Every Run is a Great Run!

Happy Independence Day! Got out around 6am and noticed it was plenty warm, windy, cloudy and muggy! Probably around 75 degrees. This week is a reduced miles week for me but I wanted to get a mini-long run in early in the week. Since today is a holiday it seemed like a good day for a 12 miler with a few MP miles in the middle.

The warm muggy weather had me feeling sluggish from the start. Ran from my house to Canyon View park via the river trial, got a drink then started the MP tempo run.  5 miles of MP would have been nice but the warm/windy/muggy conditions had me not feeling the love and I could never get into any kind of groove.  Decided to stop at 4 miles feeling a lot more worn out than the 7:15 ave pace should have left me. 

Met up with Kim for the last few miles of the run as we both death-marched/jogged back home looking forward to being done and getting a big drink!  I suppose this warmer runs are good for you but I much prefer the 45-55 degree range.

MP splits were  7:09 (slight downhill), 7:14, 7:18 (slight uphill), 7:15

8:14/159 max HR 187

Ran 6 with Kim on a warm and muggy morning. Felt pretty sluggish I think the humidity factor makes it feel 10 degrees warmer. Later went to the gym for 30 min XT.

9:04/137

Kim and I had fun with hills today.  Decided to do an up/down Payson Canyon run.  Started at Beercan then up 4 miles just past the water hole then back down.  With 2 miles left Kim's knee was doing some weird stuff so I raced to get to the van while she worked out the kinks.  Luckily she ended up doing fine (we think/hope) and I was surprised to find her not far behind me. Always gotta be careful on the steep stretches of Payson.

8:45/148 

Easy 5 in the morning then later 30 min XT and core at the gym.

8:23/150

Easy 3 miler with a few strides along the way.  Excited for the 5K tomorrow although I wish it could be a bit cooler and less humid than it appears it will be.  I'm a 50 degrees and dry kind a guy.

8:15

Ouch!!  It's been nearly a year and a half since I've raced a 5K and I had forgotten how much they hurt!  Not the result I wanted today but sometimes that's how it goes.  This was not a PR type course, lots of hills including bonus of canyon headwind with the uphill the first mile.  Also pretty warm temps probably around 70 at the start. It didn't help that the race started 15 minutes late.

I had hoped I could come in around 20:something, and if the stars aligned even sneak in under 20.  No stars aligning today.  I thought I would squeak in under 21 but either the race was a tad long or garmin was off (I measured 3.14 miles).

Mile 1 - 6:47  Lots of uphill.  Course tool said I need to be around 6:40 or less for sub-20. Since it was hard enough to get the 6:47 I could sense that sub-20 wasn't going to happen.  Just trying to run by feel and not crash and burn too early.  Passed a couple guys this mile.

Mile 2 - 6:25 Downhill comes during this mile.  I was hoping to be closer to 6-6:05 but by the end of this mile the wheels are already wobbling and my motivation is going down the toilet.

Mile 3- 7:00 Ugh, can't even get under 7.  Steady uphill most of this mile but not as steep as mile 1 but feels worse because it's mile 3.  I'm too far behind to catch the next guy in front and nobody is threatening from behind so I'm really have a hard time finding a good reason to try very hard.  The best I can do is think of Terry old-Bean being disappointed in me wimping out this mile but that doesn't seem to help much.

Last .1 (.14?) I manage to speed up a bit to finish (52s, 6:15 pace) and it's great to hear Kim cheering me in.  

Felt pretty hammered at the finish and actually feel like I worked pretty hard. Just not reflected in my time. Just need  a bit more focused training, a friendlier course and cooler temps and I think I can get down into the 19's again. Looking forward to doing some more racing over the summer.  Not a lot of Master's competition in this race but I'm happy for the 1st place Masters and 7th place overall.

Ran a couple miles with Kim then 5 more solo.  Glad to see Kim's achilles may be better off than we first thought on Saturday.  My legs felt great during the run.  Guess the nice thing about 5Ks is the quick recovery factor.  Hoping things go better in a couple weeks when I race the Speedy Spaniard 10K.

Later to the gym for 30 min XT.

8:20/149

Warmed up with 4 miles running from home to CV park. Still a bit on the warm/muggy side. Temps 65-70 but humidity factor always makes it feel warmer than that to me and I sweat like crazy and run out of gas quickly.  Kim is wisely still babying her achilles and backing off the running until things improve.

After a few strides I did a 3 mile tempo run along the Speedy Spaniard 10K course.  First mile has a bunch of uphill then the rest of the miles are mostly gradual downhill or flat. Wanted to try a pace that would put me in the 41-42 finish time range.  According to course tool and based on my past races this means I need to run mile 1 around 7:30 and the rest of the miles in the 6:30-6:45 range.

Actual splits/aveHR ended up as follows:

Mile 1 - 7:29/174 already feels harder than I want it to feel)

Mile 2- 6:43/184 HR already approaching red-line territory (190) by the end of this mile, not a good sign, means I only have about a mile left before lactic acid attacks my legs and any speed goes bye-bye.

Mile 3- 6:41/189 red-lining, HR around 190+ the whole mile and legs going to pot. Good thing I don't have 3.2 more miles to go today.

Cooldown 3 miles.  Man I just don't do very well in this warmer, muggy stuff.  Been running in these conditions a lot the last couple week I would hope my body might start adjusting better but not yet.  Hopefully come race day (2 weeks from today) with training kicking in and a bit of race magic things will go better.

Overall: 8:08/161 (max HR 193)

Five mile easy recovery run in morning and 30 min XT + core at the gym in the afternoon. 

8:37/144

Ran up/down Payson Canyon with Darin, Pat and Kent.  Started at Pateetneet up to Maple Dell and back down. Everyone was taking it pretty easy today which was just dandy by me. Nice weather today, cool and dry, but a bit windy with headwind during the uphill (of course).

8:17/162 

Easy 3 miles with a few strides just to stretch out the legs a bit.  Gonna rest up today and hopefully be fresh for 20+ miler tomorrow.

Ran with a bunch of speedy guys.  The regular crew was short on numbers today for some reason but Hal had invited a few guys from Provo/Orem so we had a pretty good size group of faster guys. They were going a bit quicker than I wanted to go for a 20+ mile run, so after a few miles I hung back and ran with Kent for a while and solo a few miles coming down off Harry's. Ran a few miles with Pat and Chad also

Felt better the last half of the run than I thought I would so hopefully I won't be too hammered from running faster than planned.  Beautiful morning and temps not too warm for July. Great view from the top of Harry's hill.

8:14/161

Met up with Chad and Dan and did an up/down Payson canyon run.  Warm, windy and very muggy day today around probably mid to upper 70's with high humidity. 

8:13/158

Started and finished a bit with Kim but mostly solo 7 miler this morning. Kim is still trying to figure out how best to deal with her nagging achilles issue and today some gentle run/walk seemed like the thing. I hope we can get on top of this pretty soon and she can get back into a groove.

Ran what has become my favorite 7-mile route out to CV park and back along the river trail for the middle of the run.  Unsettled weather this morning. About 2 miles from home got caught in a downpour and ended up completely soaked from head to toe. But got rewarded with a rainbow in the west after the rain stopped.  Didn't actually mind the rain at all since it's mid-July and temps still warm despite the wet.

Maybe time from some Yasso's tomorrow.  Kent convinced me to do try these on the roads instead of the track as he mentioned the curve of the track always gives him achilles/calf grief. We'll see how it goes.

8:36/144

Ran a Yasso 800s workout down in the bottoms on a flat stretch of road that works well for 1/2 mile intervals.  I lucked out and got near perfect weather, around 60 degrees with low humidity and very little wind. 

Goal was to do 6-9 repeats in the 3:10-3:20 time range with equal time rests.  Similar to when I've done this workout in the past the first 3 repeats were harder than I wanted them to be and I had thoughts of doing no more than 6.  But then the next 3 felt pretty good and I decided to go for 9.  Last 3 repeats were hard but not totally-wipe-you-out-and-make-you-hate-life hard. Can I say they were "comfortably" hard?  And though I was glad to be done at 9, I'm pretty sure I could have done another 1 or 2 if I had to. I'll save that for a few weeks down the road when I do this workout again. Yasso says I only need to do 10 of these right?

I was mister consistency on the pace today.  Time/aveHR info for each repeat as follows:

3:12/154

3:13/176

3:14/179

3:13/180

3:13/182

3:13/184

3:14/184

3:14/185

3:13/187

Overall: 10.25 miles, 7:59 pace, 164 ave HR max 193

Happy with the workout :), but bummed out that Kim's achilles problems are being very pesky :(

Easy recovery run. Only time for 3 miles today as I'm headed up to girls camp all day to be a "guardian".

8:45/139 

Hiked 2 miles at girls camp and zipped around the lake in a pedal boat for 30 min. I think this is much better XT than anything I ever do at the gym.

Nice and easy 6 miler.  Great morning for a run, a bit breezy (as usual in SF) but nice and cool, maybe even into the 50's. Did 4 or 5 strides the last half of the run.

8:26/148

Later to the gym for 30 min XT + core.

Nice morning for a run, cool and not too breezy. Kept the pace nice and easy for the most part today so that hopefully I'll have something in the tank for the 10K on Monday.  Mostly ran with Hal, Chad and Dan.  Had an annoying John Mayer song in my head the whole run and still bugging me. Hoping that maybe blogging about it will purge it from my head and make it be GONE!

8:29/150 

Nice to be pleasantly surprised every now and then.  Since the 5K a couple weeks ago and recent tempo runs have been lackluster I didn't have great expectations for this race.  Figured I'd be lucky to dip under 42 minutes.  

Ended up not looking at my watch much but just running by feel and glancing at my watch at the mile markers.  Sure was nice to see after the first couple miles that I was coming in 5-15 seconds ahead of goal pace and it was feeling much easier than during training runs. The good vibes continued the entire race and although the last mile was plenty painful I still felt like I left a little on the table and could have pushed a little harder.  Would have at least been nice to sneak in under 41 but for now I'll be content with the 41:08.  Thanks Kim for all the cheers coming into the finish line, it gave me a big boost and helped me sneak under 6 min pace the last .2!

Splits were 7:16, 6:32, 6:37, 6:35, 6:40, 6:35, :53 (5:51 pace)

Sure is just plain fun to run when things click and nice to finally see that the training and mileage base benefits are starting to kick in.   Looking forward to Hobble Creek and SGM.

Easy 5 mile recover run in the morning. Sure glad we didn't have this morning's weather yesterday morning. Warmer and very muggy today. Later went to the gym for 30 min XT + core workout.

8:27/143

Easy 7 miles in the morning. Later did 30 min XT at the gym at work.  My legs feel about best they've ever felt after a race.  Even better than what I typically feel like after a hard tempo run or speed workout. Not sure why that is but I'm not complaining!

8:27/147

Had planned on doing a Payson canyon up/down run with the boys but yesterday Darin told me nobody was likely to show up.  I didn't want to run the canyon by my lonesome so I decided to do a few loops around the Harry's hill route by my lonesome instead.  

No gas in the tank at all today.  I guess the post-race fatigue decided to wait until today to kick in.  Even ended up walking part of Harry's the last time up. Hope I get some energy back for the Saturday 22 miler. I'm thinking the pace is going to be very nice and easy.

8:55/160

Easy 3 miles with a few strides mixed in.

Today was one of my worst long runs of all time. No gas in the tank at all, very similar to Thursday despite running a slower pace most the time. Guess sometimes you have to endure these "running blues" runs to enjoy a "runners high" run like the Monday race.

Like Thursday my heart rate was through the roof as well.  Looking forward to a reduced mileage rest week next week.

8:47/159 

The heart rate certainly tells an interesting story. Looking at my last few "enjoyable" long runs of 18, 21, and 20 miles, my pace & ave HR were 8:29/150, 8:14/161, and 8:33/153.   Interesting to compare that to todays HR clear up almost to 160 for 8:47 pace. Ugh.  Hope I don't have many more of these kind runs and especially on race day.