Breaking the Wall

We had a Stake Conference today instead of regular church meetings. This was actually more of an area conference - it was broadcast from the Marriott Center to local stake centers. We heard talks on a variety of subjects. Elder Oaks spoke at the end. 

A.M. Ran with the kids. Total of 10 miles. Jenny and Julia did 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1. Felt good, no fatigue from the marathon in any way that I could feel, but probably some in subtle ways. Taking it cautiously, so ran only 10 miles. Did a pickup for 0.5 in 2:40 down the canyon.

P.M. 0.5 with William. 

A.M. 12.7 miles total.Jenny, Julia, and Joseph did 1. Benjamin did 3. Cross-country race in the evening. I ran into Cliff Reed, a 56-year-old runner with a 3:07 life time marathon PR, and most recent best 3:42. We ran together, and I talked him into doing a 3 mile tempo run on my standard course - Nunn's Park to the mouth of the canyon. He was planning Yasso 800s the next day. I told him most likely he did not need to do that, but as a cut off to see if there was any chance that he did (he is 56 years old after all), I set a target time of 23:00 for the 3 mile tempo assuming his goal in the marathon was 3:35 in St. George. He smashed it while remaining conversational in the first 2 miles. The splits were 7:11 - 7:11 - 6:51  with 21:13 total time. I told him he had enough speed to run his life time best, but he needed more marathon-specific endurance, which comes mostly from mileage.

P.M. Cross-country race at Kiwani's park. We had all the kids except Stephen participate as it was only 1 K.

Benjamin won overall with 3:07 with a 19 second margin over second place. He looked great. His stride had some turnover today, not just the stride length and he looked like a professional runner - very smooth and gracious. That's the best I've seen him look ever.

Jenny made her come back to racing with the third place in the Midget girls division and the time of  4:05. The winning time was 3:34 - Madison Malmgren. Based on 800 meter PR (3:08) relative to Benjamin (2:23) we should have seen exactly the time she ran.

Joseph won the Sub-Bantam's with 4:28. However, something was wrong with him. He ran faster in the 2 K. I was expecting to see at least 4:10, and possibly under 4:00 based on intuition. Mathematically, prorating off Benjamin and 800 meter track PR (3:07), he should have run 4:04. His time in the 3 K was also rather slow relative to his 2 K, but at least it was decent and you could write it off as struggles from the lack of experience racing 3 K. But he does know how to race for distances 1 mile and shorter - we do time trials frequently, and he successfully raced in the 2 K. I am suspecting something is wrong with his spikes. His best race so far was in Crocs, which I find rather odd - I thought spike would win hands down over Crocs on cross-country. But I suppose little kids have a hard time using the spikes. Benjamin ran great in spikes, though.

Julia won the Bantam girls with 4:29 finishing right behind Joseph. I was expecting her to win, and I was expecting around this time intuitively more or less. Prorating off Benjamin and 800 track PR (3:16) she should have run 4:16, but I was not expecting that because she does not know how to run fast in a race and she has a wide fluctuation in performance from day to day. However, this win should give her a nice confidence booster.

Jacob struggled more than anybody today. His time was 5:07 and his form did not look good - he looked like he was limping. His time should have been at least 4:40 based on the 2 K. Pro-rated off 800 m track PR (3:25) and Benjamin's performance, we get 4:28, but again 4:40 would have been more reasonable as he still does not quite know how to race - he just barely turned 6. But not 5:07. I am suspecting very strongly the problem is in the spikes. This still gave him 4th place in Sub-bantams which is 8 years and younger.

Even though Benjamin's performance was very good, William impressed me the most of everybody. He asked if he could run the race the day before. I was hesitant - he would have had to run around the field unsupervised. He is at the age where he might decide to just wonder off the course, and then good luck finding him. But I prayed and I felt that we should let him run and he would be fine. So we signed him up. He hesitated at the start not quite knowing what to do. Then he started running only to fall down 50 meters into the race. He lay on the grass for 5 seconds or so, then got up without expressing any negative emotions, which was quite remarkable for a child 3 years and 10 months old, and resumed running. He actually ended up beating a 6 year old girl, and finished with the time of 6:28, which is 10:24 per mile pace.  That is actually what I was expecting under the assumption that he would run all the way without stopping or getting lost, which was a very optimistic assumption. But he did it!

A.M. Total of 12. Ran with the kids. Benjamin did 7, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1.

P.M. 0.5 with William. 

A.M. Total of 12. Ran with the kids. A passerby asked me if I was the dad or the kid. Benjamin did 7, Jenny 3, Julia and Joseph 2, Jacob 1.

P.M. 0.5 with William. 

A.M. 12 total. Ran with the kids. Benjamin did 7, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, and Jacob 1. I was not planning on doing anything fast, but my legs were itching to go a little fast, and I had 7.4 miles left when I started the run with Benjamin, and I did not want run the extra 0.4 after I was done with him. So a natural solution was to run a short tempo starting about a mile before the turnaround, go a little further, then turn around and catch up. So I ran 1.25 up and 0.75 down. Benjamin ran the last 500 meters with me after I had caught up - I wanted to stop at some even number and I was already past 1.5 mark when I caught him. So I had these splits: uphill 88, 85, 87, 88 (5:48), 88, then turned around and went downhill - 82, 79, 76 (5:25, 11:13 for 2 miles). During the easy part of the run we had a physics lesson and talked about various forms of energy. If only our collision with the ground when running was perfectly elastic we could run forever with a very minimal effort and very little risk of injury. Instead our bones, muscles, and joints absorb the energy of the impact which could have been converted back into the energy of the movement. So a good portion of our hard work goes into pounding our body instead of moving forward. The harder you run, the greater fraction of the energy you lose. Reminds me of taxes.

P.M.  William did 2x400 on the track by himself. I was originally going to run with him, but he insisted on doing it by himself. So he did the first one in 2:18, and the second in 2:34. Jacob did 1:39. Joseph did 1:27.

A.M. Ran with Chad, Rachael (RAD), and George. Total of 20 miles. Rachael did the first 8 with us, then ran back. George stayed with us for the first 9, then fell back and ran slower. Our first half was 1:20:23, a bit slower than 8:00 average, which is actually not too slow for the uphill. On the way back we ran faster. I figured a good target would be to start around 7:00 pace, and gradually increase it.  So we gradually worked up to 6:40 pace, coasted there, then we did 6:06, 6:16, 6:10 for the 3 mile tempo. Chad survived another mile and a half or so at 6:20 pace, and then struggled on the hills slowing down to 7:00. Our total time was 2:25:28 with the last 10 in 1:05:05.

P.M. 0.6 with William.