Every Run is a Great Run!

Noon run with Paul, Nate and Will. We did the 6.2 mile version of the LakeView course which was mostly good except for the 1/2 mile at the beginning and end where we had to tromp thru a few inches or powdery snow. I was just saying a silent prayer the whole time along the lines of "please no injuries...please no injuries...". At the moment it appears the prayers were answered as I seemed to survive the run with no obvious new aches and pains. It was nice to run in the sun with good company. We even kept up a pretty good pace for an easy run, around 7:50 average. I think it would have been around 7:40-7:45 without the mile in the powder.

Really starting to look forward to Painters. Looks like the weather will be great. Time to think of time goals I suppose. Currently I'm thinking Gold = sub-1:25, Silver = sub-1:28, Bronze = sub-1:30. The gold goal might be a bit in dream land but what the heck, we all gotta dream sometimes, right?

Late AM run on the treadmill. Threw in 5-6 striders just to break up the monotony.  Man I'll be happy to get January out of the way. Looks like the next 2 days are going to be pretty bitter cold around these parts. But from the latest report it does look like things will be pretty nice down in St. George.  Those sunny 50's are looking pretty toasty right about now.

Did a final tune-up/mini-tempo run today. Thought it was going to be ugly cold but it was actually quite pleasant I thought. The sun was shining brightly and there was no wind. The weather report says 18 degrees but it felt a lot warmer than that to me. Thought I better give the new Adidas racers another go before the race and get a couple of miles at something close to goal race pace. The shoes felt good I think I like them better than my other flats.  Did 2 miles in the middle of the run at 6:40 and 6:36 pace. Felt fairly easy like it should if this is indeed my 1/2 marathon pace.

During the 1st warmup mile I felt some real weird pains that I've never noticed before and started stressing a tad. Luckily they went away after a bit, I think I'll just chalk it up to one of those weird things that happen during final taper before a big race. It's been so long since I've done a full-blown taper like I'm doing this week I'm not sure how I'll react as we approach the weekend. Hopefully I don't go bonkers with the running withdrawl and pre-race nerves. I think my body really does need a bit of a break with some lower mile weeks. I plan on keeping next week pretty easy also.

Noon easy 3 mile run outside. Doesn't hardly seem worth the effort to get all bundled up just to go 3 miles but I didn't want to do the treadmill and they were all in use anyway. I would complain about the cold but I out of respect for those runners like Brent who had to go this morning when it was REALLY cold and dark I'll refrain from any griping. Legs feeling good & ready to race.

Wow I guess that Sasha science stuff really works! I didn't think there was much of any chance of me getting close to the 1:25 time Sasha had predicted for me, but with a number of factors coming together today in a positive way (weather, lower elevation, taper, racing flats, race day "magic", etc.), I was able to finally have the blowout PR race I've been waiting for and even exceed Sasha's expectations! Although I must qualify my time by admitting that the race was a little short distance-wise by somewhere from .1 to .2 miles. I measured 12.99 on my Garmin but it seemed most people I talked to were measuring close to 12.9. So I suppose you add in another minute or so and my time is a bit closer to Sasha's prediction.

The weird thing is that I think I ran the first 1/2 of the race too slow. I was in a nearly euphoric state the whole race and never really got tired. I finally decided to race the last 3 miles like a 5K and ended up with close to my best 5K time ever but even then I wasn't really breathing too heavily, I just couldn't get my legs to go any faster than about 6:10 pace. Looks like I need to do more tempo runs at that pace.

I can't really remember a whole lot of details of every mile for this race. I just kind of felt "in the zone" the whole time and I remember passing about 20 guys over the course of the race. It was great to be able to give Kim a high five during the portion of the race when it backtracks and if the timing is just right you get to see some of the mid-pack and back-pack runners. Kim had a blowout PR also and will be posting her race report shortly (she's in the shower cleaning up at the moment). I was able to backtrack and run in with Kim the last 1/2 mile or so. Sasha had beat me to her though and was putting her through the Sasha end-of-race torture treatment. I whispered to her at the time that it was OK to be cursing/hating Sasha at that moment and she could forgive him later :)

Splits as follows (based off the Garmin, not off the whacked out mile markers):

1 - 6:35

2 - 6:37

3 - 6:25

4 - 6:30

5 - 6:35

6 - 6:06 (not sure what got into me on this mile)

7 - 6:31

8 - 6:25

9 - 6:28

10 - 6:15

11 - 6:23

12 - 6:14

13 - 6:10

Ave pace: 6:25

Special thanks to Kim and everyone else on the blog for all the help and encouragement over that last year. If anyone would have told me a year ago or even 6 months ago that at this time my 1/2 marathon pace was what my 5K pace used to be only months ago I would have thought they were bonkers! Special thanks to Sasha. I think maybe it's about time to make another donation to the blog!

One other note....the FRB was certainly well represented in this race. Out of the top 10 or 20 places I know a large percentage of them were bloggers. Kudos to all the great runners on the blog, you are all incredibly inspiring.