Started the morning with a 1 mile jog. Then went to the temple. In the temple talked with a fellow temple worker. He is 61 years old. Turned out that back in his young years he was a very good sprinter - 21.0 200. I told him that my best 100 m was 13.9. His response was probably similar to what I would have said if somebody had told me his marathon PR was 3:45 - this can be fixed. His suggestion was to use ankle weights to teach the hamstrings to contract when they ought to. My body says this is worth a try. In the afternoon drove to the Provo Canyon to do my speed workout. A warm-up to the Canyon Glen Park. 4 100 meter strides. Feeling good, just not speedy. Hamstrings are refusing to engage at first - maybe tired from my form drills in the last two days. Started my 10x500 with 200 recovery jog. Headwind. 500 is not as weird of an interval as it sounds. Two of them make 1000. 10 make a 5 K. Hitting 1:29s. On a couple, the headwind got strong enough to slow me down to 1:30. Then it weakened, and my nervous system seemed to have gotten a bit snappier. Started seeing 1:28s. Last one in 1:27 without a strong kick to get the 14:48.5 for the 5 K. I wish I could run it like that without having to take 9 200 meter jogging breaks. But as I like to say, do not just wish you could do something or be something - do what it takes to get there instead. Jogged half a mile, and started feeling very good. My jacket was 1.5 miles up the canyon over by the Canyon Glen Park. It is uphill, but there was a good tailwind. As they say in Russian, it would have been a sin to miss the opportunity for a marathon pace tempo run. 1.5 miles in 8:41. Was only trying to do 6:00-6:05 pace but ended up with 5:48. This could be a bad sign - strong headwind on the way back. Got the jacked, and continued the tempo run on the way back. My suspicions about the headwind were correct, although it was not as bad as I thought it could have become. 2:51 for the first 0.5 going down. Then something happened. I started thinking about snappy hamstrings, and it seemed like they started snapping better. The wind either weakened, or I was dealing with it better with the snappy hamstrings. The same effort gave me a 1:24 quarter, then three 1:22s in a row. Then I saw that if I ran a 1:20 it would give me 5:40 average for the 3 tempo miles. I ended up with 1:18 to hit 8:17 for the downhill section of the tempo. Later in the day ran with Benjamin and Jennifer, and added another always on the run mile to make the total 13 miles for the day. | 