running Friend has been reliable so far. I have tried a few GPS apps on Android before, and every single one of them ended up freezing my phone after about 4-5 miles. I have not debugged but I have an idea why. My phone is a low-end, the cheapest Android I could find with only 160 MB RAM. An app that is not careful with memory allocation will quickly run it out of memory and bring the whole thing to a grinding halt, and it is easy to be sloppy with memory allocation in Java when storing large amounts of data. Well, there is no such thing as freeing memory in Java except running the garbage collector, and it tempts me to use profanity. MotoACTV has 256 MB RAM, so a little better, but still you need to be careful, you cannot just run any app off the shelf and expect good results.

A.M. Took Benjamin and Joseph to a chess tournament in West Jordan. Benjamin reaped the fruit of his labors winning all 5 games and the top prize along with it in the Junior High division. Joseph on the other hand got a lesson in what chess tournaments are good at teaching - humility. His first game was a draw, he got another point in his second because his opponent did not show up, and he lost the last three. He is now more motivated to practice.

P.M. 8 miles total, all with Benjamin. Sarah did 1, Joseph did 2, Jacob and Jenny ran 1 in the AM, Julia was sick, William did 0.5. I was sick as well with the stomach bug (norovirus?) and did not feel good for the entire run. The highlight of the run was throwing up, it made me feel quite a bit better for the last 2 miles, although still not 100% of course. 

Day of rest. Went to church. We had a Stake Conference.

A.M. Total of 14. Benjamin did 8, Jenny rested (recovering from stomach flu), Julia did 1, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, Sarah 1.5, William 0.5.

A.M. Regular 12 mile run. 8 with Benjamin, more with the little kids. Jenny did 1, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Today was one adventure run. It snowed, so I decided to plow. The ATV was working well, and my confidence in the vehicle and my ability to drive it increased. Additionally yesterday the portion of the trail that I normally do not plow because others normally plow it did not get plowed in time. So I figured I'd plow all of it. Everything went well for 3.25 miles. Then it stalled. I tried to get it to start for a few minutes, then I was out of tricks, and I ran home. At least I ran on a plowed trail. Got home, ran with the kids. Jacob did 1, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jenny 2. Then I called Brock, and Benjamin and I ran together and met him. Brock could not get it to start either, and with some adventures we loaded the ATV onto Brock's truck and he took it home to repair it. Benjamin ended up with 9 miles for the day, and I ended up with 11.

A.M. Total of 12.5. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 2, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

P.M. 0.5 with Sarah. 

A.M. Ran with the kids, and Rob. Rob did 4, Jacob 1, Joseph 2, Jenny 2, Julia 3, William 0.5, Benjamin 8. I did a post-VPB pickup for 0.8 miles at 5:21 pace down the canyon. Felt strong. Would have been faster if the road was completely dry, it was OK, but I had to hold back in some spots for safety reasons.

A.M. Finished the Fast Running Friend data collection feature that allows me to gather and analyze the GPS data from it. Tried it out. During the 1 mile with Jacob and Julia it crashed, of course. I neglected to release the JNI references after each flushing operation and it eventually overflowed the 512-entry reference table, plus I also had a bug that was flushing the data wrong. I ran 2 more with Julia, Jenny, and Joseph, and 1 more with Rob. Rob ended up with 4, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, Jenny 2, Julia 3.

Then I fixed the bugs, and tried again. During the 8 mile run with Benjamin and later on everything went well as far as timing is concerned, and the distance also was reported correctly. I did a tempo run for 2 miles down the Provo Canyon. Benjamin joined me for 1 mile. He would have joined me for 2, but his foot has been giving him trouble so we decided to be cautious. We went through the first mile in 5:27, then I did 5:33. Felt like I did not have the top gear. Not surprising - I have not been sleeping well in the last two weeks - Matthew is keeping us up. And with all the snow I have not done anything fast. So all in all I think 11:00 for 2 miles is a good starting point.

After that I ran 0.5 with William and 2.5 myself. Collected more GPS data, analyzed in the afternoon. Discovered a small bug that does not affect anything for the user, only my analysis. Will continue working on finding a good GPS algorithm.

Total of 15.25 miles. 

Day of rest. Went to church. It was a Fast Sunday. I recall the kids asking when they were younger why it was called Fast Sunday since we did not run on Sunday at all. We had a good lesson on the translation of the Book of Mormon in Sunday school.  I find my life to be quite more simple if I accept the origin of the Book of Mormon to be what Joseph Smith said it was. It solves so many problems that you have to deal with otherwise trying to explain how it got to us. Of course, that has certain issues as well - you have to believe that God is real, that you will have to be accountable for your life when you meet Him, you have to do some things in this life that you may not feel like doing at the time, e.g get 8 kids to church by 9 AM and be there for 3 hours every week, but you find that even those things turn our to be for your benefit long-term in a way that you possibly could not have thought of or imagined. And there are many things that are required that I would do anyway. I find that simplicity inspired, and it witnesses to be of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and everything that follows from that.

A.M. Ran with Rob - 4 miles. Jacob was the only non-Benjamin kid that was somewhat healthy enough to try running and he did a mile with difficulty. Everybody else was afflicted with a cough. I did 8 with Benjamin afterwards including a short tempo run, which went better than on Saturday. I still did not feel 100% fit, but I was able to do 5:28-5:29 to get 10:57 for 2 miles down the canyon. Benjamin ran the first mile with me. When I got home I ran a mile with Sarah. Total of 13 miles. 

A.M. Total of 12. Even Benjamin started getting sick, so I had him cut the run down to 4 miles. Jenny did a mile. Everybody else rested. I ended up with a total of 12 miles.

Worked on the Fast Running Friend trying to come up with a good GPS correction algorithm. I tried several variants of bad point elimination using a simulator and plotting the resulting corrected path on the map. Naive approach of "if the angle is too big get rid of the point" kind of worked, but failed to eliminate a detour. This was a good educational experience as I learned a lot about what kind of data you get from a GPS.  Most of the time your position is wrong, but most of the time it is close enough to your route that it will not affect the total distance computed over an interval as short as 0.05 mile. However, there are minority nasty outlier points that take you on abrupt detours, and that is the main source of the annoying GPS watch distance inaccuracy. So my next approach is going to be this - break the route into samples, for each sample compute the mean and the standard deviation of the route bend angles, adjust the outlier points so their angle is within the standard deviation, and recompute the distance and pace. I have hopes for this algorithm. If not, I'll think of something else.

Once I figure out how to correct it, things are going to be very good, I might consider Fast Running Friend to be a true friend indeed when doing speed workouts or racing.

A.M. Everybody still sick. Had to cut the mileage for some, and others had to rest. Benjamin did 3, Jenny, Julia, Joseph, and Jacob did 0.5, William 0.3. I ran total of 12. Did a pickup for 0.75 in 4:08 (5:30 pace) and could feel the effects of the cough I had picked up as well. Rob ran 5 miles. Sarah did 1.

A.M. A hard day. Matthew got a cough and did not sleep. I got a cough too. So I decided to cut the mileage a bit to survive. Ran total of 10. Benjamin did just 1 mile. William 0.3. Jacob, Joseph, Jenny, and Julia did 0.5. Worked on refining the Fast Running Friend GPS algorithm.

A.M. Another rough day. In survival mode. Ran 10 miles. Benjamin did 2, Jenny and Julia 1, Joseph and Jacob 1 as well. William 0.5.

A.M. Plowed snow. Then ran with Chad and the kids. We are still not 100%. So Jacob ran 1, Joseph 2, Benjamin 2, Jenny 2, and Julia 1. Chad and I did a pickup for 1.5 on a surface that started out being good enough for 5:40 pace, but then deteriorated to make 6:40 the best we could do. At first I felt like I was going to choke, but then my throat cleared out and I felt better. Our time for 1.5 was 9:19. 

P.M. 0.5 with Benjamin.

Day of rest. Went to church.

A.M. We are still recovering from the sickness, but I ran 12 miles today. Benjamin did 3, Jenny 2, Julia 1, Jacob 1, Joseph 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Another day of recovering from the cough. 12 miles total. Benjamin did 4, Jenny and Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Finally found a good algorithm for GPS correction in the Fast Running Friend. It worked great in the profiler on my test case which was rather nasty. Started implementing it in the app itself.

 Total of 12 miles today again. Benjamin did 5, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. We are slowly recovering. I ran 12 again today. Benjamin did 5, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 1, Jacob 1, William 0.5. I did a pickup for 0.25 and felt like I was choking in my mostly dry cough, if there is such a thing as choking in dry cough.

A.M. We are slowly recovering from the cough. I still have one - it is quite violent after I finish the run, but it is dry. I ran 12 miles this morning.  Benjamin did 6, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Did a pickup for 0.5 uphill in 2:51. Felt like I was going to choke from coughing as I went.

P.M. Finished the main coding of the Fast Running Friend new GPS algorithm and started testing it. I was too lazy to make a testing simulator with pre-loaded GPS data, so my development cycle was fix->build -> go for a jog -> fix ... At first I was getting some interesting results and found myself having traveled the distance to the sun in a matter of seconds. After bug fixes it worked better, correctly reported the distance and pace for 0.25 miles, but then bugged out around 0.3. I ended up doing about a mile of jogging during the testing cycle.

A.M. 12.5 miles total. This morning was the Fast Running Friend test/debug/fix morning. I ran some with the kids and some alone. Benjamin did 6, Jenny 3, Julia 1, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Once the bugs were fixed (it took 5 miles), the Fast Running Friend produced near perfect readings, just about as good as it gets for a GPS-only distance/pace estimator. During the last 4 miles with Benjamin it reported 3.99 miles for the distance that I believe to be 4 miles from my calibrated pace-based estimates, and the immediate pace (sampled over 0.08-0.15 mile segments) never contradicted my intuition. Then I dropped him off and went for 3 more. It reported 2.99 on my course, and again the reported immediate pace  never contradicted my intuitive estimate. I was quite impressed with how it noticed that I slowed down on the uphills and snow-covered parts, and sped up on the downhills.

P.M. Added a time of day sync with the GPS clock, as well as a separate debugging log to the Fast Running Friend, and ran another mile for the final pre-release test. Then made the official release. You can download it from the official Fast Running Friend site (see link on the left in my profile). 

Day of rest. Went to church. It was Benjamin's 14th birthday, so I ordained him to the office of a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood. The full-time missionaries spoke in the Sacrament meeting. Interestingly enough, both of them are from Northern California and both grew up on a farm. One comes from a family of 11 children. The other was a convert to the Church, his family joined when he was 12 years old. He told about how his father was an alcoholic and his parents were in the process of divorce when they started meeting with the missionaries. His father was quite stubborn but eventually decided he wanted to know for himself if the Book of Mormon was true. He prayed and received a strong positive answer. They joined the Church, he overcame his addition, and he and his wife are still together.

Then we had a great lesson in Sunday school on revelation, and a continuation of that of sorts in the Elder's Quorum - the topic was the Holy Ghost. The lesson manual mentions how President Lorenzo Snow and other missionaries were thrown off a boat during a storm in Hawaii in 1864 and when they found President Snow he was not breathing. They did what they knew how to do, and he was still not breathing. Then they had a prompting to do what we know as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which was successful. It was interesting to read their account of it - they did not know the word for the procedure and they just described it.

A.M. Total of 12 miles. We are feeling better although not 100%. Benjamin did 7, Jenny 3, Julia 0.5, William 0.5, Joseph 2, Jacob 1. Tested the Fast Running Friend again with perfect results both on the distance and immediate pace.

I am going to announce a "special offer". If you bring a MotoACTV or any Android-based GPS-capable device that you are willing to run with to my house I will install Fast Running Friend on it. If you bring your laptop, I will configure it so that it has the tools for me to do remote maintenance on your device. If Fast Running Friend bugs out on your device I will investigate and fix the problem. As insurance, if I brick your device and cannot repair it in time, I will buy it from you for a price you consider fair. All services are free of charge. The offer lasts until I am tired of people coming to my house. If you are interested, send me a private message to make the arrangements.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 7, Jenny 3, Julia 1, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. We are slowly recovering. I did a little workout to test my health and see how much fitness I've lost. Did a mile up the canyon in 6:08, and after a little rest another mile back down in 5:34. It felt hard, both up and down. Fast Running Friend was perfect with one small exception. Coming out of the canyon it reported pace 5:53, and then 5:57 when the actual pace was around 5:45. Then immediately after it reported 5:18 when the actual pace was around 5:28. However that spot is set up very well for signal distortion with the trail squeezing through a narrow opening between two tall rocks. I have not yet analyzed the data, but I've seen a similar pattern in another test sample and I am suspecting the problem is that we pick up the signal with virtual delay - that is the signal keeps us on the trail, at least the points the Fast Running Friend considers legitimate are on the route, but they are shifted back. So the GPS driver in other words tells the Fast Running Friend that we are now where we were in reality one second ago. If that indeed is the problem, there is absolutely nothing we can do to correct for that short of making the sampling distance too long because in the absence of some other feedback we cannot tell if the runner legitimately slowed down by 10 seconds per mile and then sped back up or if he ran evenly. Such a change of pace is completely legitimate and the erroneous point lies on the course.

I am still working on refining the GPS part of the Fast Running Friend, mostly the usability stuff - configuration file reading and writing, then UI to edit it on the device and via web browser if the device can connect to WiFi, support for splits of various kind, ability to upload workouts to the Fast Running Blog, etc, but I already ordered Garmin Footpod and will start research once it gets here. I have high hopes for the footpod  - I think it will have more accuracy than GPS, and also less power utilization.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 7, Jenny 3, Julia 1, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. I did a pickup down the canyon for 1.25 in 6:46. Felt stronger than the day before. More sleep helped, I think.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 7, Jenny 3, Julia 1, Jacob 1, Joseph 2, William 0.5. Worked on adding wireless connectivity to the Fast Running Friend. So far it has been giving me good results distance/pace wise - has not bugged out yet.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Joseph 2, Julia 1, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Discovered a bug in the Fast Running Friend. If you pause, walk over to the new location, and then restart, it adds the displacement to the distance. Will fix it. Finished the configuration file reading/writing code, and worked on the wireless connectivity. The idea is that to configure it the user can just start wireless configuration daemon on the device using a menu function, and then connect to the device through a browser. The only issue is how to get the device to figure out the wireless authentication credentials initially - my plan at this time is that he just presses the "enable mass storage mode" on the device menu, then connects the devices to the desktop/laptop via USB, then puts his SSID and password in the config file, disconnects the device, and Fast Running Friend figures out the rest. One problem, of course, is that some users are too illiterate to open and edit a plain text file :-) If it is Microsoft Word, or PDF, they do not have a problem, but I've had accounting departments return my invoices that I sent as a plain text attachment with .txt extension complaining that they could not figure out how to open the file. Indeed Microsoft does not "delight in plainness", and definitely does not help its users in that cause. So maybe I should make that config file in Microsoft Word format :-)

A.M. Total of 15.5. Ran with Chad and the kids. Benjamin did 8.5, Jenny 3, Julia 0.5, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. 

Fast Running Friend had a chance to prove itself against Chad's Garmin 210. The course was of known length with marks. In the first 5.04 miles Fast Running Friend said 5.03, Garmin said 4.99. Garmin got off track on the distance over about a half mile stretch, then maintained the difference. Fast Running Friend was within 0.01 on all intermediate splits. Then over the next 2.04 miles Fast Running Friend added 2.02, while the Garmin added 2.05, so now the Garmin was closer to the truth that it was before. Then Chad accidentally disabled the GPS, so we were testing just the Fast Running Friend. Over the next 4.00 it reported 4.03, then after that it stayed on track until it ran out of battery with the total running time of around 1:53, but we started at 80% battery charge.

Fast Running Friend was without question more accurate on the immediate pace. This one is difficult to verify exactly, but both Chad and I agreed whenever we sampled it that Fast Running Friend was reasonable every single time, while Garmin made sense only 60% of the time or so.

Fast Running Friend also showed some resilience in a situation that I did not explicitly think through in my code. At around 1.4 mark I made a VPB stop and did not press the Stop button. When I was done and started running, the Fast Running Friend extrapolated my distance to be about where Chad was at the time. Then once it noticed that I've gone 0.15 from the last trusted point it corrected the distance moving me backwards, and eliminating the detour because the turn angles in the path were too high and disruptive. By the time I caught up to Chad the Fast Running Friend was showing the correct distance. It is a good sign when your code does the right thing when used in a way that you did not explicitly program for.

I do need to do something about the battery life. From the tests I've done so far, things look ugly. If I tell Android to give me GPS updates at a higher interval, it does give them to me at a higher interval so the accuracy is lost, but the GPS driver (/system/bin/SiRFDrv) is still reading the GPS device (/dev/ttyS0) once a second no matter what and the battery drains just as fast. So I might need to bypass the Android GPS notification system, and read the GPS device myself. This is going to be an adventure, but it has some payback potential - first, improvement in the battery life. Second, quicker acquisition of the GPS signal - I suspect somewhere in the convoluted communication process that takes the signal for the device to the application there is a bug that withholds the legitimate signal. There are times when the app is not getting the signal, the GPS driver logs says it is waiting for signal, yet I catch SiRFDrv red-handed reading the correct GPS coordinate in plain text from /dev/ttyS0. Third, this can give me the flexibility of varying the read interval quickly which could allow better battery life without sacrificing accuracy. I just need to learn more about how the GPS works on a lower level.

Day of rest. Went to church. Took a long nap when I got home. It was much needed.

A.M. Ran with Rob and the kids. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1, Joseph 1, Jacob 1, William 0.5. 

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1, Joseph 1, Jacob 1. Worked on the fix of the pause repositioning bug in the Fast Running Friend, but it was buggy. On the positive side got the wireless connectivity to work.

P.M. 0.5 with William. Fixed the repositioning bug and ran 0.75 testing the fix.

A.M. 12 miles total. Rob and Caleb joined us. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1, Joseph 1, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Benjamin, Caleb, and I did a pickup for 1 K in 3:14 down the canyon. Caleb had Garmin Forerunner 610, so we had a chance to test it against the Fast Running Friend. Total distance in reality was 8.00 and that is what FR 610 reported. Fast Running Friend said 7.99. However, FR 610 won hands down on immediate pace, which surprised me. It sampled it every second, and every single time got it right on - verified against land marks. Fast Running Friend was OK, but it sampled every 0.08-0.15 miles, so the data came with delay.

Even though we've got David fighting Goliath here - one hacker that rights code in his spare time vs a large business, I am still competitive when it comes to what matters to me - precision. Besides, when David vs Goliath analogy is used it is frequently forgotten that it was David who won. So I started researching. First we tested the position  reported FR 610. When we stood in place it did not change - Fast Running Friend (working through Android and MotoACTV GPS receiver/driver) cannot stay still - it wiggles. To make sure that FR 610 was not playing tricks we moved a few feet. It changed. We went back to where we started. The position went back to what it was originally. So it was apparent that FR 610 had the upper hand on the position itself.

I did some research and discovered that FR 610 uses SiRFstarIV chipset which has a lot of cool features including the ability to neutralize the noise. It was quite an adventure to figure out what GPS chipset was in MotoACTV. I knew it was some SiRF chip, otherwise Motorolla would not have named the driver SiRFDrv., but all of my diagnostic tricks as well as internet searches failed to unearth the info. I got really mad, replaced the driver in /etc/location.cfg with a dummy one to avoid unwanted restart of the real one, killed the driver, then manually turned on the GPS via /dev/gps_standby and dumped /dev/ttyS0. Downloaded the protocol description PDF for SiRFStarIII, and found an message that had an unsupported code. Then I found the manual for SiRFStartIV and sure enough that message was documented. So from this I think we can fairly safely assume that MotoACTV does have SiRFStarIV just like FR 610.

The difference, it appears, is in the quality of the driver. It looks like while Garmin did a thorough job using all of the features of the hardware, Motorolla quickly put something together and threw it out on the market. Thus the difference in the quality of position reporting. This is correctable in Fast Running Friend, though. I can write the driver to match the one used by Garmin. This will be an adventure and a great learning experience.

A.M. 11.5 miles total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1.5, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. 12 miles total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1.5, Jacob 1, Joseph 2, William 0.5. Last night I could not sleep so I decided to be productive, and added an HTTP daemon into the Fast Running Friend. The idea is that you enable WiFi, it connects, tells you its URL (something like http://192.168.1.178:8000), then you go to that URL and configure it or view workout history, your routes, or upload the data to the Fast Running Blog. I suppose data upload and limited workout viewing  can be done via local menus as well, but a web browser is much nicer.

The configuration part is not working yet, I just have the daemon than says Hello, World when you go to its URL.

A.M. Made up on the lack of sleep from the night before. Did the longest run since Matthew was born. Total of 16.5. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1.5, Joseph 2, Jacob 1. Benjamin and I did a 2 mile tempo down the canyon in 10:55 with the splits of 5:27 and 5:28. The pace was not super fast, but the effort felt healthy.

Day of rest. Went to church. We had a blessing of Matthew. He is now official. A child is not put on the records of the Church until he has been blessed. Then we had a Fast and Testimony meeting. I bore my testimony of tithing. When I first joined the Church I did not understand the principle but I decided to obey it on faith figuring if I promised something to the Lord I'd better do it. After the first year I knew the promises in Malachi 3 of the windows of heaven opening and blessings poured so that there shall not be room enough to receive them were true and I never struggled with the idea since. I have my weaknesses, but I do have a good memory when it comes to matters of importance. I could never forget those blessings.  Over the course of my life I have literally seen the windows of heaven open. We had to move twice because the Lord has blessed us with so many children that there was no room for them. But he also has blessed us with the ability to feed them off one income, no debt, and for a bonus with me working at home and being able to participate in the home schooling. All that through thick and thin of the bad economy. But those are the material blessings to help remember the more important ones which are less tangible.

Then we had Sunday School and the Elder's Quorum. Benjamin played the piano in the opening exercises. This was the first time he ever played the piano in public with others singing along. Amazingly aside from tempo change issues there were no other noticeable problems and we sang all three verses of God Speed the Right. Perfect hymn for running, and some even appear to be singing it while driving as well. Benjamin impressed me, though. He has many talents, but not all. Playing the piano is not one of them. Neither is performing in public - he gets shy. But he has faith and he uses it to reach beyond what appears to be his natural limit.

Got home, took a much needed nap. It filled me with strength. 

A.M. 12 miles total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 4, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Sarah ran 1.5 on our hilly course in 14:11, this is significant progress for her with Matthew being only 2 months.

A.M. Benjamin was not feeling well today and ran only 2 miles. I did a total of 12 including a 2 mile tempo down the Provo Canyon in 10:51 with the splits of 5:26 and 5:25. Felt like the effort was healthy and would lead to improvement.

Julia did 2, Jenny 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Ran total of 12. Benjamin did 3.5, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 2, William 0.5. I did a pickup in the canyon going down but into headwind for 1 mile in 5:27. It felt too hard, I thought. Not sure if I was just tired from not sleeping or if it was just the headwind. Probably a combination of both.

The Fast Running Friend did the biggest oops in the distance department since I've added the new algorithm. As I was passing the big rock in the Provo Canyon it reported immediate pace of 5:22 while the actual pace was only around 7:30. When I got to 3 miles it reported 3.03 for total distance. On the way back it measured the return distance as 3.07 but most of the displacement happened again in the area of that rock. During the mile pickup, though, it reported the immediate pace reasonably when I looked, but it must have gotten confused when I was not looking.

I probably should investigate the matter, but I am not particularly motivated to dig through the data dump as I have a pretty good idea of what is going on as I already know that the Motorola GPS driver is of less than stellar quality and I need to write my own if I want the GPS part of the Fast Running Friend to be trustworthy.

A.M. Did 12.5 total. Benjamin did 5, Jenny 4, Julia 2, Joseph 3, Jacob 1, William 0.5. I repeated yesterday's pickup to see how much of a difference one night of good sleep would make. The difference was 9 seconds per mile - I ran 5:18 instead of 5:27 and it was more of a positive experience - feeling strong all the way as opposed to the struggles in the second half.  There was still about the same headwind coming out of the canyon.

Fixed the HTTP daemon in the Fast Running Friend so that when you go to its URL  you see the configuration menu with the current settings instead of just Hello, world. The next step is to make those settings actually change when the user clicks "Update Configuration". While the technology is not any kind of rocket science, there is something intriguing about interacting with a watch that is not connected to anything and is just sitting on your wrist through a regular web browser without having to install any kind of special communication software.

A.M. Did a 14 mile run figuring I would not be able to run much on Saturday due to the Utah Elementary Chess Championship. After the first 6 did a 6 mile tempo down the canyon and back to the house.  The time was 35:27, and I felt I could not go any faster. I definitely got out of shape over the winter with all of the adventures. The lack of sleep and speed training showed itself. Will work on correcting the problems.

Benjamin was in charge of running with the kids today. He did 5, Jenny did 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Got up early and ran 10 miles in the dark. Then took the whole family to the Utah Elementary Chess Championship. Jenny, Julia, Joseph, Jacob, and William played. Benjamin helped as a volunteer official. Stephen and Matthew did the best they could to not cause trouble. Sarah and I with the help of Benjamin, Jenny, and Julia did the best we could to keep them out of trouble. 

Jenny got 4 points out 6 placing 24th out of 83 6th graders. I think she was the second highest placing girl. She said she felt bad checkmating the boys - she had not played one single girl. I told her she was doing them a service by teaching them how to win against somebody their level.

Julia got 4.5 points out 6 placing 12th out of 123 4th graders. Again playing no girls. I think she was the highest placing girl.

Joseph got 3 points out of 6 placing 41st out of 99 2nd graders. This was better than his performance in the last tournament, He is a little stubborn and is reluctant to play strong players because he does not like to lose, but he learned his lesson watching his siblings score higher than him. I think he is beginning to understand that when a stronger player beats you he teaches you how to win against your peers. Ironically, if you do not like to lose, you should seek opportunities to lose, and then you will stop losing. Chess is a great way to teach that principle, Benjamin eventually learned it.

Jacob got 4 points out of 6 placing 13th out of 45 kindergartners. In practice he was getting brutally beat up by Joseph on a regular basis, but then what Joseph did to him he did to his opponents when it mattered. I was quite impressed with his performance.

We were not certain if we should sign William up as his knowledge of the chess rules was fuzzy and his attention span rather low, but he wanted to play and we could not say no. Being only four years old he was the youngest participant in the kindergarten division. He lost his first game, then in the second game he found his match - a five year old girl named Sarah that also barely new the rules. The game was fun to watch. Sarah took William's queen illegally with her queen jumping over pieces to capture to which William did not object, then William pushed his pawn two squares forward on the move that was not first for the pawn and she did not object to that either. Then William put Sarah in check, but she could not figure out how to get out of it. The rules of the tournament are that if you cannot figure out how to get out of check, your opponent wins, so that earned William his only point for the tournament. In his third game he got tired and stopped playing which gave his opponent the win. After that we withdrew him from the tournament figuring he's done enough already. But he did manage to come back with no emotional outbreaks and more than zero points, which was about the best we hoped for at his stage of development.

The tournament also had a team competition among schools, but we were allowed to enter as a family. The rules are that your top four players score. We ended up scoring 15.5 points taking 22nd place out of 64 teams. It felt good to outdo more than 2/3 of the field with most of them  being schools. To rub this in, if we spent as much per child on education as does the government, it would have sent our family into bankruptcy a long time ago. Can we have some of our taxes back?

Benjamin told us some interesting stories from observing the games. The most notable one was where the players managed to get out of stalemate (which would require moving the king into check or allowing him to stay in check) three times. He was not allowed to say anything - the player were supposed to figure out on their own if the moves were legal or not, and the volunteer official could say something only if asked.

P.M. I ended up doing 4.5 miles running with the kids. William did 0.5, Jacob and Joseph 1, Jenny and Julia 0.5 - they both were very tired, Benjamin 3.5.

Day of rest. Went to church. Benjamin spoke in the Sacrament meeting and gave a good talk on honesty. In Sunday School we talked about the restoration of the Priesthood. The Elder's Quorum lesson was on our relationship with God. It discussed the principle that because we are His children and more than just his creations we have the ability to become like Him just like every child has the ability to become like his father.

A.M. 12 miles total. Benjamin did 7, Jenny 4, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Did a workout, then ran with the kids for part of their runs. The workout was 2 miles down the Provo Canyon in 10:48 with the splits of 5:23 and 5:25. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 12. Did some pickups. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. I knew I could not do a long run on Saturday due to the Utah Junior High Chess Championship, so I did it today. Warmed up 6 miles, then ran 6 miles hard from Bridal Veil Falls down the Provo Canyon for the first 4.5 miles, then a climb back up to the house for the last 1.5 miles. Same as last week, but I did better today. The time was 34:43- 5:47 average, 7 seconds per mile improvement. I also felt stronger. Then I ran some more with the kids and Sarah. Total of 15.25. Benjamin did 4.5, Jenny 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Ran early before the chess tournament - total of 10 miles. Julia ran 2 miles. Then took Benjamin and Jenny to the second day of the Utah Junior High Chess Championship. Benjamin came out of a huge blood bath with 5.5 points out of 7 losing 1 game, drawing 1, and winning 5 which was good enough for second place in 8th grade. Jenny got 3 points out of 7 which was good enough for 3rd place in 6th grade. There were only 5 6 graders, though, so this is not that hot of an achievement. But nevertheless it was good for her to play older kids and beat some of them. We got the 3rd place trophy in the small school division with 8.5 points. I usually do not make a big deal of trophies but I have to about this one. It says our home school is a legitimate small school.

P.M. Benjamin did 5, Jenny 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

Day of rest. Went to church as usual then again took a much needed nap.One talk from the Sacrament Meeting stuck in my mind. A member of the Church was doing something, I do not remember exactly what, that required attending conferences with all the parties, etc. He did not drink alcohol. One time somebody brought him a drink. He felt uneasy about it and checked its contents to discover that it had 1% alcohol. His friend said to him - what's the big deal, it's only 1%. His answer was that when you are 100% committed, 99% is not good enough. I really like that answer. Many things that we fail to achieve would have been achieved if we properly understood this principle.

A.M. 12.5 total. Most of it was with the kids.  Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 2, Julia 2.

A.M. Did a tempo run. 2 miles down the canyon in 10:46.4 - splits 5:22, 5:24. Got home, finished the run with the kids, but Benjamin handled most of it. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. 12 miles total. Most with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Did total of 13.5. Ran 8 with Benjamin - did 4x400 down the canyon. It was windy, may just as well have been up. First one was 76.5, then 74.5, then 70.5 as the we found a less windy stretch. The last one we did up the hill by our house in 76.5. Jacob did 1, Joseph 2, Jenny 3, Julia 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 12.5. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. It snowed today. I ran 2 miles, then plowed the trail, then ran with the kids. By the time I was done I was at 15 miles. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. I did a pickup for 0.5 at 5:40 pace.

My training right now is not optimal. Some of it due to having a new baby at our house. Some due to the kids being at a point where I feel they need more individual attention during their runs which ends up slowing me down for all runs except Benjamin's, having to take more breaks waiting for each kid to get ready, and changing the route which affects the workout. But it is all worth it. I have spent a good amount of time working on my own fitness. Now is the time to work on theirs. Some time in the future there will be a time to work on mine again. Now the goal is to not lose much fitness and do my best to forestall the aging process.

Day of rest. Went to church. Got a strength workout rocking Matthew to sleep during the meetings, but was able to participate nevertheless. Again was tired when I got home and took a nap.

Sarah made new friends with a neighbor family  and we had them over for dinner in the evening.  They asked me how I managed the transition from living in Russia to living in the United States. My short answer was that the first 20 years of my life (while in Russia) were a long culture shock even though I had never been outside and did not know any different. When I came to the United States, the shock was over and I gradually recovered.

I suppose the subject deserves a slightly longer explanation. When I was introduced to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints a realization hit me that I would feel at home with the people that have made the covenant to follow Christ and were serious about it. When I moved from Moscow to Provo I found a higher concentration of such people. We may complain about Utah Mormons, or various shortcomings of BYU students and professors, and perhaps for a good reason - with all the knowledge that we possess we should do better than what we are doing. But the truth of the matter is that it is the "Utah Mormons" that make Utah what it is - a place with the lowest smoking rate, lowest alcohol consumption, a place where you are more likely to be helped by a stranger, a place where people have more reason to trust each other than anywhere else in the United States that I visited. In spite of all the shortcomings of Utah that the natives grumble about, this is where I feel at home. While there are people that are not doing a good job living their faith, and I have had plenty of disappointment with that, we still have more of those who take it seriously here than anywhere in the world, and it shows in a number of ways. It all depends on what you choose to see.

Right now I have the ability to live anywhere in the world. I can move anytime almost anywhere. My employer would not notice much of a difference as long as I had a good internet connection. But I am still in Utah and am refusing to move.

When I travel to other parts of the United States, I do not quite get that feeling. Visiting a big city makes me feel like I have taken a step back in the direction of the Soviet Union. I begin to feel a portion of that oppressive spirit.

So coming to Provo from Moscow was an easy adjustment. If it had been New York I think it would have been different.

A.M. Easy run. Total of 12. Did a little pickup with Benjamin for 0.2. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 12.7. Did a workout with Benjamin. He was finally healthy enough to try the 2 mile tempo run down the canyon. I did not have any particular goal for him, we decided to start out trading quarters and then see what happens. I took him through the first quarter in 84, then he did his in 83, I did mine in 82, then he was headed for around 85 on his, and I did not like that, so I took the lead early and made it 84 to hit 5:33 for the mile. After that I decided he had the ability to break 11:00 if he drafted, so I told him to just sit on me until he was ready to come out, and I took him through the next two quarters in 81 and 80. He handled it fine, and took the lead around 1.5 mark to pull me for the rest of the tempo. I was very pleased for two reasons - one was that I did not have to lead anymore. The other was that Benjamin was showing he was in good shape. We ran the last 0.5 in 2:33 (5:06 pace) and finished in 10:47.7 - my second fastest time this year. Our last mile was 5:14, which makes it for my most negative split in this workout with the second mile 19 seconds faster than the first. Prior to that I had been consistently 2 seconds slower in the second mile. Benjamin is becoming a great training partner.

It is a lot of fun to run with your 14-year-old. Particularly when somebody we meet on the trail tries to guess the relationship. A few days ago a runner said to us - why aren't you boys in school? I had him guess who we were and what we were up to. His guess was that Benjamin was in high school and I was 23 years old, married, and in college - after he had observed my wedding ring. With Benjamin he was not too far off, but with me he was off by 70% on the age part, and off by 15 years on the college part, but he was correct on being married.

Jenny ran 3, Julia 1, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. 12.5 total. Ran with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia was sick, did not run, Joseph and Jacob did 2, William 0.5. 

P.M. Oil change time. 1.5 miles back from the car shop.

A.M. Total of 12. Ran with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William and Julia 0.5. Benjamin and I did a workout. 4x400 uphill near our house. The first 130 meters are actually down, starting at maybe 1-2% grade, then maybe a 30 meter segment of about 6-8% down, then about 90 meters up at 6%, 90 meters at 3% up, and the remaining 90 meters at 6% up. The recovery was jogging back. My times were 74.8, 75.8, 74.8, 72.4. Benjamin stayed with me in the first 3, and dropped me in the last one finishing it in around 71.2. All of that came in the last 120 meters. I was very excited about that because it shows he has recovered from his winter issues and is getting into good shape. And this was the first time he gapped me by so much. He has edged me out before, but never really truly gapped me until now.

A.M. 12.5 total. Most with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia was too sick to run, Joseph and Jacob ran 2. Jacob set his course PR of 16:45. This "2" is really around 2.05, and is hilly. I would have to work hard to break 12:00 on it. Jacob's last 800 meters was 3:43 (uphill), which I was very happy about given that his track PR is only 3:24. Joseph took off with 800 to go and ran 16:36, with the last 800 in 3:35. William ran 0.5. Joseph then added 2 more with me, Sarah, and her friend Shelly, and ended up with 4 miles for the day.

A.M. Finally got respectable sleep. First 20 mile run since the Rocket City Marathon. Ran with Chad. Benjamin joined us for 8 miles after we had already done 6. So 4 miles into Benjamin's run and 10 miles into ours we ran a 4 mile tempo from around the magic bridge in the Provo Canyon back to the house. The course is the first 2.25 downhill, the last 1.75 rolling up. The target was 5:50. We went around low 5:40 down the canyon, and hit the 3 mile mark in 17:05. The last mile was 5:52 for me and Benjamin, and we finished in 22:57, which is Benjamin's PR for 4 miles. He did not drop me this time - the distance neutralized his top gear and helped me survive. We slowed the pace down for Chad a little after the first 2 miles for the next 1.5 to help him get a good time, but then in the last 0.5 I wanted to break 23:00, so Benjamin and I went for it. Chad finished in 23:14, which is also a very good time for him.

I felt stronger than I ever have this year. The strength was in the legs, I felt like I had more support, and the form felt smoother. I attribute this to two factors:

• Tempo runs
• My new toy - leg press machine. I've been working out in the last couple of weeks three times a week with 165 lb on each leg in 3 sets of 10. This idea came to me during a tempo run. I realized that the best muscle to compensate for my L-4 defect was actually the quad. Which is why my quads are so large from running. The body knows what it is doing. Then the hamstring, the glut, and the calf working together provide some additional support. I used to think big quads were bad because they meant I had a problem and they hog energy without providing much return. I realized that this was not quite correct. I do have a problem, but it cannot be solved by having smaller quads. Precisely because of that problem, until an angel from heaven comes and heals my L-4, I need to have huge quads. So a natural way to hit the quad, the hamstring, the glut, and the calf was a leg press. So I found a machine for $317 on Amazon including shipping, it comes without weights, but I had a total of 165lb already so it was perfect.

Joseph did 2, Jacob 1, Jenny 3, William 0.5, Julia 0.5.

Day of rest. Went to church. With this being the Easter Sunday we had a lesson on the Atonement. It was a very good lesson. The Sacrament meetings talks were on faith. One of the speakers mentioned a story of healing in Matthew 17 that is one of my favorite stories because it teaches some precious gems about how faith works. The apostles try to cast out an evil spirit, and fail. Then Christ does it. They ask Christ why they could not. He tells them this is a difficult one, and you need to have more faith. Those were the apostles who have succeeded in performing remarkable miracles before, but now they ran into a difficulty because they were not quite as strong as they needed to be. This gives me encouragement. I have had many of my prayers answered. In fact, most of the time I ask the Lord something I eventually get it so I need to be very careful about what I ask. Sometimes it takes a minute, sometimes a  year, sometimes five years. But there are a couple of things that are just too stubborn and too "impossible" that I've been asking that just do not want to come, it seems. Even though it is just a couple of things, at times I feel frustrated, I wonder if the Lord really wants me to persist, and then I remember Matthew 17. "This kind goes out not, but by much prayer and fasting...".

A.M. Total of 12.5. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 4, Joseph and Jacob 2, Julia 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 13.5. Benjamin did 8. I did a workout with him. We ran 2 miles down the Provo Canyon on our usual course. The target was 10:40 - 5:20 pace. I pulled him for the first 1.5, then he took over for the final push. The splits were 79, 80, 79, 80 (5:18), 79, 81 and then 2:34 for the final 0.5 miles, 5:14 last mile - total time 10:32.9.This is Benjamin's fastest time for the course, and I was very pleased with his performance. He also commented that this was not as miserable as when he ran 10:37 last year. The road was wet from the rain. When we got home our backs were covered with dirt. Jenny asked us if we had had a mud fight. This was partially true - we did what we could to run each other into the ground.

I felt much stronger that a couple of weeks ago. 5:18 felt very comfortable, when it became 5:08 at the end it felt manageable. If Jeff was there, I think I would have had another mile in 5:10 behind him today. So far I am seeing the most remarkable results from any form of weight training that I ever tried throughout the years. In the past I tried leg extensions and curls. Those did help a little bit, but apparently not as much as a one-legged vertical leg press. My guess as to why is that it works out several muscle groups in sequence that is very similar to running. My intuition also tells me that in order for weights to be effective, you need to hit the magic sync between aerobic training and resistance training. I think I've hit it somewhat on accident in the last two weeks.

Jenny did 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. 12 total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 4, Julia 2, Joseph and Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. 13 total. Benjamin did 8. I did a workout with him. 4x400. First 3 down the canyon with 400 recovery, the last one after a long recovery up the hill by our house. Used this as a chance to test the new split function in the Fast Running Friend. I got the splits, so the test was good. There was a distance recording glitch, which I fixed later. The splits were 71.7, 72.2, then Benjamin ran around 63.8 and I did 64.5 on the last one in the canyon. The very last one up the hill was 70.7 for me and about 70.3 for Benjamin. I think this is my fastest time on that segment, if not the fastest, then one of the fastest. I do know that I never cracked 70, and I am too lazy to look up if I ever cracked 71.

Jenny did 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, Julia 2.

P.M. 0.5 (800 meters) with William on the track. His time was 4:50.

A.M. Total of 13. Benjamin did 8, Jenny was sick - 0.5, Julia 2, Jacob and Joseph 2, William 0.5.

A.M. For the first time in a long time I did a 20 miler with a 10 mile tempo at the end. I ran the warm-up 10 uphill in 1:16:14. On the way back I ran 58:01. Benjamin ran with me for the last 4. He dropped me in the last 200 meters. His time for the last 4 was 23:17, I got 23:20. Felt strong, but for the life of me could not consistently stay under 5:50, kept slipping. Perhaps a subconscious fear of the distance. Nevertheless I am happy that even though I did not feel super speedy at the start, I was able to maintain the pace throughout the tempo and never really felt too miserable.

Benjamin did 10,  Jenny 3, Julia 2, Jacob 1, Joseph 2. When I got home Sarah had not yet done her run, so I went with her for another 2. So I ended up with 22 miles.

Listened to General Conference. Had a bit of trouble staying awake, but it was not too bad. Was able to understand the talks.

P.M. Took William and Stephen to the track with Benjamin to help me. Asked Benjamin which one of us was more out of commission. He thought it was I. So he ran 0.5 with William while I followed Stephen around.

Listened to General Conference again. Then went to the Priesthood Session with Benjamin in the evening.

Some General Conference highlights. Elder Uchtdorf explaining our relationship with God. He does not set up commandments just so we would fail to keep them and then just sits there and anxiously waits for us to trip up. Rather, He sets them up to show us the way out of trouble. He rejoices at our successes, and when we fail, He helps us recover, just like any good parent would.

Elder Scott - if the young generation reviewed a scripture for every text message they send, they would become great scholars of scripture.

Elder Callister - the idea that young men should accelerate their spiritual development and arrive in the mission field more mature. A few weeks ago in Sunday School we talked about Joseph Smith's vision, and in particular what it was like for his father to have a 14-year old son come to him and announce a vision. Most members of the class found it rather remarkable that the father believed the son right away. The reason given was that a 14-year-old is so immature that anything he says that is unusual would hard to believe. I did not say anything at the time, but I thought about what it would be like if Benjamin came to me and told me he had had a vision. I realized I would not have a problem with that. Yes, just like many young men his age he occasionally experiences a lapse in judgement. But overall he is on top of things. He is spiritually in tune, he knows what the voice of the Lord sounds like, frequently he is able to correctly point out my errors in a mature way. If he told me the Lord had spoken to him, I would not doubt for a second because I know he would not speak of such things lightly.

Day of rest. Watched General Conference. One talk that stood out to me was by Elder Holland. He talked about a man that said: "I believe, help my unbelief". Elder Holland applied it like this: we should acknowledge our strengths before we deal with our weaknesses. When we acknowledge the strengths, it makes us aware of the tools we have to deal with the weaknesses. But if we do it the other way around, as is frequently the case (at least I see that as a common theme in many blog posts), in worlds of Elder Holland,  it is like trying to stuff a turkey through the beak.

I also was impressed by President Monson's talk. He talked about how he was being disobedient as a little boy and started what could have become a forest fire. When I hear him speak, he reminds me of a master chess player that keeps making what appears to be inauspicious  moves. But then the opponent realizes he is faced with a dilemma which piece he would rather give up to stop checkmate and realizes that it is no dilemma at all because it has to be the queen, so he resigns. In the simplicity of President Monson is hidden vast spiritual depth of a prophet. He simplifies and frequently repeats to help the simplest of the simple understand.

A.M. Total of 12 miles. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 2, Julia 2, Joseph and Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 12. Jenny did 4, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. I did a pickup for 0.5 uphill in 2:51.

A.M. Total of 12. Did a workout with Benjamin. We repeated what we did a week ago - 2 miles down the canyon. It was colder today that last week, so we wore more clothes - pants and jacket instead of shorts. Our time was 10:32.6, 0.3 faster than last week with very similar splits - 5:17 for the first mile (vs 5:18) and then 5:15 for the last mile (vs 5:14). Benjamin said the effort felt harder. For me it felt a little easier.

Jenny did 3, Julia 2, Jacob and Joseph 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 6 in anticipation of the track meet the next day, and also due to bad sleep from upper back tension. He has always had a tendency to develop back tension, and once in a while it pops up and causes problems. So we massaged him, had him hang upside down, and do tennis ball sit-ups. Jenny ran 3, Julia did 3 as well. Joseph did 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

I did a little pickup on my 1.02 or so out-and-back hilly course in 5:49.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 2.5 warm-up for the track meet in the evening. We took Joseph and Jacob to the track at Orem High to do a mile time trial. Benjamin paced Joseph, while I paced Jacob. Jacob ran 7:04.2 with the splits of 1:46, 1:45, 1:47 and 1:43 - the remaining 3 seconds rounded off go to cover 9.34 meters extra.This is Jacob's new PR by 5 seconds. He is headed for being the first child in our family to break 7:00 mile before turning 7. He turns 7 on July 21.

Joseph opened with 1:41, then fell asleep to 1:47, then 1:45 and a kick of sorts in 1:41 finishing in 6:57, 5 seconds off his PR. Benjamin is still learning how to pace a kid,and Joseph is difficult to pace because he has a mind of his own. Jacob is much easier - you tell him to run faster, he just does it. Also Joseph runs to win, not for time. So he stops pushing once he feels is safely ahead of Jacob. So perhaps this year Jacob will just get faster, maybe run 6:40, and this will force Joseph to run 6:30. Or maybe we should just have Jacob race him for the last 800.

Jenny did 4, Julia 2, William 0.5. Joseph and Jacob ended up with 2 total.

P.M. Took Benjamin to a high school track meet at Juab High in Nephi. This was our first experience with the high school track. First for Benjamin period, and first direct experience with the US high school track for me. When I was of high school age I was in Russia, which back then was part of the Soviet Union. I raced, but it was a very different system. Running in the US I heard a lot about US high school track, I read race reports, but I had never actually been to a high school track meet.

So two surprises I ran into. One - I did not realize that in a little town of Nephi you could have such a big deal of a track meet. We struggled finding a place to park. There were as many people around at you would see at the Moscow city-wide youth championship, perhaps even more. Expect in Moscow most people came by public transportation - no cars or school buses.

The second surprise was the spread of abilities, particularly as the distance got longer. In all the meets I ran in Moscow, in 14-15 year old division in 3000 last place would finish in around 11:00 even though there was no official qualifying standard. If you could handle being laughed at for being last, you were in. The winner ran maybe 9:10-9:20 in the city championship. Converting this to 3200, that would be maybe 9:50-10:00 for the winner and 11:45 for last place. At this particular meet in Nephi the first place was 10:08, but the last place was 14:36 and it did not appear to be a statistical fluke - all the gaps were evenly filled. Last place in the "fast" heat was 12:04. That was in spite of the age limit being around 18 years old.

So those two surprises caused us some problems. I did not realize until the day of the meet that there would be 43 people on the starting list, which means two heats, the fast one and the slow. Benjamin did not have an official 3200 meter mark, so I just entered nothing instead of giving some info indicating his abilities. So they put him in the slow heat. I asked the course clerk to change that but he told me it was too late. So we figured we'd make the best of the situation.

3200 was the next to last event. It was difficult to estimate when it would start. The meet director gave me a lower bound of 5:00 pm at the earliest, so we got there at 4:30. Benjamin did not get to run until 7:45 pm. With the slow heat, the delay, and some intimidation factor of being crowded by older boys in his first high school track meet, I was not expecting much and I told him to just go out and enjoy it. However Benjamin outperformed my expectations.

Being without a mark he ranked lower than the boys with any mark, so they put him on the outside in the second row. During the first lap he worked his way out of the pack hitting it in 82.4. I yelled at him to get out, but he did not quite understand what I meant. He passed a couple of guys, and then comfortably settled behind the leaders. After the second lap of 86.4 he finally got the message, pushed his way out, and went for it. From that point on he was completely alone. 80.4 - good. 82.7 - acceptable, but the slowdown is a cause for concern. Is he getting tired maybe, perhaps the stresses of the day are wearing on him? Not wanting to discourage him I told him to just try to hold it. 5:31.8 at the 1600. Second place is 5:57 at that point.

80.6 for the next lap. I guess he is not really tired. Later he told me he was just having a hard time gauging the effort and was afraid to push too hard. 82.7 for the sixth lap. I yelled at him to start his kick. At this point he was passing lapped runners in herds, which provided some encouragement. The spectators started cheering him - "Go Crocks!". This was a rather unusual sight I suppose - a home-schooled 14-year-old wearing a plain looking Fast Running Blog singlet and a pair of Crocks lapping team-uniformed high school boys wearing all kinds of fancy spikes. Maybe it was good that he ended up in the slow heat, it created a chance for a little bit of a show. His next to last lap was 78.9.

And then he started his kick for real. I was pleasantly surprised. He was moving, it was quite a sight to watch. At the start of his lap I yelled at him to try to lap the field. He thought I was kidding. But I knew that if somebody runs 82,86 then 3:09 for the next 800 they are Benjamin-lappable. He blew by the second place right before the finish line with the last lap of 72.2. His official time was 10:46.64. I had 10:46.1 on my watch. 0.25 of the difference goes to automatic timing. The rest probably from me not seeing the finish line at a good angle from where I was. Second place in his heat was 12:12. I know all kinds of things happen in high school track meets, but I suppose lapping somebody  you were with at 800 in a 3200 meter race on a 400 meter track is rather rare. Benjamin ended up finishing 8th overall, and 2nd among freshmen. Fastest freshmen was 10:37, which is a bit of a bummer because Benjamin could have run with him. But he got to Crock-lap the slow heat instead, so I suppose it is all good.

On the way back home Matthew was crying. Without being asked Benjamin moved right next to him and sang songs to him all the way. Sarah pointed out that not many 14 year old boys would volunteer to do that after finishing a hard race.

A.M. Ran 20 with Chad. We warmed up the first half uphill in 1:17. On the way back we started out on pace for 58 minutes but it was too fast for Chad, so we slowed down to about 6:10-6:20, and then to 6:40-6:50 at the end. Total time for the last 10 was 1:02:55.

Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

Day of rest. Went to church. It was a Fast and Testimony meeting. Benjamin bore his testimony. Public speaking is not one of his talents, but he knows the Gospel is true, and it drives him to overcome his natural fear of public speaking. It was quite a treat to watch it. He progressed a long way from the time he was 12 when he got up one time, his face was pale, he did not say anything, and immediately sat down.

And that is the beauty of the Gospel - when we know it is true our fears do not matter, we are able to find the power over them.

A.M. Easy 12 total. Mostly with the kids. Benjamin did 8.5, Jenny 4, Julia 2, Joseph and Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Sarah could not sleep, so figuring that since she cannot sleep anyway she may just as well run I suggested a midnight run. We ran 2 miles. It woke me up enough that I did not feel like going to sleep for some time, so I did what I would normally do later in the morning - read the scriptures. Then after some time I finally fell asleep. Then ran 10 more in the morning with the kids. Benjamin did 8.5, William 0.5, Jacob 1, Joseph 2, Jenny 3, Julia 2.

A.M. Total of 12. All with the kids. Benjamin did 8.5, Jenny 4, Julia 2, Joseph and Jacob 2, William 0.5. I did a 3 mile tempo run down the canyon with Benjamin on my usual course from Nunns to the mouth of the canyon. It was a historic run. Benjamin gapped me in a tempo run at the end for the first time while I ran well. He also pulled me when I was struggling. I suppose it was time for the son to give back to the father. A special moment.

Our target was 16:00 or 5:20 pace. The plan was for me to pull Benjamin until the last half mile, then he would take the lead and push if he felt good. We opened with 82 quarter on a slow part, then once we hit the nice downhill I pushed a bit to make up the loss, and we hit the mile in 5:16. Then we did 79, 79, 81. Seeing the drop in the pace and not feeling strong enough to fix the problem, I asked Benjamin to help me. He moved forward and I sat on him for the rest of the run. Our next quarter was 82 (he took over in the middle and being caught by surprise was a bit cautious), giving us 10:37 (5:21) at 2 miles. Drafting made things easier for me, so 81 was quite comfortable, but I decided I will not do anything about it until the 5:20 guy catches us. So we did 81, 81, and now the 5:20 guy was just a second behind. So I told Benjamin to hit the gas, which he did and we ran the next to last quarter in 79. Then we pushed at the end. In the last 100 meters Benjamin shifted gears into the range that I found inaccessible. So he ended up finishing in around 15:54.3, while I got 15:55.0.

I was happy with my result, especially given the lack of sleep and the heart skipping beats during the tempo, which I think did contribute to my weakness in the last 1.25 miles. But the legs were strong from the leg press exercises, so they made up for the deficit somewhat. But I was much happier with Benjamin's.  Prior to this I had never been schooled by a 14-year-old over 3 miles in any condition, definitely not in my current condition for sure.

With the good news we got bad one, of course. Just as I was getting excited about Benjamin's abilities, I learned that it was against the rules for him to run in high school meets unless he affiliated himself with a high school team. If I went back to my old Russian habits, I would have had a few special words to say about that, in Russian for strong effect, as Russians are the masters of swearing,  but when I was baptized I made a covenant to avoid this form of expression. So I will try to express my feelings in a more mature way.

People ask me why I would not just sign Benjamin up to run for Orem High or some other eligible school. I have nothing against Orem High or other hard working and not very well compensated high school coaches, some of whom are on this blog. But I do have an issue with the whole system. I believe home schooling is a superior way of education. The key predictor in the future success of a child is parental involvement, which tends to lack when the child spends countless hours away from the parents. Yet for one reason or another home schooling tends to be marginalized in our society. You have to work extra hard to prove that you are legitimate. The UHSAA rules regarding home school athletes is case in point.

Aside from that, I worked hard to make sure that Benjamin got the best chance to develop his running talent. I have sacrificed my own training and my own professional development to make it happen. When he races well, I do not want the average result peruser  to assume that his performance is a result of our high school system. Not because I want the credit, but because I want the truth to be known. I want people to know what it takes to run fast and do it. And that, I believe, starts not with the school, but with the family.

So for now the plan is to stick to road races, USATF events, and next year he should be ready to run respectable collegiate times, and we should be able to put him in collegiate meets which tend to not have affiliation requirements.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8.5, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph and Jacob 2, William 0.5. Joseph and Jacob did a mile time trial at Orem High Track with me, Benjamin and Jenny assisting. Learning from the experience last week where Joseph was content to run ahead of Jacob the slowest possible so that he still could feel he was winning we changed the arrangement. Benjamin, Jenny, and Jacob started 20 seconds ahead of me and Joseph.  This produced much better results for Joseph, and still another PR for Jacob.

Splits: Joseph: 1:39, 1:40, 1:40, 1:36 for the last lap total time 6:38.1 - new PR by 14 seconds, the balance goes to the extra 9.34 meters.

Jacob: 1:45, 1:47, 1:45, 1:43 - 7:02 - new PR by 2 seconds, the balance goes to the extra 9.34 meters as well.

Joseph caught Jacob on the last lap and ended up about 4 seconds ahead. Jenny joined Joseph once he caught up and ended up with 6:58 for her mile.

Jacob now holds the family 6 and under record. Joseph technically does not yet hold 8 and under family record, but he is going to get it. Benjamin ran 6:32 shortly before turning 9, and Joseph has 9 months before that happens. Benjamin barely broke 7:00 at Joseph's current age.

I realized that Jacob has another unique family record. Fastest time in the mile while still having all of the baby teeth in place. Benjamin had the misfortune of losing his first baby tooth at the age of 5, so we are looking at around 9:00 - 8:20 level performance. We have not yet figured out exactly when his first baby tooth fell out. Joseph's fell out at the age of early 7 when his mile PR was only 7:53. But Jacob has already run 7:02, and if he can hold on to his baby teeth for another week or so and the weather cooperates, he has a good shot of becoming a sub-7:00 miler with all of his baby teeth still in place!

A.M. Easy run - 12 miles. Most with the kids, but I got 5 on my own at 7:00 pace. Benjamin and Julia were at grandma and grandpa's house. Benjamin ran 8, Julia did 3. Jenny did 4, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. I did a short pickup uphill by the house for 0.51 in 2:49.5, so about 5:30 pace.

A.M. Today was my last run as a young man. I am turning 40 tomorrow and will become a master. Started the run late today due to the ward cleanup that did not finish until after 10:30 AM. But it was actually good because it was raining earlier, but then it stopped. So I did 3 with Joseph and Jenny, then 1 with Jacob, 2 with Sarah, and 0.5 with William. Benjamin did 8 and Julia did 2 at grandparent's house. After I was done with the slow portion of the run I decided to do something that I have not felt I was ready for in a long time but it seemed to just be falling into my plate given a relatively slow pace in the first 6.5 and the need to finish the run in some reasonable time. Well, the pace was not that slow - Jenny and Joseph averaged under 8:20 on a hilly course , Jacob ran 8:00 pace on the same hilly course, Sarah averaged sub-10:00 and so did William. But it still justified an extra effort in the remaining 13.5 of the long run. So I decided to run 6.75 out from the house into the Provo Canyon, and then back. This not a happy course for a tempo run for sure, and the distance was long. So I said fight for sub-6:00 average, but realize it might not happen and do not get depressed if so.

Fortunately, I somehow managed to dip under 6:00 average finishing the run in 1:20:58. My split for my 3 mile Provo Canyon course going up was 18:02. At the turnaround my time was 40;53. With that I was getting quite encouraged about gapping the 6:00 guy by a minute on the way back, but I forgot about two things. One, it was 1 pm already, and the wind had turned around becoming an odd cross wind which was friendlier when you ran up than  when you ran down. Two, running 6:00 pace up the canyon took some juice out of me. So coming back I was running sub-6:00, but only marginally. The 3 mile stretch down was only 17:41. Nevertheless, it was enough to build enough gap before the final half mile uphill that I did not lose it all, and ended up 2 seconds ahead of my virtual nemesis.

I am quite encouraged by this run. Whenever I can hold sub-6:00 for 13 or longer at the end of a 20 miler even on a flat course with no wind, that is a big positive, but it is particularly positive when there is no net elevation drop, there is a lot of climbing, and we add head wind into the picture. I attribute the success to my recent discovery of vertical leg press which I have been doing faithfully 3 times a week.

Day of rest. Went to church. Got a lot of happy birthdays. 40 years old officially.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8.5, Jenny 4, Julia 3, Joseph and Jacob 2, William 0.5. Jacob set a PR for our 2+ mile course- 16:09, an improvement of 36 seconds. His first half was 8:18, second half 7:51.

A.M. Total of 15.5. Did a 10 K time trial with Benjamin. We drove to the Canyon View Park and warmed up 3.25 miles to the start of our 10 K course which was about a quarter mile past Bridal Vail falls. Then we ran to the house from there. The course has an elevation drop of about 380 feet according to Pachev Uneventful 10 K, but it does have uphill in the last mile. Actually the profile I made is not 100% accurate - it completed missed the uphill in the last 0.2. I can understand why - there is one road that goes sharply up, while there is a road right next to it that stays flat, and in between those two there is a steep wild hill part of which is actually on our property. USGS data shows average elevations for squares, and coupled with a possible geo-coding error we have a problem. In any case, the profile is accurate for the first 6 miles of the course, and the Course Tool suggests that we get a speed up of 8 seconds per mile from the downhill not accounting for the final climb. That is within the range of believable.

One thing for sure is that this course is slower than Deseret News 10 K measured correctly with police not taking runners the wrong way. I wanted to see what Benjamin had in him over a longer distances, so the target was to run 5:40 down the canyon until failure, then see what kind of failure we got if any.

From the start Benjamin was tailgating me, so I figured he was full of juice and decided to build a lead on the 5:40 guy while we could. So first mile in 5:29, then 5:32. Around 2.5 Benjamin groaned, and I figured we should ease off. Next mile in 5:37, 16:38 at 3 miles. I am figuring we went through the 5 K in around 17:13. Then Benjamin started to wear out, I am suspecting it was more psychological as he had never run this fast for this long, so I eased off the pace to 6:00 for a quarter or so to let him rest.  I wrote this and observed that it is quite remarkable that I am calling 6:00 pace for a 14-year-old boy in the middle of a 10 K "rest".

I would have been happy if he had just run 6:00 pace all the way home, but he did a bit better. Our next mile was 5:52, followed by 5:54. The closing mile uphill was 5:53, which I was very happy about. Our total time was 35:30.2 which comes out to 5:42.8 average. Closing 5 K on a more difficult part was 18:17 in spite of the crash, which is still quite respectable.

This was a good confidence builder for Benjamin. He's never run more than 4 miles at sub-6:00 average. He learned today that he can go out aggressively, and when he crashes it will still be faster than 6:00. This is a very important mile stone.

Jenny and Julia did 3 on their own. I ran 1 with Jacob earlier before we drove to the park, and then did 3.25 with Joseph back to the car, and then 2 more with Sarah. So I ended up with a medium long run.

And I suppose I should record my own master's PR of 35:30 for a 10 K.

A.M. Total of 12. Took Jenny for a mile time trial at Orem High Track.  This was an important step for her. She is 12 years old and has struggled with growth. Her muscles grew faster than the bones, and the bones in turn grew faster than the heart and lungs. Last year was the first time she ran PRs since she was 8. Her training runs have been difficult. Yet she has endured well. That ability has come from knowing that she is a daughter of God, and having a testimony of Christ. The Lord knows I am weak, so He sends me strong children.

Jenny recently started running 4 miles for 3 days of the week alternating it with 3 on other days. This was a step of faith for her, and she wanted to measure the progress.  Her PR was 6:42. With Joseph running 6:38 she also felt motivated to retake the the non-Daddy non-Benjamin family record. Benjamin and I paced her. The target was 1:38 laps, then kick in the last lap hoping for a 94 and 6:30 for the mile.

The plan was executed perfectly which was quite remarkable. I was able to hit three 1:38 laps exactly. I think the reason is that Jenny is a very rhythmic runner. I remember back when she was 6 or 7 she would hit the exact same split on every quarter - this amazed me. Sensing her rhythm helped me run evenly. It did help that she never lost contact and I did not have to worry about asking for a low five. Then she kicked and ran the last lap in 92, which gave her 6:28.2 for the mile - a PR by 14 seconds and a huge mental breakthrough.

Jenny ended up with 3 for the day. Benjamin did 8, Julia 2, Joseph and Jacob 2, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 12. Today was a significant day in our family history. A child with all of his baby teeth did not break a tooth, and did not break a window (another child did earlier), but he broke something else - 7:00 barrier in the mile. This child was Jacob, which now makes it 7 people out of 10 who have broken 7:00 in the mile, while those who have not are all under the age of 5.  We also now have the distinction of having somebody in the family who broke 7:00 before turning 7. This would not have meant much to me if it was my first child, but with the fifth it means a lot because now I know how impossible it is for a 6 year old to crack 7:00 barrier in the mile.

First, I paced Joseph through a 400 in 86.6. This was not quite what we were hoping for - well, you cannot have success all the time. Joseph for the life of him was afraid to really sprint and it was subconscious - there was nothing he could do about it. But this is normal and is not too hard to fix. All we need to do is have Jacob start ahead of him.

Then Benjamin, Joseph, and I helped Jacob break 7:00 in the mile. Unlike with Jenny, the pacing was less than ideal. I blew it in the first 200 opening in 49. After that Jacob did not trust my pacing, so we had to do a lot of low fives to get him going at the right pace. So our first lap was around 1:45, then 1:47. Things were not looking good for sub-7:00, but then Jacob was able to shift gears and hit the next lap in 1:41. That was quite remarkable. He held his own in that last lap with a high 1:42, which gave him 6:57.8 for the mile, and he got his 800 PR by 1 second as well - 3:23. Jacob runs like no other kid I've ever seen - not just in terms of speed, but in terms of pacing. He looks like he is struggling, like what he is giving is all he's got. Then somewhere mid-distance he can just surge, and then he lives after it.

Then I ran more, most with the kids. Benjamin did 8.5,  Joseph and Jacob 2 total, Jenny 4, Julia 3, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 15 miles. Benjamin did 9, Joseph 3, Jacob 2, Jenny 3, Julia 3. I did a workout with Benjamin. The purpose of it to get an idea of how much speed he really had, and also to rattle the cage and try to help him not be afraid of higher speeds in longer distances. I was looking through the Utah USATF records in the 13-14 year old division and to my surprise realized that Benjamin is seriously threatening Josh Rohatinsky's record of 9:49 in 3000 meters and the 1500 record of 4:29 as well. Benjamin ran 10:46 in 3200, if you subtract his slowest 200 from the time, that yields 10:03. The splits were not ideal for a record - 5:32/5:14 with the last two laps being the fastest, and the last lap 10 seconds faster than the average pace in the first 7, neither was having to run alone and having to pass a large number of lapped people on the outside lane - he lapped everybody in the heat at least once. So I see how even without an increase in fitness he could have found those extra 14 seconds needed for the record.

Now, in all honesty I do not think the record is that strong. I think Conner Mantz, for example, could have taken it down when he was 14 if he tried - but he just never ran in a 3000 meter race in a USATF meet, I suppose - I do not know for sure that he had not, but I am suspecting if he had we would have had a different state record. This reminds me of Porter Rockwell's defense in the murder attempt on the governor of Missouri trial - the governor is still alive, that proves I did not shoot, because if I had he would have been dead. 

But take it or leave it, the record is what it is, and we decided to try to break it this year. We are tentatively planning on going to Eugine to run in the Hayward Field Meet in July. That is cheating, because Josh ran his record in the Summer Games in Cedar City at altitude. But I do want to know what Benjamin can run at sea level when he is not winning (or at least when he is pushed) for a benchmark. We might do the Summer Games as well to have a fair comparison.

So anyway, I wanted Benjamin to psychologically prepare for the assault. So the workout was 800-600-400-200 down the Provo Canyon. Well, more precisely the distances were slightly longer - 0.5, 0.375, 0.25, and 0.125 of a mile, but we were on a net downhill of 1-2%, so this was probably equivalent to running on a windless day on a really good track like BYU for the above mentioned track equivalents.

Benjamin again took me to school. 800 - 2:18.5 for him, 2:18.9 for me.  1000 recovery jog, then 600 - 1:41.5 for him, 1:42.8 for me. 800 recovery, then 400 - 62.3 for him, 64.8 for me. 800 jog, then 200 - 29.4 for him, 31.6 for me. That was better than I was expecting. I thought he would run something like 2:20 - 1:44 - 67 - 31.

One thing I miscalculated is how much this workout was going to take out of him. His gluts and hamstrings were almost post-marathon type sore. I assumed incorrectly that he simply would not have the speed to run himself into the ground. He did. His speed is ahead of his resilience. I knew that, but I just did not realize by how much. Well, now we know what we need to work on. There is really not that much to do except be more moderate with the speed, just keep working on the base, and wait for the muscles to become more resilient as he grows and his conditioning improves. Then we can really work on speed and seriously kick some trash.

P.M. 0.5 with William.

A.M. Ran with Chad, Collin, and Steve Ashbaker. We started with a 2 mile warm-up taking Joseph for 2 miles. Jenny and Jacob started with us. Jenny did 4, Jacob 1. Julia did 3, Benjamin was at the camp out and ran 4 miles. 

We ran 18 more making it a total of 20. The last 8 miles we did a tempo. The pace started out around 6:10-6:20 range, then we visited 6:05 and maybe even 6:00 range on occasion. Chad was sick and backed off around 4 miles into the tempo. Collin started having problems with about 3 miles to go and told us to go ahead. Steve was a little edgy with 4 and even 3 miles to go, but knowing that he might not be quite in shape on endurance, I gave him some words of caution, so he held back.  Once we pulled ahead, he started having issues with around 1.5 miles to go. So it was good that he held back. Our last 8 miles was 49:45 - 6:13 average. Collin finished about 50 seconds back.

Based on this workout I predicted that Steve's condition was 2:47 in the Top of Utah if he were to taper and run it in two weeks. He will get into better shape, though.

P.M. Jenny did 0.5 with William. Benjamin wanted to run more, but he had some issue with his hip from the combination of yesterday's workout, and sleeping on hard ground during the camp out. We did some stretching, icing, and massage.

Day of rest. Went to church. Learned some good things. The lesson in the Elder's Quorum was on the two great commandments - love the Lord, and love thy neighbor as thyself. Was tired when I got home. Took a nap.

A.M. Ran with the kids and Sarah. Total of 13 miles. Benjamin did 7, including a mile with William. He is still recovering from the double hit of the Friday workout and the camp out, but is doing better. We had to stop and stretch/massage him multiple times, but he got through the run. The problem is tight piriformis on the right causing pain at the attachment point to the sacrum in the SI joint area. Tight hamstrings as well contributing to the problem. Not sure if we would be able to do the Uneventful Provo River Half practice on Saturday. But at least he was able to run today - Saturday afternoon after all the massage and stretching he could not even take three running steps.

Jenny did 3, Joseph 3, Julia 3, Jacob 2. William ran a mile with the hand held in 9:57.

P.M. 0.8 for transportation purposes from a car shop to a gas station. Sarah could not find the car shop, and needed to go to the gas station anyway, and I needed a little shakeout run.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, including 1 with William in 9:27 holding his hand. Jenny did 4. Her aerobic fitness is starting to finally develop. Finally. It has been a struggle over the last 3 years or so. She grew really fast, her muscles could not keep up with the bones, while the heart and lungs could not keep up with the muscles. But she remained in good spirits, we toughed it out together, and she is beginning to break out of it. Today she ran 4 miles in 32:45 with a reasonable degree of aerobic comfort initiating 7:30 pace mid-run unprovoked. She is still having muscle issues - tension in the neck and lower back today. Julia did 3, Jacob 1, Joseph 2. I did a pickup for 0.5 in 2:48 uphill near the house.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, William 1 in 9:11 holding Benjamin's hand, Jenny 3, Joseph 3, Jacob 2, Julia 2.25. Jacob and Julia did a time trial on the track. We are focusing on getting Jacob to break 90 in a 400. This is the qualifying standard for the Hayward Field Youth Meet in Eugine. I am not sure if they have the 800 for sub-Bantams, so to get our basis covered we try to get a qualifier in the 400. Plus it is a good goal - sub-90 400 at the age of 6. 

So Jacob raced Julia in the first lap. I thought she would go with him, but she was to scared. He blasted the first 200 in high 42, then faded and finished with 93.1 - a new PR by 3 seconds. Julia still could not catch him and went through the first lap of her 800 in 98. She finished with another 98 and a total time of 3:16.9, which is a repeat of her PR. The conditions were not very good - it was cold and a little windy. We will try again in a couple of days.

I did a couple of pickups. 0.5 from the house going down in 2:45, and then on the way back the same stretch in 2:45 again. It was odd. The stretch looks like it should be much faster going away from the house. But there is a little bump with the grade reaching 9% which just kills the momentum. Also the downhill is hard to get going on - only about 0.15 in length - I need more than that before I find my downhill stride.  Then the bump, then more or less flat, then downhill again about 100 meters of 4%, and 100 meters of 2%. That one is nice, and I start finding my stride there, but the interval end just when I got going. If you go further, it is not nice - a turn, then concrete pavement going uphill. Concrete is not good - bad traction. So anyway, long story short, that 0.5 interval is slow both ways.

One thing I forgot to report is that last week Benjamin broke the 1700 rating barrier in chess for the first time, and his rating now is 1708. He is starting to pull away from me - mine is 1653. 

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin's piriformis is still not 100%, although it has been slowly recovering. But we decided to postpone the Uneventful Provo River Half until May 18. He also has 4 AP tests coming up - Chemistry, Computer Science, Calculus BC, and Physics C: Mechanics next week. To keep his brain functional, we will run easy next week. We have an ambitious plan to get high scores, then take the ACT hoping the score is good as well, and apply for the winter semester at BYU. If it does not work, we can always try again, we are used to that. However, Benjamin already has a 4 on Calculus BC to his credit from the last year, which is good enough for BYU Math 112, but it would be nice get Math 113 out of the way as well for $89, so he is taking the Calculus BC test again.

He will run in a USATF track meet in Park City on May 11. The goal is to get the qualifying standard in 3000 for the Hayward Field Meet which is very low - 11:30, but it needs to be an official mark. He will try to crack 10:00, but it might be challenging doing it alone and at 6500 or so feet. But we take what we can get.

Benjamin did 8, Jenny 4, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 1. I did a pickup for 0.5 at around 5:40 pace, then I did a 2 mile tempo coming back to the house from the canyon. The first mile went well - 5:38, which is good for that course, but then I had an odd incident  - my hamstring seized up, and I had to slow down. I still could run the last uphill mile in 6:00 in spite of that, but that was all I could do. So I ended up with 11:38.

A.M. Total of 12.5. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 2.25, Joseph 3, Jacob 2, William 0.5. Jenny ran 23:58 for 3 miles - her first easy run in a long time that was sub-8:00 average. 

Jacob and Joseph did a time trial on the track at Orem High. Jacob did 400 while Joseph did 800. We started Jacob just a little bit in front of Joseph after Joseph had already run a lap. It was quite interesting. Joseph opened with 43 high 200, then he got a little cautious and slowed down hitting the first 400 in 90.4 or so. With Jacob in front of him he pushed harder in the second lap. But Jacob, being fresh and starting 2 seconds in front, was way too fast and gapped him by a good margin in the first 200. Then Jacob started to wear out, while Joseph maintained the pace and started to close, but he ran out of road.  Jacob ended up with 91.0 400 - new PR by 2 seconds, while Joseph ran 3:00.4 for the 800 - a new PR by 7 seconds.

Benjamin stood and watched to avoid aggravating his injury by fast running, while I paced Joseph. Benjamin commented on Jacob's turnover. Well, he is not even 4 feet tall yet, so to run a 91 quarter you have to turn over like crazy.

A.M. Kids ran on their own. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 4, Julia 3, Jacob 1, Joseph 2, William 1. I did a long run - 20 miles. After running the first 5 I realized I really did not want to go any further at any pace.But yet I knew that if I dug deeper I would find another 5 easy miles followed by 10 hard ones. And I did - I ran my first 10 uphill in 1:15:07, and then came back in 58:56. It was a struggle to do alone, but whenever I slipped to 6:00 pace, I always found another gear that took me back up to 5:50 no matter how late into the run it was, and no matter the terrain. That is a good sign.

I did however feel that I need to get more sleep, so I took care of that right after breakfast. It felt good to take a nap.

I realized not too long ago that I could not name a single sub-2:07 marathoner that did not have some kind of religion in his life. I understand why. Up to a certain point of speed you can run the marathon off your natural talent and conditioning. But there comes a time when you cannot progress any further unless you use your faith. I have been there. When I ran my best marathon I approached the start with trepidation because I knew I would be sprinting from the gun. Yes, to some 5:29 pace is a jog, especially on the St. George course, but to me it is very close to sprinting. I have a good excuse - I have only about two-thirds of the L-4 vertebra. Regardless, it was a scary experience, a step into the dark.

Now, there are people you have a healthy spine and other subsystems, and who can condition themselves to be able to go much faster than that without having to visit that zone. But I believe the limit is around 2:10-2:12 for the most talented, well-trained, well-nourished, and well-rested. To go faster, therefore, even the most fit will have to step into the dark, and move their legs by faith. Where does that faith come from? You need to believe that your running has some kind of a higher purpose. You need to more than believe, you need to know. And that knowledge naturally comes when you have faith in God, and God to you is more than a fictional character or concept, but somebody who sent you here, and somebody who will meet you when you are done with this life.

Day of rest. Went to church as usual. We had a Fast and Testimony meeting, then a lesson in Sunday School about gifts of the Spirit.

A.M. Total of 12. Did a pickup for a mile. Benjamin did 5, Jenny 3, Julia 3, Joseph 3, Jacob 2, William 0.5.

Benjamin took the AP Chemistry test today at Orem High. This is going to be an interesting benchmark of our educational method. Last year he took Calculus BC test and got a 4, which I thought was a good result for a 13-year-old, but I know calculus well enough to teach the AP test material. I know some chemistry, I successfully challenged BYU Chem 105 19 years ago, I do have a good memory, but it is not perfect, I have not done anything with chemistry since them except occasional curiosity reading, and I found that I did not know enough to teach Benjamin, and I did not have enough time to learn it all either. But I found out that I did not have to. We came up with a study plan, used  KhanAcademy.org, sample tests, Google, and a textbook. He learned what I could not teach him and he taught me some of that in the process as well.  Benjamin came home feeling quite confident in the result, but we will find out how well he learned this when the test scores come out in a month or so.

The concept of an environment where the student exceeds the teacher is something I consider critical for effective education. Not just home school but at any level. When you have a real job, you have to self-learn, you have to figure things out that nobody can teach you. It is a good skill to learn at a young age.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 5, Jenny 4, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, Julia 3, William 1. Joseph took Stephen for a short run as well. Stephen is still in diapers, so he does not run regularly as a workout.

Benjamin took the AP Computer Science test. Of the four he is taking this year - Chemistry, Computer Science, Calculus BC, and Physics C: Mechanics this might be the easiest for him because he has quite a bit of programming experience. He had to learn Java for this test - most of his experience is in PHP, although he has programmed in Perl and C as well. He felt quite confident after the test, which is a good sign. He also was the only one taking the test. There were about 20 students at Orem High taking the Chemistry exam, but Orem High does not offer Computer Science as a course so Benjamin was it. But they were nice enough to order the test for us and administer it. They only have to proctor, and send it somewhere else to grade, so it is no big deal for them.

I was perhaps naively surprised that nobody else had thought of learning Java on their own and taking the test like Benjamin. If you get even just a 3 (out of 5 graded on a curve) that is a 3 hour credit at BYU for the introductory Computer Science course. Only $89 - compared to around $500 or so worth of tuition - quite a deal. Well, I am posting it here so the cat will be out of the bag.

I did a 3 mile tempo run from the magic spot in the canyon to the house. First mile downhill, then a rolling climb back to the house. Ended up with 17:08. Did not think I'd be running much faster than 6:00 due to the hamstring tension, but it partially went away, and I realized how much had missed my hamstring. But then in the last mile I started to struggle with the pace I think due to not getting good sleep the night before - for some reason I woke up and just lay there from a little before 5 until I finally decided to get up a little after 6. My time was 17:08.

Julia did 800 meter time trial today at the Orem High track. I paced her. She started out a bit too fast going through the first 100 in 21, but I did not hold her back because she had held herself back too much in the past. I also noticed that if I hold my kids back when they are starting out, they get the wrong idea and settle into a pace that is too slow. So I just let them go and follow them. Once they drop below the target pace, I step forward.

Her 200 was 45, then 1:34 at 400 (49), 2:24 at 600 (50), and the last 200 in 46 finishing in 3:10.8 which is a new PR by 6 seconds, and her first PR of the year.

A.M. Ran with the kids. Total of 11.5. Jenny did 3, Julia 3, Joseph 3, Jacob did 2.05 miles on our nasty course in 15;48 with the splits of 8:08 for the first half, and 7:40 for the second. I was quite impressed by that. It all started with me challenging Jacob to catch an adult runner ahead of us. He did it without too much of a problem, I invited the runner to join us but he was too intimidated to run with us even though I told him Jacob was only 6 years old - maybe that had the opposite effect. Once Jacob got going, he was maintaining a decent pace, so I challenged him to break 16:00 and he did with vengeance. William did 0.5.

Benjamin took AP Calculus BC today. It took quite a bit out of him. The stress of a third AP test wore on him, and early on he felt his mind was clouded. But then it cleared up and he felt more and more confident in his answers. So we'll see what he got - the worst thing that can happen is that he did not get a 5 - he already has a 4 to his credit from last year. So he ran only 3 miles today to avoid getting sick as he felt a cold coming on - we do have a little cold going around the house.

A.M. Total of 12. Today finally was the day when Benjamin did not have an AP test. I finally got to run with him for the first time this week. We took it easy because he felt like he was catching a cold last night. I also was aware of the stress of those tests, so we had to adjust the mileage to make sure it did not push him into the red zone from that. This made be appreciate home schooling. We do not have to worry about external academic stress except when it is time to test. This has academic benefits, but it also has general health benefits which translates into running benefits among other things. We give academic stimulus when we feel the child can take it, and in the amount that we feel is beneficial. In running the timing and the amount of stimulus is critical - if you do it wrong you either overtrain or undertrain. I believe the same is true in schooling.

So Benjamin just ran 4 with me and Jenny today, and then 5 more with William. Then I took Jacob for 1 mile, and then Joseph for 2. I learned something about Joseph today, it just came to me. Again, another benefit of home schooling and home coaching at the same time made possible by having a telecommuting job. There is no way I could do those things if I had to be at an office all day - even if the scheduling worked out, the stress would have made it difficult for me to observe those things. We started the run, and around a quarter into it I challenged Joseph to beat Jacob's time of 15:48 from the day before. Eager to prove that he is faster than his younger brother,  Joseph accepted the challenge. About a mile into it he started slowing down complaining about a side-ache. But I could tell that it was more than that. Yes, the side ache was making it difficult, but he was not dealing with it right. I let him stop and do a few squats to stretch things out but also for a mental reboot. He when he started running, he was still having a bad attitude, and going a slower pace. Then something clicked, and he sped up. By that time he was a good 20 seconds behind Jacob's pace. He shaved off the difference down to 4 seconds by the end, but still ended up behind with 15:52.

Then it just dawned on me - Joseph has a hard time doing things that require effort and need to be taught how to do it in a special way. Not uncommon for an 8-year-old boy, but he struggles with it more than our other children have so far. A famous quote from him a couple of years ago. Jacob was telling him that he (Jacob) was feeling lazy. Joseph's response: "You are not feeling lazy, you are feeling tired. Lazy is when you have the energy to work, but you do not want to work". We all laughed because we knew Joseph was intimately familiar with the matter.

So I thought of a remedy. It was a non-running remedy but I felt it would benefit his running among other things. I told him to read Benjamin's physics textbook. Joseph objected saying that he had tried and it made no sense to him. Then I knew that this was exactly what he needed. I told him: "When you find something that does not make sense, do not just lay the book aside or read past it. Find me or Benjamin, and ask us to explain to you what that means. Spend more time than 5 seconds fighting with it before you declare that something does not make sense."

The next day later I found him reading that textbook on his own initiative at 9:00 pm in the van while we were coming back from Jenny's play.

Julia ran 3 miles. I added 2.05 at the end on the same Joseph-Jacob nasty course in 11:46.9.

A.M. I did my long run today because of the kids' track meet the next day, except I kept it medium long because I had to work immediately afterwards, and I knew I was not going to get adequate recovery if I made it full 20.  So I ran 8 out uphill in about 59 minutes, and then 8 back down in 46:20- 5:47.5 average. I struggled in the last 2 miles, and especially in the last mile. It did not feel like fuel, I think it was the heart. In fact, for the last two weeks I've felt like I've had a hole in my heart. Well, I do not think there is really a hole, otherwise I would be dead, or at least would not be able to run at all. It is probably just the thinning out of the muscle and it is probably very minor, but to me it is not because all of a sudden my pace drops by 10 seconds per mile terrain adjusted in the last two miles of an 8 mile tempo at the end of a long run, so I call it "a hole".

I have actually considered the idea of training runners to recognize what is going on with their heart by performing the tests at the times they felt there was something different. The idea is this - a trained runner with some HRM experience knows his HR without having to measure it. He knows his pace by feel. With some training he could be taught to identify his stride rate. By the same token he could be trained to identify his lactate concentration and blood glucose level by feel. What else? How about the thickness of the heart muscle in different parts of his heart? Probably a good number of important parameters. Why is this important? A runner with some scientific training paying close attention to his body overtime would be able to formulate a hypothesis about some process that a scientist would never think of because the runner has 24x7 access to a multitude of sensors and can processes their input subconsciously - a luxury not available to a scientist even in the best equipped lab. Then the scientist could test it and prove it in a lab.

I wrote to a couple of researchers about it. They agreed with me that it was a good idea, but as far as I know it never progressed beyond the status of a good idea. I suppose if I really wanted to push this beyond it I could get a degree in cardiology, get my hands on the equipment, and start doing it. Or maybe there is a better way - I need to become good friends with a cardiologist that has access to the equipment, is a bit of an unconventional thinker, and is interested in exercise. If you know anybody, give them a reference to this post.

Benjamin did 6, Jenny 4, Julia 2, Jacob 1, Joseph 2, William 1.

A.M. Did 12 total with Steve Ashbaker and Chad. We ran out 6, then on the way back did the 3 mile tempo course from Nunn's Park to the mouth of the canyon. On the positive side of things, I woke up without the feeling of "the hole" in the heart. One difference between this night and others was that when Matthew woke up Sarah did not wake me up to get him. I have been getting up and bringing him to her to nurse because if she gets out of bed, she has a hard time falling asleep. I have been falling asleep after getting him right away, but I think he has been timing his wakefulness just when my sleep was in the middle of doing heart repair. 

In any case, because I ran hard yesterday, my plan for the tempo was to just keep company to Chad and Steve. I was hoping the pace would not be much faster than 5:40, but I was wrong. We went through the first mile in 5:19. Then I knew that the heart repair was good because this pace felt very manageable in spite of the 16 miler with an 8 mile tempo the day before.  Shortly after 2000 Steve dropped back, but Chad was still pushing it. We hit 1.5 in 7:59. I was sitting behind Chad for two reasons. One is that I was lazy and I did not want the pace to be any faster than it already was. The other was that I felt that if I had approached the run taking responsibility for the pace, I might go too fast for both of us because I was not sure that Chad could hold 5:20 pace all the way. But when Chad's pace started to slip I decided to step forward and help him - I felt that 5:30 was good for my health, and that it would also help Chad get a really good time and a confidence builder for the Ogden marathon. So we ran like that to the end. We hit 2 miles in 10:45 (5:26), 2.5 in 13:31, and then finished in 16:16 (5:31 for the last mile).

Jenny ran 3 miles including 1 with William.

P.M. Took Benjamin, Julia, Joseph, and Jacob to the USATF track meet in Park City at the Park City High track. The reason we were there was to practice competing, and get some official times for the track meet in Eugine on July 13 which requires qualifiers. Jenny could not do it because she was in a play - she would have to get her qualifier in the next meet. The meet qualifying standards are here. So Joseph and Jacob had to run 3:30 for the 800, Julia had to run 3:20 because even though she is still only 10, she counts as a Midget because her birth year is 2002, and Benjamin had to run 11:30 for 3000.

With Benjamin we had several plans - plan A was to break 10:00, plan A+ was to take down Josh Rohatinsky's Youth state record of 9:49, plan A- was to run a little slower than 10:00, and plan C was to hit the qualifier of 11:30 for the Eugine meet.

There were some things against him - the track is located at the altitude of 6770 feet, his race started at 1:30 pm with the sun shining brightly, there were only 3 other runners in the race, which was better than the worst we were afraid of, but none of them could help with the pace even for a lap, Benjamin had done no speed for two weeks - the first week due to the injured piriformis and the second due to the AP tests and a minor cold, and he did take three AP tests this week which took quite a bit out of him. So I held the A+ and the A plans out there, but I knew that it would be difficult to get them. However, trying to get them he would do the best that he could under the circumstances, so I told him to pace for 10:00, and if things were good, go for the record, and if not, hang in there and just do his best.

He ran 10:10.3 with the following splits: 78.9, 79.2, 79.6, 83.0, 84.9, 85.1, 85.1, 34.6. The altitude got to him on the fourth lap. This was a good learning experience and it reveals something we need to work on - aerobic conditioning. Well, his conditioning is OK, but he is aerobically underdeveloped, which is not a surprise - he is in the middle of maturation, which creates an imbalance with the body being too big for the cardiovascular system, but I've seen it worse. In fact, I think because of his training this growth-related aerobic capacity lapse has been mitigated so well that you have to take him to 6700 feet or have him run a fast pace past 3 miles to notice the problem. But it is good to know the problem exists. I was very happy with this performance, and particularly with his ability to muster a 34.6 kick with no competitor in sight unless you count the ones being lapped after struggling with several 85 second laps.

For a comparison, Josh ran 9:49 at 5782 feet when he set his record. So now I think we can say for sure that Benjamin is honestly within 21 seconds of that performance by all counts.

A well-meaning coach suggested that next time Benjamin should run in "real shoes", which Benjamin wisely and politely corrected explaining that he has run all of his PRs in Crocs including a 200 in 29.

Joseph and Jacob were in the same heat and they dominated it. Joseph went through the first lap in 95. I yelled at him to speed up, and he did hitting the next lap in 91 high finishing in 3:06.97. Jacob was second with the first lap in 97 and the second lap in 99 finishing in 3:16.15, which is his new PR. Both qualified for the meet.

Julia ran the first lap in 92, but then on the second lap her low iron came into play at the higher altitude and she struggled. But she still held it together and finished in 3:11.8 (still do not have her official time) in third place in the Midget girls and hitting the meet qualifier of 3:20 with room to spare.

I ended up jogging about 0.5 going back and forth. Joseph and Jacob ran about 1 each total, Julia around 1.5.

Day of rest. Went to church. The talks and lessons naturally focused around Mother's Day. Afterwards the children put on a mother's day celebration for Sarah. They sent me and her on a date of sorts - they set up a table outside and made us lunch for two.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 2.5 (easy before AP Physics), William 0.5, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph and Jacob 2. I did a pickup for 2.25 in 13:04- 5:48 pace - over the rollers to catch up to Sarah, then ran with her. She did a total of 3. With Benjamin getting a bunch of AP tests at once instead of one every two months or so I remembered a Russian joke back from the Soviet days:

A man dies. He has lived a sinful life and is condemned to hell. However he is offered a choice - the socialist hell or the capitalist hell. He inquires of the difference and is told that in both hells he will have 30 nails pounded into his back every month. The difference is that in the capitalist hell he gets one every day, while in the socialist hell he gets all 30 at the end of the month.

After some thinking I realized also that Benjamin was subjected to a form of cruel and unusual punishment on Saturday having to run 3000 alone on the track in Park City at 6770 feet at 1:30 pm with the sun shining bright and clear above him and the air temperature of 75F - not a lot after 6 PM when sunlight is indirect, but earlier in the day it is not pleasant . Well, I knew that, but I had not quite thought it through and had not felt the depth of it. But it was good, because it pushed him to the limit psychologically, and revealed some things about his aerobic conditioning that would not have been so apparent otherwise. And he did run 10:10 and now has a respectable and official 3000 meter time.

P.M. Benjamin ran 1 back from the AP test. Later in the eventing he and I went for an easy 4.5. Both of us were having stomach problems, but we each had a different mode of issue. He was throwing up small amounts of liquid, while I had diarrhea. He felt worse than I did as my emissions were more effective. We remembered Bob Kempainen in the 96 Olympic Trials. It is rather symbolic that the KemPAINen has PAIN in it. My kids know this story (throwing up while running 4:55 pace at the end of a marathon), as well as the one about Lasse Viren falling but still winning the Olympic 10,000 in 1972 with a world record, as well as they know the one about the wolf and the three little pigs, and others of the kind - and you can guess why.  Sometimes they struggle when they run, and when they are younger, they complain. When they are older, they just recall those stories and draw strength from them.

A.M. Total of 13.6. Ran with Dave Taylor. We did the 3 mile tempo from Nunn's Park to the mouth of the canyon. The purpose was to evaluate what's up with Dave's fast starts. So I told him to just start like he would in a half-marathon, and then we'll see what happens. The deal was that if he was going sub-5:00 I would slow him down, but otherwise we'll just let the pace he chose stand. In the first 100 meters the pace was sub-5:00, which resulted in a warning, and a slightly slower pace afterwards. We got to the first mile in 5:09. I tucked behind him hanging on for dear life and wondering what would happen if he kept it all the way. On one hand the prospect of breaking 15:30 sounded exciting. On the other hand, the pain of was was not so. I felt that if I could just find the right spot behind him that minimized air resistance I could perhaps run around 15:30 today, but I would need that magic spot.

At the start of the second mile the pace eased to 5:20, and finally became manageable. After 2000 it dropped off to 5:28, but I was in no hurry to step up and help with the pace because I wanted to rest from that 5:09. Our split at 1.5 was 7:51. That quarter in 82 gave me enough of a break, though, that I felt ready to step up and pull Dave for the rest of the tempo at 5:20 if needed. I made an effort to shift gears and get back to 5:20, but I saw that Dave was dropping back, so I corrected to around 5:30-5:35, which I did not mind too much. We hit 2 miles in 10:37 (5:28), then 13:23 at 2.5, and 16:09.9 at the finish with the last mile in 5:32.

Dave and I had opposite experiences in this run. He felt the first mile was easy and then it got progressively harder. I felt that the first mile was hard, and then it got progressively easier. My partial explanation of that is that he has been running only 40 miles a week so his aerobic conditioning is lacking. So he runs the right pace from the gun, but he just cannot hold it. We will work on fixing that, though. Our next workout will be even 5:20 pace for all three miles. In between, I recommended that Dave should run 8 miles a day at an easy pace.

We ran the cool-down to our house, and then I ran with some of the kids. Jacob did 1, Joseph 3, Jenny 4, Julia 3, Benjamin 8, William 1.

After I ate breakfast and got the kids going on their math practice, my body asked for a nap, and I obliged. Felt much better after a nap.

A.M. Total of 12.5. Did a workout with Benjamin. The purpose was to evaluate his aerobic conditioning, and to develop it. We did 10 miles from the house into the canyon, and then back alternating fast and slow miles. The target for fast was around 6:00, for slow no slower than 8:00. We started with a slow mile. Our fast mile splits were - 5:59 (up a small grade into headwind), 5:53 (up, less headwind), 5:50 (down), 5:54 (down), 5:50 (up to the house). The slowest recovery mile was 7:45. Total time for 10 was 1:08:13. This workout is difficult psychologically because you think you are resting, but in truth you are not quite resting. The first fast two miles took a lot of out of Benjamin and strained me as well because of the headwind and the uphill. However, I recovered faster - that is one difference between us. He can drop me in a 3 mile tempo, but because of the difference in aerobic development I recover almost instantaneously after a near maximum effort that, as my mother likes to say, makes me "see Paris", while Benjamin is not quite there yet, and needs more recovery even from a very much sub-maximal effort.

So when we finished the second mile repeat he was hurting both physically and emotionally - uphill running into a headwind beats you up in both ways. On the way back he recovered some as we dialed down the effort, and was able to give it a good push in the last uphill mile making me work.

With the better understanding of Benjamin's recovery process we decided it would be better for Benjamin to do a 10 miler at 6:00 pace on my regular 20 miler course on Saturday instead of the Uneventful Provo River Half.

Then I ran 2 with Joseph and Jacob, while Jenny and Julia ran 3. Then I ran 0.5 with William.

A.M. Total of 12 miles. Took Jenny to the track and we did 800 meter time trial. The goal was to break 3:00 and retake the non-Benjamin non-Daddy family record in the distance which was currently held by Joseph (3:00.4). We started out a little fast - Jenny was a bit edgy, and I had to run faster to take the position in front of her. This resulted in the first 100 in 19 seconds. I realized my mistake and gently took the foot off the gas, but the damage had already been done. To make things more interesting, there were two ladies with a small dog walking around the track. Jenny is a big girl (5'5'' at 12 years old) but has a strong dislike of little dogs. So she swerved into lane 4 or 5 to avoid the dog. With all the excitement we got to the 200 in 41. At this point I just hoped that she would survive, and also that she would not get tripped up by the little dog on the second lap. Fortunately, things worked out and she was able to get her goal.

We hit 400 in 87(46), and got to 600 in  2:13(46). At this point I emphasized the urgency of a strong kick. Jenny gave a good push. We caught up to the dog. I warned Jenny not to swerve this time. The dog went after Jenny. Jenny kicked harder to outrun the dog and finished in 2:57.1 with the last 200 in 44 and the last 400 in 90. This is a PR by 11 seconds. Now she needs to do something like that in an official meet. She needs to run 3:05 to qualify for the meet in Eugine.

Benjamin did 8, Jenny ran a total of 3, Julia did 3, Joseph 3, Jacob 1, William 1.

P.M. We got a new stroller from Amazon. It is a Schwin double-stroller. We paid $215 for it. It is very nice - has suspension, the front wheel swivels, and it is very light. Clearly the strollers have made some improvements in the last 10 years or so. So tonight I tried it out with Matthew in it. Of course, after running the first 600 meters I realized that I needed to go to the bathroom really bad - when I start doing doubles I run into this problem - just cannot clear out my stomach properly before the run. Possibly a side effect of my spinal problem. This resulted in a route change and I barely made it to the house. Total of 3 miles.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 4, Julia 3, Joseph and Jacob 2, William 1. I enjoyed watching Joseph and Jacob take it easy as they coasted through the run at slightly faster than 9:00 pace, and then with about 500 to go they decided to get down to business and sped up to around 7:00 and just blasted their way up the hill at the end. So they ended up running 17:19 (Joseph), and 17:22 (Jacob). Jenny ran 4 miles in 32:39 which is her fastest training run time on that course. I am happy to see that 8:00 pace is becoming more natural for her again after her growth spurt. During Julia's run I pushed Stephen and Matthew in the stroller.

A.M. Total of 23 miles in 2:37:39 which is 6:51 average which is on pace for 2:59:43 marathon. Today was a rather unusual run. First, Benjamin and I drove to the park at the start of the Provo City Half Marathon in South Fork, left the car there and ran about 0.5 warm up to the start of my 10 mile tempo course. Then we ran the 10 mile tempo to the house. The purpose of this workout was to help Benjamin remove the fear of running 5:50-6:00 pace for a long time in preparation for the Utah Valley Half. We also wanted to test his capabilities in running long. I was not sure exactly where he stood over such long distances and wanted to see if it would even be wise right now for him to race the half.

Benjamin did better than I expected. He groaned a few times in the early miles as he pondered the reality of running this fast for this long. Then around mile 3 he began to feel more confident and to lose the fear. The pace was quite steady - I tried to hit all quarters in 88. If I saw 89 I sped up, if I saw 87 I took my foot off the gas. Benjamin was keeping the pace up until we hit 9.5. Then the combination of the fatigue from the actual running and the fear of the hills over the last 0.5 leading back to the house ate him alive and he slowed down to 93 going uphill. In the last quarter he rebooted and sped up to 90. We finished in 58:34, 5:51 average. So hopefully he can run around 1:16-1:17 in the Utah Valley Half - we'll see.

Then I ran 3 with Joseph in 26:22. Jenny and Julia did 3, William 1, Jacob 1. I drank some EmergenC mixed with dextrose for energy and headed back to the car. My original plan was to just go a little faster than 8:00, but I felt good and I wanted to be done with the run sooner, so I averaged around 7:10 up the Provo Canyon, and at times was hitting 6:40. I was happy that I felt healthy in the last mile, the heart was working well. That is a good sign for the marathon.

Come to think of it, it is quite remarkable how much easier it is to run a marathon when you slow down even if the pace is ridiculously uneven. On this type of course - no net elevation drop, highest point at 5500 feet, lowest point at 4700 feet or so, I would be quite lucky to break 2:40.  Yet slow me down by 20 minutes, and even though some of that was at 5:51 pace and some at Joseph's pace (8:50) I am quite happy - this is now a normal training run.

Day of rest. Went to church. Heard some goods talks in Sacrament. They were on joy. There is temporary joy, and then there is lasting joy. One speaker mentioned that there are only two days that a boat owner is happy - the day he buys it, and the day he sells it. The same speaker mentioned that the oldest user of Facebook is 105 years old, followed by a quote from somebody else that no matter how old you are you can always find a way to waste the little bit you have left.

Took a much needed nap in the afternoon. Then we visited Sarah's parents. Maybe it was just bad luck today, but it appears to me that drivers in West Valley do not like 15-passenger vans or at least do not appreciate what it takes to maneuver one through traffic. I had trouble changing lanes from left to right every single time - I turned on my blinker, let it run for long enough, watched the mirrors waiting for other drivers to make room, then eventually I just had to gradually move over in one case, and another time I lucked out with another car in the right lane in front slowing down to make a turn which blocked the pursuing lane-change obstructor in the right lane and gave us enough room to do it safely.

A.M. Ran total of 12 - all with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 4, Julia 3, Joseph and Jacob 2, William 1. Benjamin is recovering well from the 10 mile tempo on Saturday - the damage appears to be only a little bit of fatigue noticeable in the last 2 miles of the run today and some soreness in the calves. This is perfect, better than I expected. This Saturday he plans to attack the 1500 meter Utah State Youth record (13-14 years age division) in the UVU USATF track meet. The record is 4:29 and belongs to Josh Rohatinsky.  Benjamin ran 5:03.7 in the 1609.34 (full mile) on the track last year in a time trial, which is on pace for 4:43.1 1500, and Mt. Sac Relay conversion chart gives 4:41.3 1500 for that performance. This year I can tell from workouts and races that his speed is better, but will this be enough to improve by 12 seconds in who knows what kind of conditions - the UVU track tends to be windy? We'll see.