Breaking the Wall

Day of rest. Went to church. Given that it was Mother's day, the talks in the Sacrament meeting were on motherhood.

Jacob was able to make it and stayed for all the meetings. I went with him to the second part of his primary class to make sure no wild kid would accidentally re-injure his broken leg . The lesson was on obedience. The teacher, while talking about Lehi and his family, who were commanded to leave everything they had and go into the wilderness, asked the children how they would react if their father told them he had a vision and they needed to leave in a similar manner expecting a response something to the effect of "it would be very hard, I am not sure if I could go, etc". Jacob's answer was simple: "I would just go". 

A.M. 4 with Benjamin including 1 with Joseph, 2 with Jenny and Julia. 6.5 alone, total of 12.5. Did a 0.75 pickup in 3:59. Felt sluggish, the pace felt hard, but sustainable. Ran in new Crocs.The old Crocs are being retired at 1631 miles. They do not have a hole yet, this is actually record mileage without a hole, but I really do not like the slant on the right shoe, so I decided it was time for the new pair.

A.M. Did 4 with Benjamin including 1 with Joseph, and 2 with Jenny and Julia. Then did my 4x1000 workout: 3:13.5 down - 3:22.7 up - 3:17.5 down - 3:18.5 up. Fastest average time (3:18.1) since I started doing those a couple of weeks ago, and first time I broke 3:20 on the uphill. Felt sluggish, but was able to push through it. Total distance 12.5 as usual.

A.M. 10 before going to the temple. Did a pickup for 0.4 miles at the end at around 5:50 pace. Kids ran on their own - Benjamin - 4.2, Jenny and Julia 2.1, Joseph 1.05.

A.M. Ran with the kids - Benjamin 4, Joseph ran 1 with us, Jenny and Julia 2. Then 4x1000 with 200 recovery - 3:14.5 down - 3:21.8 up - 3:16.1 down - 3:19.9 up. Total of 12.8.

A.M. Kids runs - Benjamin 4 with 1 of it with Joseph, Jenny and Julia 2. Then another 6.5. Picked up to 5:45 pace in the last quarter.

A,M. Raced in the Law Days 5 K - 17:35, 7th place. This was the annual team race. I ran for Chad's law firm Curtis, Manning, and Bradshaw. In the past we have been able to win, but this year our team was not as strong, and we were racing Olsen Shaner headed by Teren, Jamal, and Seth Wold. So we lost. My 17:35 did not help either. Fritz ran decent for the course (16:40), which was longer than it was last year, but not sufficiently long to justify a loss of 1:08 for me compared to last year. Teren won with 15:33, which is probably comparable to his 14:52 last year. The logic goes like this - he ran Provo City Half this year about 55 seconds slower than Jeff did last year, and he beat Jeff last year by 3 seconds in the 5 K. Adjusting for the fact that he probably is better trained for the 5 K than for the half marathon, it is reasonable to suppose that if he is losing to Jeff by 55 seconds in the half, he would have been on par with him in a 5 K. So if we are to use Teren as a benchmark, this means I performed about 30 seconds worse this year than last year. It was better than the worst I expected, as I have struggled to run good times in my workouts lately. Especially after seeing the splits at 1 mile (5:48), and 2 miles (11:50). I do not know if those markers were right, but by the time I got to 2 miles, I thought, hills or not (the course is very hilly), I am about to run a very embarrassing time. I hoped that a) the marker was off and b) the downhill in the last mile would help. It was probably a combination of both. My split at the 3 mile marker was 16:48, but then it took me 47 seconds to get from there to the finish. So either the marker was off or the course was long. Andrew Hansen outkicked me on the home stretch, although I tried hard to hold him off. Jamal was second with around 15:58, then Seth with around 16:25, Fritz 16:40, and Oliver from Westminister College in 17:24.

The entire race I felt in a daze, it hurt, but I felt more like a spectator than a participant. I suppose we would run really fast if the spectators got to feel our pain instead. And running would have even fewer spectators than it does now. The good news is that I never really felt weak and done, just could not quite kick into gear. What is odd is my throat was hurting afterwards like it does after a hard mile race. I had not felt that way in a while. Fritz and I went for a long cooldown afterwards, and meandered to East High Track. Then we did a test to evaluate the quality of our 5 K effort. 800 meters at what I perceived was my 5 K race effort I had just run at. This gave us 2:36.6, so about 5:15 mile pace.  Fritz said it felt easier than his 5 K effort. So if we adjust a bit for the short length of the interval, and compensate for the wind (there was a significant wind that was a factor) and post-race fatigue, I think it is fair to say that I would have run a track 5 K in still air in 16:40. So whatever length that course was, we can probably say that it was 55 seconds slower than track in ideal conditions.