Thatcher's Running Blog

I'm back from my mission, just got back on Wednesday. This was my first run since I've been back. I only ran a handful of times in two years, and I'm pretty out of shape.

 The run went pretty well. I did six miles at a  7:11 pace. It was hard, but not as bad as I thought. One stretch of my run was really uphill, and I was hurting then, but overall it felt pretty good. 

 Does anyone have any advice for getting back in shape after my mission? 

This was a pretty good run. I wasn't as sore as I would have expected, and it felt good. I went over to Sugarhouse park and ran on the grass there. I'm being careful and I don't want to get injured. 

 I ran four miles at a 6:44 pace, and it felt really good. I pushed my last mile and did a 6:07. It felt good to finish it out nice and quick. I also did a few strides at the end.  

Today I did a short run. I went up past Skyline and turned around. I kept it pretty easy until I got to skyline, then I did a few laps on the track. I'm not sure how fast I was going, but my third mile was 6:00. I felt pretty good, and I was sore, but not too sore.

 My average pace for the run was 7:05. 

Today I was in Provo, so I ran around BYU. I did a short run, only 3.5 miles, and it wasn't too hard. I averaged about 7:00 for my run. I was sore again, but not bad.

I went on a run out on Wasatch Blvd. I decided I would go a little longer today, and it still felt pretty good. I was getting pretty tired near the end, but it wasn't too bad. I averaged 7:00 pace for the run.

I did an easy run today. I did almost four miles at about a 7:30 pace. It felt good, and I kept it easy. 

I did a really short and easy run today. We're on a family vacation in California and we ran together. I'm doing a 5k tomorrow to see what my fitness level is at. I pushed the last 2/3 of a mile in at 6:00 pace just to loosen up a little bit. It felt good. 

So this was my first race in two years. I didn't get a lot of sleep due to circumstances, but I felt pretty good. I was a little nervous because I hadn't done anything fast at all since I got back from my mission, I'd done a few miles around six minutes, but nothing as fast as my 5k pace. I could tell so far that I'm out of shape, but not horribly out of shape. That being said, my goal for the race was to be 17:00 something, as long as I wasn't over 18:00 I would be happy. 

 I felt pretty good at the start, and it wasn't too fast. I started out easily and got right with the front group. I decided to move right up behind the leader, which may have been a mistake looking back, but I felt good at the time. I stayed behind the leader and a few guys caught up to us, making it a group of five. Around the mile I started to fall back from the group of five, falling back into fifth or sixth place. I came through the first mile at about 5:18.

 Shortly after the mile two high school kids caught up with me. They were moving quite a bit faster than me but I was able to push when they caught me and stay with them. It was hard to stay with them, but we started gaining ground on those in front of us. I was hurting the second mile, but I still managed about a 5:17 or so. 

The third mile is where I started to hurt. One of the high school kids passed me while the other fell back. I pushed it up a monster hill and tried to stay close to the kid in front of me. He pulled away, but I was able to catch another guy in front of me and put a good gap between us. I wasn't feeling great, but I pushed it the last half mile and was able to maintain my sixth place and finish with a decent kick. My third mile was the slowest, almost six minutes. My final time was 17:04, sixth place.  

 I was happy and surprised at how I did. It wasn't incredible, but after not running for two years and only starting running a week earlier, it was a good time to start with. I really could feel the lack of training in the last mile, but I know with time I'll get back in shape.  

I did a short easy run. I was short on time, so I only did three miles. I ran at a 7:30 pace. It felt pretty good.

I did a pretty easy run today. I ran a little over four miles. I kept it pretty easy once again. I;m going to keep it fairly easy for a while, slowly increasing mileage. I don't want to do any hard workouts yet, at least not for a few weeks. I went to the track after my workout though to do a few sprints. I did some 200's. I started off with a 30, jogged half a lap, then ran a 29 followed by another 29. The sprints felt pretty good. 

 My body is feeling pretty good, not to sore and no injuries so far. I'll keep it up and hopefully it well stay this way.  

I haven't been running much the past few weeks because of an injury I've had. My right achilles has been bothering me, but I think it should be better now. I'm still going to take it easy. 

I ran two miles easy on the treadmill to see how my achilles  felt, and it felt pretty good.

I ran a little bit more today, 4 mile. I still kept the pace slow, I wanted to be careful and come back slowly from my injury. I averaged 8:00 per mile, and my achilles felt pretty good. 

 Later that evening I went to moab with some friends. We went on a hike at Negro Bill's canyon. It was a fun hike of five miles. My achilles is a little sore, but not bad.

No running today, but a day full of hiking. It was a good workout in the 100 degree heat, and it was fun. 

I ran this evening after dark, so I did it on the treadmill. I decided to push the pace a little bit and see how my achilles felt. It felt great. I did four miles in 26:12, so a 6:33 pace. It felt good, and I got faster each mile. My last mile was under 6:00 pace.

I ran at Sugarhouse Park today. I ran 4.5 miles, and it felt good. I ended up with a 7:06 pace. My achilles felt good once again, just a little pain.

Today was my "long run". I was only going to do four miles, but my achilles felt good and I went a little longer. I went out on Wasatch Blvd. and back. My pace was 6:59, and that felt pretty good. 

I'm finally back on the blog. I went through some injury issues and other things, but I'm back running and recording my runs. 

 Today I did a four mile run. I decided I would start off easy and pick up the pace every mile. My splits ended up at: 8:26, 7:09, 6:56, and 5:58, for a 7:09 total average. It felt pretty good, not super hard, but not easy at all.  

I did another short run today. This run was hard though. I ran directly after a hour of plyo, so my legs were super tired. I averaged a 7:40 pace for the run. My last mile was the fastest, with a 7:09. My legs were tired, but no injury problems.

This run felt all right. My legs were pretty sore from yesterday's plyo, but they warmed up and were feeling better. I ran up Millcreek Canyon for two miles, then turned around and went back. My splits were 8:30, 7:43, 6:48, and 5:38. This run felt pretty good after I got warmed up, but it took a lot out of me. I really started pushing the last half mile, I wanted to be under 6:00 for that mile, and I did it easily. I'm tired, but no injuries to speak of. 

I ran six miles today. It felt good, I averaged a 7:15 pace. Nothing much to report, no injuries or anything.

Today I did a fartlek at Sugarhouse Park. I warmed up about a mile, and did seven one minute pushes with two minutes between each push. I averaged 6:45 pace for the entire run, and my pushes were about 4:40 pace. It was hard, but it felt all right. My heart rate was pretty high, my average heart rate was 179, and my max was 189. I ended with a mile cool down.

Pretty easy recovery run today. I averaged 7:23 per mile, average heart rate of 157. It felt good.

Not the best run today. I was planning on going longer than four, but I wasn't feeling it today. I was abnormally tired for some reason. I averaged 7:38 per mile, with a 154 average heart rate. 

I started off the day with a seven mile hike. It was fun, but nothing too strenuous. Tonight I did a four mile run. I started off feeling really good and ran a 6:15 mile, followed by a 6:33 mile, a 6:50, then backing off for a 7:40 last mile. My average pace was 6:50. It felt surprisingly easy and good.

This was my longest run since I've been back running again, and it felt pretty good. I averaged a 7:35 pace. 

I had a pretty good run today. My hip has been bothering me today, so I didn't want to do anything too hard, but my hip felt good running. I ran 5.72 miles at a 7:40 pace, last mile at 5:58. It felt pretty good.

This was my first 5k in a while. First one since June I think. I'm not in great shape right now, and I took a break from running up until last week. So the past two weeks I've been running every day, starting out slowly with my mileage.

I've run this race a few times, and I decided to take it out slowly. The first mile is a lot of uphill and pretty hard, so I didn't want to kill myself. I didn't know what the competition would be like, but I just wanted to go by feel for at least the first mile.

 The race started and I was surprised at how quickly some people started out. I was probably in 20th place a quarter mile in. I settled into a good pace and was in about 15th going up the hill. I kept the pace easy and relaxed. I passed a few people and was in about 12th place after the mile. My first mile (from my garmin) was 5:55.

I picked it up a bit after the mile and passed a few people, about 1.5 in I picked it up even more. I was in about 5th place at this point. I passed third place during the second mile and set my eyes on the front two who were running together. My second mile was 5:30. The second mile was filled with rolling hills, uphill and downhill.

I finally caught up to second place a little over two miles. At this point first place had pulled away from second by a few seconds. Second place stayed with me, but he fell back after a bit. I set my eyes on first and was gaining, but with around 3/4 of a mile he started to pick it up and I stopped gaining on him. I was able to close the gap to five seconds, but I couldn't gain anymore ground on him over the last half mile. He ended up around 16:53 and I was at 17:00. My last mile was 5:05.

Overall I was pretty happy with this race. I wasn't expecting much because I just started training again, but I improved my time over 20 seconds on this course from the last time I ran it in 2007 after my senior cross country season. I also was happy because I ran a smart race, starting out conservatively and passing people throughout the race, not getting passed once. I even negative split very well, even though the last mile was the most downhill.

Also, I was happy that I almost beat Dallin Taylor. He is on BYU's team, and he said he was just out of making the traveling team. I'm not nearly in my best shape, and I almost caught him at the end.

I've been having some foot pain, but it feels pretty good after the race, and I didn't notice it during the race at all. I haven't been on the blog for a while, but I plan to start blogging again since my starting running again. I plan to start building my mileage starting from 35 this week.