My Running Log

I ran the same 10 mile route as last Monday. It's basically 5 miles of gradual uphill, turn around and come home. I loved being out early and hearing nature and running part of it on a trail.

I felt strong for the first 3 miles and then had fast spots at times on the rest of it but also struggled for parts of it. My average pace was about 8:20.

I did my 11400 south loop. The first two miles were warmup. Then 5 miles at a faster (tempo) pace. Then cooldown for the rest.

The wind was blowing 20-30 mph into my face on the first four miles. I was happy to run under 8 minute pace for the 1st and 2nd miles of the tempo run because of the wind and going slightly uphill. The next two miles were close to 7 minute pace on the downhill and with the wind at my back. The fifth tempo mile was a difficult one. My body ran out of gas. Some of the difficulty today was probably from also running out of gas yesterday.

The average tempo pace was about 7:30-7:35. The average overall pace was about 8:20. I hope to improve on this in future weeks.

Today is my easy day. I did 3 miles on the elliptical in about 24 minutes. I can't get my heart rate as high as I used to on these machines, which hopefully means my cardio is getting stronger. Then I ran 4 miles on the treadmill with 7 surges of about 60 seconds each (between 6:00 and 6:30 pace). The surges felt surprisingly easy. I think I am getting better even though it hasn't felt that way lately.

I ran along the Bonneville-Shoreline trail, starting behind the University of Utah medical campus. It was incredibly beautiful and a great workout. I got up to 5880 feet, which was about a 900 ft elevation gain. The average pace going up was 10:03/mile. The overall average was 9:00/mile, so coming down it was a little better than 8:00/mile.

I think these types of workouts are really going to pay off in the long run.

Today was a big workout for me. I did "ladders" on the track. This consisted of 400-800-1200-1200-800-400-400-800-1200-1200-800-400. It tires me out just to type of all of that, so you can imagine it was tough to run. First I ran 3 miles to the track for warmup. And afterwards I ran 3 miles home. I rested half the distance of each speed portion.

My initial goal was to run 6:00 pace and stay with it.

400 - 92 seconds

800 - 3:00, right on pace

1200 - 4:45, couldn't keep the pace

1200 - 4:48, not too bad

800 - 3:11

400 - 97 seconds, that stunk

400 - 93 seconds, that was better

800 - 3:14, averaged 97 per 400

1200 - 4:59, the worst so far, averaged 100 seconds per 400

1200 - 4:50, pushed better on this one

800 - 3:24, running out of gas

400 - 89 seconds, at least it finished strong

Wasn't able to keep the pace that I intended. But this was my first time doing this workout, so I didn't know what to expect. It was hard to get in a good rhythm because the distance changed so much. I might have enjoyed it better if I had just done 8x1200m. And it would have been just as good a workout. So I might ditch the ladder workout. We'll see. Also, other people were on the track and getting in my way, so that made it more difficulty.

Let's say I roughly convert this run to 12x800m on paper. So a little more than the Yasso's 800m workout. It would be may 3:20 per 800m repeat. Which, according to his theory, would convert to a 3:20 marathon. That's probably not too different from where I am right now. But I'm training SOOOO much better than I have for my previous two marathons, which were right around this speed, so I'm hopeful I can improve on those times substantially.

This workout gave me a lot of miles. I was super tired by the end. But I'm happy that I ran my highest weekly miles of the year (49) and had some great workouts. Next Saturday I'm doing a 5K on the track, so that will be fun.