Breaking the Wall

Day of rest. Went to church as usual. It was a Fast Sunday. We had a testimony meeting. Then a lesson in Sunday school on Jacob 5, the allegory of the olive tree. Then a lesson on temples in the Elder's Quorum.

A.M. Ran with Jeremy and Benjamin. We did 8.25 miles. I did two pickups - 1000 uphill in 3:38, and 800 down in 2:38. Then I did 2 with Jenny and Julia, and 2 alone. Total of 12.25.

P.M. 1 mile with Jacob, and 1 mile with Joseph, total of 2.

A.M. 8.25 with Jeremy. Did a pickup for 600 in 1:57. 2 more with Benjamin, Sarah ran 1 of those, then 2 more with Jenny and Julia. Total of 12..25. Benjamin ran 5.

P.M. Paced Joseph in his mile record attempt. He ran 7:37 on our hilly course. Benjamin ran with Jacob. 

A.M. Ran with Benjamin and Jeremy. Benjamin did 7, Jeremy 8. I did the tempo workout. 2 miles uphill, then 3 mile downhill after a mile jog recovery. Benjamin stayed with me through the first mile of the uphill tempo, which I did in 5:53. Jeremy made it to about half mile. The second mile was 5:57, giving me 11:50..3 for 2 miles. In the downhill tempo I ran 15:56.6 with the splits of 5:16, 5:23, 5:17. After the first mile I started drifting into slower than 5:20 pace, and it went on like that to 1.75 mark. Then I said, enough of that, and decided to monitor my splits every 100 meters until I was back on pace, and then every 200 meters after that. That worked, I was able to kick myself out of the rut, there was only one 200 after that that was 41, every other was 40 or faster. In the absence of a strong training partner that will be annoyed by a slower than 5:20 pace, I think the next best thing is 100 meter splits and visualization. 

So it was 10.5 before I got to the house. Then I ran 2 with Jenny and Julia. After about 0.8 Julia wanted to go faster, so I went with her, while Jenny stayed back. Julia ended up running 7:59 for the last more than a mile stretch, which is uphill. I still need to measure it with the wheel to know exactly how far it is. Her total time was 16:49 for two of those stretches which I round off to 2 miles, but it is more.

Total of 12.5 miles for the run.

P.M. 1 with Joseph and Jacob. 

A.M. Started with a 4 mile warm-up, then did 6x100 uphill near the house. The splits were 18.3, 18.1, 17.8, 17.6, 17.0, 17.0. 17.0 is my new record for that stretch. No hamstring problems. I was happy about both the speed and the safety progress.

Then I ran 6.25 with Benjamin. We did 2x100 as well, this time coming out of the canyon, so I would say aided, but for a sprint it is not so much. I've done a workout once where I I did 100s in the canyon, then immediately drove to the track, and was able to repeat the "aided" times on the track. Those were not slow for me either, somewhere around 14.6 - 14.8. That was back in 2005. Our times today were 15.0 and 14.8. I was happy about that, not only the times, but also how it felt. I could visualize myself running 800 if not the mile like this if I could just find a way to relax some more, and be more efficient. Even though I could not find a way to run faster, I felt it was not because of strength, but more because I did not know what to do with my legs at those speeds.

Then I did 2 miles with Jenny and Julia. Total of 12.25. 

P.M. Jacob and Joseph ran a mile time trial on the track at Orem High. I paced Joseph while Benjamin paced Jacob. Joseph ran 7:09.3 with the following splits by 400: 1:44, 1:49, 1:47, 1:46, and 3 seconds for the last 9.34 meters.  Jacob ran 8:00.4. His splits were fairly even with around 2:00 - 2:01 per lap, and his last lap was 1:58. 

A.M. Did 3 miles with Julia, Jenny did 2. Then 9 more alone. Did a couple of tempo pickups. First a mile in 5:51 uphill into a headwind. On the way back, the last 1.5 in 8:40 which included uphill to the house. Total of 12. miles.

P.M. 1 with Jacob and Joseph. 

A.M. Celebrated my 39th birthday by pacing Chad through the Uneventful Provo River Half-Marathon, or in other words we drove up to the start and Chad did a time trial. The target was 6:00 whenever possible, and I was thinking it would be nice if we got a low 1:20, or maybe even a little under. In fact I was thinking that after we had finished the first half.  But then I moved up front and for an experiment decided to see how Chad would handle 5:52 pace. He groaned, but was not falling back. So we did my 3 mile tempo stretch in 17:34 and caught up to the 6:00 guy who slipped away from us during the uphill/headwind detour earlier. Then we held on to 6:00 or around that in the last mile. The finishing time was 1:18:42.

During the run I felt sluggish. The pace did not feel like a jog, I felt I had to concentrate. In fact, until we got to the headwind, we were running side by side and I made zero effort to push the pace letting Chad take the initiative. Even when I moved forward once we hit the headwind, I could tell I was going too slow at first as Chad kept running into me. However, around 3 miles, and around 8 I had to make a VPB stop, falling back by about 30 seconds each time and both times caught up in a little over half mile with what felt like my own half-marathon race pace effort. So I did have another gear, but for one reason or another was very reluctant to shift into it. Maybe it was psychological. I told myself - you are pacing a 1:18 half that will likely deteriorate into 1:20 later on, and my body refused to work any harder than it had to. 

Overall, I think this sluggishness on my part ended up being a plus because it happened to hit Chad's fitness level right on the dot and he ended up with a 4 minute + PR.

We jogged to make the total 20. During the cooldown we met Benjamin and he joined us. He ran the total of 8 miles, having run 1 mile with Joseph, and 1 mile with Jacob earlier. Jenny and Julia ran 2 miles.