Breaking the Wall

Day of rest. Went to church. The talks in sacrament meeting were on standing in holy places. The lesson in Sunday School was on the gifts of the Spirit. The lesson in the Elders Quorum was on scriptures.

My legs were sore, but walkable/runnable. When I finished the pain was in the calves, but later in moved to the quads. There is a term for that - DOS - delayed onset soreness. To a computer programmer DOS, aside from a well known old operating system, also means Denial of Service attack. So I suppose I can say my legs are getting a mild denial of service attack. I think I need to do more downhill training to get them back to where by Monday I would have no clue that I raced a marathon on Saturday. That ability is not there anymore, although it is not as bad as pre-2003 when I was totally miserable and could not run at all for 48 hours after the marathon. 

A.M. Met Daniel on the trail.  Ran 7.25 at a bit slower than 8:00 average. Did not want to go any faster. Ran the last quarter with Sarah in 2:50. Legs sore, but runnable with an OK form. At least I think it was OK :-) Jenny and Julia ran 2 in 17:32.

P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 16:29. 0.5 with Joseph. 0.25 with Jacob.

A.M. Did 10.1 meeting Daniel on the trail. We did a control mile. Daniel's target was to hit what he thought was his 10 K race pace. So we ended up with a mile in 5:31.6 with the splits of 78, 83, 85, 85.  Then Daniel more or less correctly identified each split by feel after the run. So this is significant progress for him compared to last week. I was rather puzzled by the results, and asked him when he got to Utah from South Carolina. Turned out May 29th. That explained everything - altitude acclimation. He was not himself a week ago. Also ran 2.9 with Benjamin with quarter pickups of 84 and 89.

P.M. 0.5 with Joseph in 4:29. Jacob ran 0.25 with Benjamin. Jenny and Julia ran while I rollerbladed along. Jenny did 2.16, Julia did 1.85.

A.M. Met Jeff and Daniel on the trail. Ran a bit with Jenny and Julia at the end. They ran 2.16 miles. I did 10.5. Had a post-VPB pickup for 600 meters in 2:09. Felt good. A bit later ran with the kids. Jacob ran 0.5 in 6:09, Joseph and Julia did it in 5:06. I stayed back with Kaytlin, this was her first half mile run. We did it in 6:19.

P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:55.

A.M. 10.2 in 1:18:07. Met Jeff and Daniel on the trail. Did a post-VPB 900 in 3:13, which is 5:43 pace. Caught up to Neal Harmon at the end and ran with him. He told me about his new business OraBrush and even gave me a sample product. It scrubs the tongue to remove bad breath.

Jenny and Julia ran 2 miles.

Later took the kids for a group run. I stayed with Kaytlin and she did 6:09 for 0.5, and this time she ran all the way. Jacob did 0.5 in  5:49. Joseph  and Julia did 0.5 in 5:00.

Then took Benjamin for 2.9. I have given him a challenge of breaking my 11-year-old  2 K record of 7:57. He obviously was ready to smash it, given that his mile PR is 5:53. So something like a 6:10 to open, and even jogging down in 1:40 would still put him 7 seconds ahead. But he does have a tendency to psyche himself out, and he has been doing that over the last two weeks stubbornly convincing himself that he could not do it in spite of all of the facts to the contrary staring him in the face. Finally I had enough of that and told him we were going to run 1200 in 4:42 (6:16 pace), and if he made it that far with no negative comments he was off the hook and could run whatever pace he wanted to the finish. If he made a negative comment he had to surge for 100 meters at whatever pace I would set for him (around 5:20). If he failed to do that, then we stop immediately, go back to the start, and try again. We keep doing this until we have gotten to 1200 in 4:42 or faster, or until we've run a total of 10 K!

So we hit the first quarter in 95, then I picked up the pace and did 92 with Benjamin reluctantly dragging about 2 seconds behind. I yelled at him and told him he could not stop at 1200 until he had caught me. He caught me immediately running an 88 quarter. So we were 4:37 at 1200 and jogged the next 400 in 1:59 while I tried to convince Benjamin to start running a normal pace and get that monkey off his back. He fought me like there was no tomorrow, and those of you who I have paced before would know that I will make your life so miserable at a slow pace that the faster pace would appear the lesser evil if you have that faster pace in you at all. And after having raced for 25 years I do know by feel when a runner right next to me has another gear!  So when we approached the mile mark (6:36), he smelled the barn and starting running. His next 200 was 43, and then he shifted gears and ran the last 200 in 37. That is 5:00 pace! So he ended up with 7:56, 1 second ahead of my record in spite of jogging and arguing for a quarter mile at 8:00 pace in the middle.

This was the third time in the last couple of months that Benjamin had a practical lesson on not doubting himself. First one was 5:53 mile. Second was in a chess tournament when he kept insisting that he was going to lose to a 1900 player no matter what he did, and then ended up beating him. So hopefully the third witness today had delivered the final crushing blow to his self doubt.

A.M. Met Jeff on the trail. Ran 10.1. Then added 2 with Benjamin in 16:39 with  2x100 in 16.7 and 16.2. 16.2 is Benjamin's record. Took kids for a group run. Jacob ran 0.5 in 5:39 paced by Jenny. Joseph did 4:17 paced by Benjamin and Julia. I stayed with Kaytlin - she set a record - 5:41.

P.M. 2.2 with Jenny and Julia.

A.M. Ran with Jeff for most of the run, but he started from his house, so I ran the last 4 miles alone.  Total of 15.2 with the last 2.95 in 16:58. Last two quarters were 84 and 80. I was happy with how easy they felt. 80 was not exactly easy, but it felt more in the tempo range than 5 K pace. Jenny and Julia ran 2.

P.M. 0.5 with Jacob in 5:18. Joseph ran 0.5 with Benjamin in 4:45. Then 2 with Benjamin in 15:46.