Per Aspera Ad Astra

12 hour work day. No time to run!

12 hour work day.  No time to run!

A little over 8 with Kevin in the AM.  Over to Memory Grove, up City Creek to the 2.5 mark, down city creek, up to 11th, down B, and home.  Just under 7:20 pace, but lots of hills, so it felt pretty honest for an 8AM training run.

Bummed that I didn't get to run the last 2 days, but that's the 5th year of a PhD for you.  I can't wait to eventually have a real job, in which I work normal easy hours and get paid a real salary.  #Someday.

4 mile tempo, didn't have a lot of time, so I just hopped on a treadmill for 4 miles and ran at 6:00 pace, except for the last 1/3 of a mile, which was at 5:15 pace.

My place through downtown to 8th south to Jordan River Parkway / 9 Lane shared trailhead, to the end of 9 lane, back, down Jordan River Parkway, back to 8th, and back.  First 15.5 miles at an average pace 1 second / mile faster than my sea level marathon pace.  Accidentally did the first 2 miles kind of fast (6:17/6:13), but they felt comfortable, so I decided to roll with it.  Had 15.05 on my watch in 1:36:xx for the marathon-ish pace miles, but had accidentally shut it off for about a half mile, so I'm calling that roughly 15.5.  Did the last 2.5 miles (once back on the outskirts of downtown back to home) easy, as a cooldown, because a) it was getting dark and I didn't want to be rushing through intersections, b) I hadn't eaten in 7 hours, didn't bring gels, and was absolutely famished by 15 miles in, so I didn't feel like running more MP miles.

Miles 1 and 2 were 6:15 average, but I backed off and ran more around 6:30-6:35 from 2-9, so I actually picked it up from there from 9 to 15.5.

Overall, it felt not so hard aerobically and my legs held up well.   My hip was minorly irritated around mile 10, so I stretched for ~20 seconds at mile 10 and it was 100% fine from then on.  15.5 miles at 6:26/mile at 4400' is actually equivalent to a 2:47 full marathon effort at sea level, so being able to do this with relative ease when not even close to in shape definitely demonstrates that I'm going to run a big PR next time if I can just not get a nasty virus right in time for the marathon like I did last time out.

Traditional Sunday spiritual experience in the mountains (well, the foothills today), with Holly.  8.5 easy miles from my place up C and B to City Creek, up the trail, up the turn on the left ~ a mile up, up to the trail that ends right before the first towers, and back.  Garmin uncharacterstically lost signal for awhile on the way out.  Way back was 4.25, way out was a quarter shorter, despite same route and I actually noticed when it lost the signal, so I'm just doubling the way back for 8.5 instead of the Garmin's 8.21.  9:00 pace because of all of the uphill and because Holly wasn't enjoying the mid-60s temps and intense sun with her fur getting pretty long lately.

The mountain bikers were really obnoxious, as is typical for Shoreline.  Holly and I were running down from the towers against some some fat woman biking up to them.  She couldn't handle the not-very-step uphill and, right after I went by, she swerved hard on the trail to keep her momentum going while going up the uphill.  She came within about an inch of running over Holly, who was running 2 feet directly behind me on a leash and had to dive off the edge of the trail, forcing me to grind to a halt and nearly pulling me off the trail with her.  Good thing Holly has common sense for a dog, but seriously, bikers, if you can't handle sharing the trail, get off your bike when a pedestrian (who ALWAYS has the right away over bikes) is coming, or better yet, stay at home and eat a bucket of ice cream rather than riding out of control and endangering others.  I can't wait until winter, when only the serious and respectful bikers touch the trails.

My new-ish car (bought at the beginning of summer) started to have issues, so I had to bring it into the shop.  Jogged a half mile from there to get to trax, rode the trax up, jogged a half mile across campus.  The mechanics only asked for the key, but set off the alarm somehow and needed the fob to turn it off, so I had to get back to the mechanics shop mid-day to give that to them and mixed in more jogging to and from trax (including one 4 block full-out sprint to successfully make it to the tracks station before the trax got there on the way back).  At the end of the day, my car wasn't done, so I just ran home another 2.5 miles.  So, not really a structured run in there, but still got in 5 miles in jeans and dress boots. Hah.

Didn't have my car back from the shop yet, so I ran to work, 2.5 miles.  It's always fun to show up to work sweaty.  Hah.  The shop called me mid-day and said they didn't have time to figure it out, so I went and picked it up, jogging a half mile from trax along the way.  Took Holly out for another 6, up and down Memory Grove / City Creek.  We picked up the down miles, hitting 6:09, 5:54, 5:44 (pace for .62), and the downhill made the pace feel nice and relaxed.

14 miles, about 12 with James.  Met up with him after .3 miles at 5th East / South Temple, ran to his house for him to drop off his backpack, and then ran to the end of 5th East at 4500 South, right around 7 miles when we got there.  Splits on the way out were pretty easy, ranging from 6:52 to 7:04.  On the way back, we did 6:26 (slightly downhill, about marathon effort), 6:21 (slightly downhill, marathon effort), 6:18 (uphill, only a little faster, but that uphill was noticeable, felt like it was getting to be about tempo), 6:01 (first half down, 2nd half up, full on tempo), 5:55 (uphill, hard), then another .2 at 5:5x pace before jogging the last block to James's house, and then I jogged home very easy (8:20 pace, quite uphill, 5 or 6% over th last mile).  Good run overall, I felt strong on the marathon pace, although that 5:55 mile was not feeling great.  Hip was totally fine.

Didn't get in a run.  Oh well.  Wasn't looking for huge mileage quite yet this week, so it's OK.

3 miles with Holly, over to E, up to 11th, down to City Creek, down Memory Grove.  8:00-ish pace on the steep uphill, then settled into a 5:36 mile (pretty downhill) going down from 11th and down Memory Grove, finally doing half a mile at 4:56 pace (equally downhill, just going a little harder).  Just trying to get my legs feeling speedy for an XC race the next day.  Jogged home and then shook out for another half mile to make sure I was loose.

2+ mile warmup, Dracula's Dash for Hope 5k, short (not even a mile) cooldown.

Dracula's Dash is almost certainly the slowest 5k course I've ever run.  The course is XC, with pretty long grass, and features 3 loops of a little over a mile, each of which has 6 extremely tight turns of 90 degrees or more, 4 extremely steep rhythm-sucking hills (2 up, 2 down, with a few more pretty steep hills, mostly around 20-30'), and a quarter mile of running on a muddy path across a slope, making it hard to get traction.  This morning, the grass was frosted over, so everything was pretty wet, and the dirt portions were muddy.  I ran this race on a whim last year and won with a 19:19.  The next few close-to-accurately measured 5ks that I ran were within a couple seconds of 17:30 (with a 15:25 on a super flat and fast 2.85 mile course in there as well), so I feel that it's 90-120 seconds slow, at least for me, being the type of runner that likes to get a rhythm going.

Anyway, I warmed up with a loop and a half of the course and some more light jogging, and then the race started.  I led from wire to wire and the whole thing was pretty uneventful except that a kid wearing a banana suit stuck pretty close for the first mile or so.  I remember thinking, about a half mile in, that I would quit running forever if I lost to a 20 year old in a banana suit.  Fortunately, he fell off, so I get to keep running in the future.

Anyway, I averaged 6:00 pace exactly for this super slow course and finished the slightly long 5k in 18:51.  The time is irrelevant compared to other 5ks.  What matters is that it was 28 seconds faster than last year while equally early in a training cycle, so I figure that I should be able to run some reasonable courses faster this fall than I did last year.

I wouldn't normally pay $35 for a little 5k like this, but it's put on by a great organization that helps abandoned children, so my money seems well spent.

Went out for another 4 and change loop around the Avenues with Holly later in the day.  Legs felt fine, but I kept it really easy (8:00 average).

From Liberty with Jake, Fritz, Krah, Josh, and Steve.  SE Liberty to Memory Grove to City Creek to 11th to Virginia to South Temple, and back to NE Liberty with 1 3/4 laps after that.  Quads/hams felt slightly sore at the end, just because I raced yesterday.

Ran up to work late at night to deal with a couple things.  On the way home, I ran to Federal Heights Drive, and once I hit Alta Drive (exactly 3 miles into my run), I tempoed the last 3.8 miles of the Haunted Half Course (which I'm running next wekend) + an extra .2 at the end for an even 4 miles of tempo, before jogging one more circuitous mile home.  Splits of the 4 miles of tempo were:

1. 6:23 (nasty uphill, average 2% uphill, but most of it shortly after the start in a steep climb, and then a long gradual climb), from Fed Heights / Alta to roughly the Fire station on 11th)

2. 5:36 (nice 2.5% gradual downhill, to roughly 11th and B)

3. 5:39 (nice gradual 2.5% average mostly downhill down Canyon Road and then into Memory Grove's paved trail, but exposed to a swirling wind for a good chunk of it up on the road)

4. 5:23 (nice 4% downhill, inside the trees, no wind, continued through Memory Grove down to 1st Ave and State).

Finished feeling like I had run fast, but with a lot of juice left.  Honestly, the hardest mile of the tempo was probably the first one.  I run Memory Grove a lot and can get a great rhythm going around all the turns on that 4% grade downhill, so locking into that 5:23 last mile really wasn't actually all that tough.

A few of the miles between 7 and 10 at Haunted Half are going to be pretty brutal, but if I'm feeling decent at mile 10, I should be able to really throw down hard over the last 3 miles.

A little over 7, easy, with Holly, up and down Memory Grove and City Creek, about 8:00 pace.

Pre-run, found this interesting:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sns-rt-us-padded-shoes-20131011,0,4536920.story

Sorry Hoka.

6.2 miles with James on his "Sugarhouse 10k" loop.  A couple of the miles were probably getting to within the ballpark of marathon effort.  Afterwards, another 1.8 with Holly, because I don't like to end on incomplete mileage and because Holly likes to run.

Workout, treadmill.  I know, I know, treadmills are lame and a little easier, but it allows me to lock into a specific effort and hold it, not to mention that treadmill workouts worked really well for me in the Spring.

Anyway, 1 up, 4 x 2 mile @ tempo progression, 1 x 1 mile @ 5k, with 2 minutes rest between intervals, 1 down.

2 mile: 11:55 (not bad)

2 mile: 11:44 (not bad)

2 mile: 11:36 (starting to get pretty hard)

2 mile: 11:18 (really hard)

1 mile: 5:20 (really really hard)

I really like running interval tempos as progressions, in which the pace becomes a little faster each rep.  The point of the last mile was to be able to push hard after already being tired from a relatively long tempo run (ie, being able to kick home the last mile of a 10 miler or half marathon).  All in all, I think this was a pretty good workout specific to the half marathon (racing one next weekend), but stuff like this just build all around strength, which I can always use more of.

Easy shakeout with Holly, around the Aves.  Legs actually felt good despite yesterday's workout; that said, I'm planning a long run of 18-20 tomorrow and want to keep my mileage below 70 this week so that I can keep building up intelligently, so this is all I let myself do.  I suppose I could have taken the day off, but active recovery is always best in my book.

2:11 for 19 miles, 6:53 average, so pretty easy, mostly right around 7:00 flat with a couple mid-6:20s thrown in.  My place to the 8th South entrance to the Jordan River Parkway Trail, down to the General Holm memorial trailhead at 3900 south (exactly 9.5 out on the Garmin), and then back.  Garmin got screwed up really badly coming back through downtown (these things don't work at all with tall buildings around), so I'm just doubling the distance for 19 total (still far shorter than the 19.6 Mapmyrun calls it, which is probably fair considering that I tend to cut corners on training runs).   I realized 2 miles into the run that I had literally only eaten 2 mini Reese's beforehand, but figured I'd be OK with the 3 gels I had on me.  Did the first 10 at just a hair under 7:00 pace.  I just did a hard workout tempo/VO2 workout 2 days ago and didn't want to overreach, so I decided to test marathon pace out for a bit as long as everything felt good, but back off as soon as it got tough.  After 2 miles of MP, I was getting a headache due to lack of calories and just didn't feel super fluid, so I backed off and just finished the run at 7:00 pace, which was pretty darn easy.  I felt fine until 16, but over the last 3, I felt super out of it and had a raging headache due to the lack of calories.  That said, my pace only dropped a little bit on the uphills, and my legs/lungs were fine.  This is the 2nd long run in a row in which I felt moderately to severely crappy at the end due to not paying attention to food intake beforehand, so I'm going to make sure I don't repeat that mistake next time.

Overall, this was a good week of getting the mileage up a little higher, and my legs feel solid.  I'm going to keep the mileage a little lower this week as I get ready for the Haunted Half on Saturday, but I'll be ready to start working really hard once that's out of the way. :)

Missed the group run yesterday since I was up until 3AM working on some writing the night before and then had to work all day Sunday.  Oh well; not a big deal to take a rest day given that I'm racing this weekend.

Anyway, today, I did 8.5 with Holly, from my place up to 11th to City Creek to the start of watershed and back.  Took it easy, but let gravity carry me to 5:30 pace over the downhill last half mile.

Lifted aftewards.

Worked really late, didn't run.

Was at gym and just ran on treadmill.  Really boring after IPod died.  First 2 miles a little under 7:00 pace, last 7 at about 6:20.  Mileage is obviously cutting down this week.  I don't mind taking a couple days off as I'm racing on Saturday and would like to be able to run well.

Shakeout with Holly.  Felt good!

Ran to the capital, jumped up on a bus, warmed up in the canyon, ran the Haunted Half in 1:16:02, did a couple miles of cooldown (picked up Holly from home on the way), went back for awards, and then jogged home.  I metered my effort pretty well.  I led by a small margin for the first 7, but a guy running in his first half started conservatively, pulled up alongside me at mile 7, and then made a big move at mile 8 that I couldn't go with.  I lost touch and he closed really fast.  I don't think there was anything I could do to stay with him.  Overall, I'm pleased with it.  The course has a net drop of 1450 feet, but is countered by 350 feet of uphills.  By my calculations, it's almost exactly equivalent to a totally flat course at sea level (14 seconds slower, actually).  Provo City, where I ran my PR, is about a minute slower due to less downhill, and I ran about 30 seconds faster there, so I consider that performance to be roughly 90 seconds better than today's.  I haven't had the best training since May and have just started to get the ball rolling again, so I consider this a big success.

Splits:

1: 5:22 Most downhill mile of all, starting around the hairpin turn in the canyon.  Felt really easy.

2: 5:34 Half as downhill as the first mile.

3: 5:39 Slightly less downhill than 2nd.  Little uphill rolls here and there.

4: 5:40 Similar to 3rd.

5: 5:42 Similar to last 2.

6: 5:38 Similar.  Came out the bottom of the canyon.

10k split: 34:42.  Better than my PR.  Felt good, just hoping my legs could stay together.

7: 5:36.  Nice fast first half of mile, but the uphill by the zoo in the 2nd half was the biggest roll up to that point.  Th eventual winner pulled up alongside me at the mile marker.

8: 6:20.  Long gradual uphill, followed by a very steep uphill through research park, finally flattening a bit.  130' of uphill in the first half of the mile alone.  Oof.

9: 6:00 Quick downhill, long very slight uphill.  Definitely struggling to recover from the terrible uphills still, and the winner injected a bit surge right at the start of the 9th mile.  I tried to go with it, but quickly realized it was suicide.

10: 6:01 Steep plunging downhill through federal heights, then a horrendously steep uphill to Shriner's.

11: 6:17 Very steep uphill along Virginia, the rest of the way to 11th, gradual uphill on 11th for awhile.  Finally started going downhill at the end of the mile.  Even with the nice moderate downhill in the last chunk of the mile, the section from mile 7 to mile 11 was still a little bit net uphill.

12: 5:41 Nice downhill along 11th, and then turning onto Canyon Road.  An extremely thick crowd of slow 5k runners was in the way in the canyon.  This was very frustrating, as they were supposed to be contained on one side of the road, with an open lane for half runners on the other side.  I hit the mile 11 marker at 11.03 on my Garmin, but had to weave so much over the last 1.5 miles that I tacked on an extra .05, which ultimately cost me a 1:15.

13: 5:38 Canyon Road and Memory Grove.  So much weaving.  It's extremely irritating when I'm trying to hammer and idiots with strollers are running (well, walking) on the wrong side of the road and cutting me off.  I felt like I was capable of a faster last mile, but the rhythm kept getting interrupted.

13:18: 54 (5:03 pace).  Couldn't quite make the sub-1:16.

Overall, while I'm annoyed that 5kers blatantly ignoring race instructions cost me a sub-1:16, I'm pleased with how things went.  No matter how you cut it, I wouldn't quite have been able to beat my Provo City time, but just being close is super encouraging.  18 total for the day.  Not too bad. 

Nice easy recovery day after Saturday's race.  First 2.5 with the whole group, but Allie and Andrea were hanging back, and I stuck with them, mostly running about 8:00 pace.  Felt great to run so slow.

2 easy miles on a treadmill after lifting weights (~8:00 first mile, 7:00 second mile), 1 more easy mile jogging errands.

Quads felt pretty beat up earlier in the day, but were definitely on the upswing by the end of the day.  Still trying to decide whether or not I can be ready to race another half by this coming Saturday.  The hip isn't really a concern, as it held up absolutely 100% in the race, but I just want to make sure that I'm not overdoing it and racing through any soreness in my quads.

14 hour work day = no running.  Signed up for Snow Canyon Half on Saturday though, as legs are feeling pretty good again today.

Easy run with Holly.  My place, up B to City Creek, up the canyon trail, up BOSHO from there ti to the ridgeline, down to Ensign Peak, down the road, back through Memory Grove.  There were a ton of really loud Coyotes up between Ensign and the radio towers and Holly was definitely intrigued - good thing she was on leash!

Shoreline trail with Nate Krah at lunch time.