Started the morning with a 1 mile jog. Did another 1 mile jog in the afternoon. Then drove to the Provo Canyon. Today I decided to try a new type of workout. I was actually not quite sure what I was going to do exactly, but I had a vision. Run fast for as long as I could do it maintaining a relaxed form. Stop as soon as the muscles start tensing up, "reboot" by doing a stride downhill, then continue. I started with 15x100 strides at between 5:00-5:30 pace depending on whether I was going uphill or down, and which way the wind was blowing. This took me to the start of my rebootable tempo run at the mouth of the Provo Canyon. I started going uphill closely watching the splits and the tension in the quads. At first I thought I would only be able to make it to the mile mark. 1 mile in 5:25. I decided to go another quarter. Still feeling relaxed and maintaining good pace for the uphill (1:24). Decided to do another quarter. At the end I started feeling it was time for a reboot. 1.5 uphill in 8:12 - not bad. A short reboot, and I am going up again. Did a mile in 5:31, and right at the end of it felt the need to reboot again. Then turned around and started running downhill. Was able to feel relaxed for the entire length of the stretch - 2.5 miles in 13:17. This gave me 27:00 for 5 miles, 2.5 up, 2.5 down with two reboots. My goal is to reduce the number of reboots to 0 eventually, and still be able to run this in 27 minutes or faster. Afterwards I started doing 100 meter strides at sub 5:20 pace with 100 meters of jogging in between. It was addictive. It felt not that much harder than just jogging, but the pleasure of the speed was so great that it removed the tedium out of the cooldown. I did 31 strides, 21 uphill, 10 downhill, to give me the total of 48 strides including the two "reboot" ones (3 miles). This is a great workout. I ended up running 8 miles out of 11.5 at 5:20 average, and it did not hurt very much at all. The remaining 3.5 were probably 10:00 average physically, but a good portion of them was still 5:20 mentally - once you are done with a stride, the mind is still doing it while you jog. Did Benjamin's run, and added a bit more jogging to make the total 15 miles for the day. | 