Per Aspera Ad Astra

15 miles at 6:38 pace with a big group at Riverton.  Pushed the last 6 a little bit harder than the rest with Jon Kotter, probably about marathon effort, but very very relaxed.  These 6 had a couple hundred feet of hills and an average pace of 6:24/mile (including that annoying run up and over the bridge, which cost a good 15 seconds on that mile's pace), which would be worth about 6:04 on a course like Phoenix.  I felt really fit today, which is always a nice feeling. :)

PM: Skied at the Bird for 2 1/2 hours, 3rd day in a row and 16th day of the season.  Legs felt super solid, even though I spent a lot of time hitting moguls really fast and hard.

Ski day #17 for the season (4th in a row).  Legs were a little tired, so I just skied moderately for about 100 minutes.

Run: With Holly.  Didnt' get out until right around midnight.  Wanted to avoid the poison gas that we have to breathe outside, so I stuck to the upper aves and ran pretty close to an exact loop of the perimeter.  A little over 9 miles with nearly 1500' of gain, a little under 9:00 pace (8:55 pace correlated to 8:15 effort on flat, so quite easy effort).  Perimeter was pretty complete other than an offshoot of Terrace Hills Drive and a small loop off of Capital Park (the latter a gated private community that I couldn't run even if I wanted to).  I'm sure the air is still quite bad up there, but at least the visible smog line was lower in the valley than where I was running.

On a note related to air quality, I've been coughing constantly, despite not being sick, ever since getting back to Utah.  My lungs feel simply awful.  At this point, I've never been more excited to finish my PhD and move to a place where the government won't put more effort into selecting a state gun than solving an extreme health crisis that affects millions of people.

My place to Sears to pay for some tires that I'm going to have mounted on Tuesday (they only had 3, have to wait for the 4th from Tire Rack), to 27th South, to 5th East, to Smith's (needed new pillow cases), back home, carrying my purchase over the last mile.  7:25 average pace.

AM: Ugh, that kind of sucked.  17.5 with James from Highland, up to Wasatch, along the bike path, and down to 6200 before following some complicated route back with a pickup from 13 to 17.  Kinvaras were a terrible choice today, as it was extremely snowy and icy for the first 4 or 5 miles, so my legs started to feel it too fast and I didn't have much on the MP pickup.  James started pushing really hard right away and I didn't have it mentally, so he got away from me.  I averaged 6:29 on the pickup.  Granted, it had some significant hills and is at altitude, so this isn't terrible, but I wanted to be faster and feel better.  I think I felt crappy due to a combination of:

a) 3rd run this week that was at least moderately hard (Mile repeats on Sunday, somewhat similar 15 mile pickup on Wednesday, and then this) plus skiing 4 of the last 5 days

b) Mentally wasn't really all there on the pickup, as it wasn't physically all that bad, breathing wise.  Strangely, I tend to run workouts best solo a lot of the time.

c) Have a horrible cough from the inversion still which probably won't go away for another week or so, at which point we'll probably have another inversion.

d) Shoe choice.  Kinvaras were really really awful on snow and ice, slipping all over the place, and my stabilizers were already feeling pretty shot by mile 5.

Anyway, runs like this that you have to suffer through are good training for the marathon, so I'm glad that this happened.

PM: Ski day #18 at Snowbird (5th this week), legs actually felt good.  Great day to ski. :)

12.5 with the group (slightly less, did an extra minute-ish at the end to get the mileage far enough past 12.4 to round up... haha...) at 7:17 pace.  Moderately hilly route from Highland, overall nice day out there...

Worked typical hours, but still had more work to do, so I went home, ate, played with Holly, and then ran back to work, slightly longer than the typical 2.5 mile method.  Ran a little over 8.5 miles on a longer route back home down through Sugarhouse, with one mile at 6:15.  Had to carry my wallet, phone, and keys in a camelbak (I remove the bladder and use it as a backpack), which really wasn't so bad.  Average pace for the 11 was about 7:10.

Pretty big workout today, and felt absolutely great, despite this workout putting me at 60 miles over Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues.  2.5 mile warmup up to the gym at about 7:30 pace (uphill), then hopped on a treadmill for 14 miles (marathon effort between treadmill at altitude here and flat at sea level is pretty similar).  Miles 1-5: 6:00 pace, mile 6: 5:52 pace, mile 7-8: 6:00 pace, mile 9: 5:56 pace, miles 10-12: 6:00 pace, mile 13: 5:52 pace, first .75 of mile 14: 6:00 pace, last .25 of mile 14: 4:55-ish pace (5:00 for most, kicked it down to 4:30 over the last .05).  2.5 mile cool down, SO SLOW. 9:15 pace downhill.  Workout was comfortably hard, but I've done quite a bit harder.  To put this on par with my hardest workouts last year, effort wise, I'd have had to tack on another 4 miles.  I felt like i could've gone ~20 if racing all out.  I love the mentality of doing hard workouts on a treadmill: either run the pace or fly off the belt.  There's no question of whether or not I'll keep up the pace.  I simply have to.  Based on how I felt today, I couldn't currently hold 6:00 pace for a full marathon, but I bet I could hold 6:07s and hit a 2:40.  Once I drop all the way to race weight, I might just have to take Phoenix out at 6:00 flat pace.

One other note to self for future reference: pace felt kind of "fast" already by mile 3, but didn't really feel any harder even by the end, so that's something to keep in mind when a race pace feels "fast" too early.  If I'm strong enough, it's not a big deal.

Easy snowy/slushy/icy 9.5 at 7:55 pace.  Down to Fairmont Park, then slight Sugarhouse Loop.  Pretty boring and uninspired tonight.  Didn't get out until 11:40 PM and was quite tired.

10 miles on a treadmill at the gym, 6:35 pace, which felt pretty darn easy.

A little over 5 at like 7:48 pace, felt really tired, so didn't do much.  Lungs felt horrrrrrrible afterwards.

16 with a pretty decent sized group.  Lungs weren't so good (not much coughing while running, but hard to breath during any significant exertion on a hill, and really bad whenever briefly stopping).  When I stopped at the portal potty at mile 10 or 11 and then again after the run, my chest was very painful.  Average pace was 6:55, a bit faster at the end, and when the group decided to start injecting pace at mile 15, I intentionally went on another street to avoid even trying to go with it.  Anything under 6:45 was kind of unpleasant for me today and I was feeling pretty awful most of the run, but it's good for me, mentally, to feel awful starting from mile 3, and still finish the run without slowing down.

Tried to go to the student health center afterwards, but they're "only seeing international students on weekends" for the first couple weeks of the semester.  They referred me to a local after hours clinic, where I'd have to spend the first thousand out of pocket and then 20% after that.  Some great insurance they give to students here!  I think I'll wait until Monday and hope that I don't lose an hour+ of sleep tonight being awake and coughing like I have the last couple nights. :(

In any case, I have new skis, so I'm still about to go skiing.  Hope my body can deal. :)

Took the day off after skiing at Deer Valley!  Snow was AMAZING.

7 miles easy with Holly.  Capital and Aves loop, didn't wear a watch, so I don't know the exact pace, but probably about 7:30.  An hour later, 4 more miles on a treadmill at 6:00 pace.

I went to the student health center this morning and was found to be quite healthy other than the cough (lung capacity literally off the charts, HR of 45, not fully at rest) and I was diagnosed as simply having crap from the recently polluted air still stuck in my lungs (I guess it can take a full month to clear the system).  After exertion, my airways get irritated and constrict, leading to the coughing.  Despite not having asthma, I got a prescription an asthma inhaler, which I will have to use before my runs (and after, if I start coughing), likely for the remainder of the winter, assuming the air doesn't stay like how it's been for the last few days.  I used the inhaler for the first time before the fast miles and found myself breathing easier than usual at 6:00 pace.  I noticed that the overall effort seemed slightly easier than it typically does at that pace, but completely forgot that I had used the inhaler until a little while later.  Apparently being able to breath better makes a difference.  Who'd have thought?  After the run, I had a cough, but it was reduced, so that's good.

I'm going to go easy tomorrow, as I'm planning on a massive workout on Wednesday.  Time to rest up well for 2 nights.

10 with Holly at ~7:30 pace (wasn't wearing watch), my place to 9th to 27th to 5th to my place loop, immediately followed by jog to grocery store and back for a couple things.

Annual Indoor Treadmill Marathon #2.  Last year, about the same time out from Phoenix, I hopped on a treadmill and ran 26.2 miles in 2:53:4x.  I decided a few days back that this was the ideal week to do it as my workout, so I did it tonight.  Time was 2:45:32.  Last year, when I ran the 2:53, I was hurting over the last 2 miles or so and couldn't pick up the pace.  In Phoenix, I was sick, but still ran nearly 4 minutes faster with a 2:50:00.1.  Tonight's 2:45:32 felt very relaxed.  I picked up the pace about 5 seconds per mile on miles 24 and 25, went another 25 seconds faster on mile 26, and then ran the last .2 at 4:57 pace.  Now, an hour later, my legs feel completely fine other than a tiny blister on the front of my right middle toe (just an air blister).

This was a major confidence booster.  I planned on running in the ballpark of, but no faster than, 2:45, so I hit that spot on, but it felt a lot more relaxed than I anticipated.  Splits were 63:41 for the first 10, 63:27 for the second 10, and 38:24 for the last 10k  19:04 for 20 to 23, 12:30 for 24 and 25, 5:50 for 26, and :59 for 26 to 26.2).  So yeah, I think sub-2:40 is very realistic come Phoenix.

Recovery run with Holly, Koren, and Megan at 5:30 AM.  5 miles, 8:59 pace.  A little hilly, but still quite nice and easy.

Stupidly hilly aves/fed heights/aves/memory grove loop (nearly a perimeter loop) with Holly at mid 8's pace to stay above the inversion.  Hills included Virginia all the way up to the top at Tomahawk and Terrace Hills all the way up to 18th, among others.  Garmin was nearly dead at the start and started beeping low battery a mile in, but it got within 7 tenths of a mile from the finish before it died.  Legs are a little fatigued still from 2 days ago, but that was expected, and actually, they felt better than I would have expected them to.

My recovery from the 26.2 mile workout has actually been meticulously planned out.  I didn't want to take any days off, but wanted maximal recovery, so I did 5 miles very easy at 5:30 in the morning yesterday, and then put off my run until nearly 10 PM tonight, so I had nearly 40 full hours off of running without taking a day off.  I'll do easy runs for the next couple days to ensure that I'm fully recovered.  Doing 26.2 at 15-20 seconds per mile off goal marathon pace as a workout would be a bad idea without proper recovery, so I'm going to make sure that I'm being smart and listening to my body very carefully over the next couple days.

AM: Ski day #23. Legs still slightly tired. Pretty bad snow. :(

Pm: 7.6. Aves, Fed Heights, Capital Hill with Holly. Low to mid 7s. Lazy with distance; made sure to get above 70 for the week.

Ski day #24 for the season in the AM, this time at Alta.  REALLY fun day out there.

Very late (12:30 AM): 10.5 miles, 6:48 average.  Intended to go easy, but around 5 miles, I got rolling.  Did a 6:06 for mile 6 (slightly net downhill), 6:26 for mile 7 (70' net uphill!), and then 5:39 and 5:34 for miles 8 and 9 (quite downhill, really got rolling down the 4% average grade down University Avenue).  Definitely a bit harder than MP effort overall, but still easier than tempo, so I guess I'll log those miles as MP. Finished up with a nice easy last mile.  Garmin had 10.1, but it got started a couple minutes late.  I thought it was connected when I started, but it wasn't, and after a couple minutes, I noticed that it only had me logged as .08 miles, so I just reset it and started back from 0 after a couple minutes.

AM: Weight is coming down, thanks to a better diet, with help from Allie.  155.6 is the lightest I've been in quite a long time.  Skied for day #25 of the year, this time at Park City MountIn Resort.  I love that my Snowbird pass gets me 3 free days at each of Alta, Deer Valley, and Park City.

PM: 10.4 miles with Holly.  Aves - fed heights- upper campus loop - fed heights - 11th ave - canyon road - loop around capitol building - around the bottom of memory grove and back home.

Didn't get out until 11:30 PM.  Need to fix my running schedule again. Hah.  Up 4th to Virginia, on University to Foothill, up a bit, across to Sunnyside, upper research park, down wakara to foothill, onto capechi, through upper campus, back through federal heights, up to 11th, to B, down A, back home.  Lots of hills, 7:20 average pace, had to fight the urge to start pushing hard a couple of times. :)

Big workout tonight.  1 mile warmup at 6:20 pace, then 4, 3, 2, 1 on treadmill with 4,3,2 minutes rest, starting at about half marathon effort and getting slightly faster each rep, then 1 mile cooldown without a watch on the indoor track..  I did a similar workout on a track last April a few weeks before rather easily running 1:15:33 at Provo City Half (with a lot left at the end) and wanted to run a better workout on a treadmill.  Last year, on the track, the total time was 59:14, so to run an equivalent workout on a treadmill indicating the same fitness, I'd need to hit sub-56:50  I decided to plan for low-mid 56s to make it a slightly "better" workout without crushing myself (I've been trying to not full-on race my workouts as much this cycle, so as to not leave my legs in training).  In hindsight, I mis-timed my rest a little bit and gave myself a bit too much, as I had thought I had done 4,3,2 last time, but had actually done 3,2,1.

Without further ado, times were:

4 miles: 22:58 (5:44.5 pace).  Felt very smooth.

4 minutes rest: ended up taking only 3:45.  4 minutes just felt too long.  I was itching to get going again after less than 2 minutes.

3 miles: 17:00 (5:40 pace). Last half mile was getting harder, but still felt smooth.

3 minutes rest.  Felt a little long, but took the whole thing.

2 miles: 11:05 (5:32.5 pace).  First mile was fluid, and second mile was the hardest mile of the workout, as I split this as 5:36/5:29.

2 minutes rest.  Was happy to have the full 2.

1 mile: 5:16.  Felt pretty fluid.  It's not hard to stay engaged for a little over 5 minutes.

Total time for the 10 miles: 56:19.  I hit exactly the kind of time I wanted, but should have taken 1 minute less rest per cycle.  Overall, it was hard but not super hard, so I'm quite certain that I could've held the same pace with less rest.  In all honesty, I'm not even convinced that it would've been much harder; with nearly 4 minutes of rest between reps 1 and 2, my heart rate had dropped a fair amount by the time I started the 2nd rep, and it took a little bit to find my rhythm.  With less rest, the 2nd rest would've been easier, while the 3rd might not have changed much, and the 4th probably would've been harder.  Maxed out and fully racing, I would estimate my maximum capacity for this kind of workout to be in the ballpark of just under 55 minutes.

Take-aways: I've been getting really confident for March.  I've had some really good workouts lately that have strongly indicated to me that I'm going to be able to run fast, but I haven't been beating myself up in the process, which I think is going to be key on race day.  I've felt fresh and I've been extremely consistent throughout the entire cycle so far, and I think these factors are going to give me massive benefits.

I'm going to race Winter Series 5k on Saturday, and frankly, I have no idea what to expect.  I haven't been training for short stuff, and I generally find it hard to mentally engage for something as short as a 5k, so I find it unlikely that I'll be much faster than, say 17:20.  In any case, the entire focus is on the marathon, and I'm only running this series because it's fun/miserable and everyone else is doing it, so I've already promised myself not to put any stock into it one way or the other.  If I run well, it's not relevant to a marathon.  If I run poorly, that's typical for me in a 5k over the last year, so it doesn't matter.

AM: 6 miles at 9:00 pace in City Creek Canyon. Nice slow recovery run with Sara Davidson, who's in town for OR.

Pm: 7 miles on treadmill @ 7:20 pace without ipod or tv. Certainly less than thrilling...

8.8 miles very easy (9:10 pace) on BOSHO trail in bad conditions (very icy, to the point that I fell, in places, even muddier in other places) with James, Josh, and Nate.  Note to self: Garmin has 8.55, but I started .25 late because it wasn't connected when I left my building.

My first race in a couple months went well.  I did a couple miles of warmup, the Winter Series 5k in 17:02, a couple miles of cooldown.  I went out in 5:32 and felt really comfortable, not to mention that the weather was uncharacteristically good, so I figured I had a shot at sub-17.  Not wanting to blow up (I'm bad at gauging 5ks, and just yesterday thought that anything under 17:20 probably wouldn't happen), I decided to conservatively increase the pace and just sneak under the mark.  I did the 2nd mile in 5:27, and then the 3rd mile in 5:23.  Unfortunately I wasn't planning on 3.13 (I guess I ran the tangents pretty poorly), so my last .13 at 4:59 pace couldn't quite get me there and I ended up at 17:01.6.  Oh well.  This is still my fastest non-aided 5k in Utah (previous was 17:04 in 2009, on a point-to-point course that was net uphill by a measly 5 feet) and my overall 3rd fastest 5k ever (16:34 PR is from my win in the 5k at the National Beer Pong Championships in 2009, down at sea level, and my 16:44 at Running of the Leopards last year was obviously aided).

Race wise, I went out in what must have been about 30th place.  I stuck about there until shortly before a mile, when I started passing people.  I couldn't get a sense of pace for about the first .5 miles, but right around when Steve Ashbaker pulled up to me at a half mile, I started being able to roll, so I took off from him.  I passed another 5 or so guys before the turnaround, and after the turnaround, I saw Sasha pretty far off in the distance.  It took me until 2.3 to catch him, but I did, and then started to focus on Walter.  I caught him around 2.7 or 2.8, and then keyed off closing the gap on Benjamin Pachev from there until the finish (closed on him, but he was too far and still got me by 10 seconds), while fighting off Dennis Simonaitis - who had been running with Walter and then went with me -over the last couple hundred meters.  I don't normally feel like having others in the race affects how I perform all that much, unless I'm just sandbagging for an easy win, but negative splitting was a lot easier today when I had other runners in front of me that I knew I could reel in.

Congrats to Josh E for running nearly 2 minutes faster than last year (and massively leapfrogging me), Scott Keate for an absolutely dominating masters performance (yeah, yeah, he's 39, but he turns 40 this year and counts as masters in the circuit), and Riley for beating a solid course record.  Getting 17th with a 17:02 this year, compared to 12th with a 17:33 last year, indicates that there are a lot of people who are rounding into monster shape for their upcoming early-mid Spring races, so I'm excited to see everyone's results this year.

Noon: Clean air rally.  Some of the speakers were good, but overall it was less effective than it could have been.

PM: Ski day #26 of the season.

12 from Liberty Park with Allie, James, Josh, and Fritz.  Nice out and back, pretty flat, out to and along JRP.  Legs felt a little tired today, which means that it's a good time to go out for ski day #27 of the season. :)

9.1 miles with Holly, quite late (midnight start), 7:45 average pace.  Would've done a little more, but Holly started getting tired around mile 7, so I cut it a little short.  Hilly loop through Aves/Fed Heights/Upper Campus Research Park (low point under 4500', high point over 5000').

2.4 up to the gym, 5.1 on a treadmill at the gym, 2.9 home (if comparing to Garmin, I started the watch a little late after leaving the gym).  6:45 pace on the treadmill, 7:30 (hilly) on the road.  Kinvara 4s are starting to tear, ever so slightly, in the upper, after 123.6 miles.  Lame.  Good thing I still have some 3s.

Hip felt a little tight, weather was atrocious, didn't want to risk it, took the day off.

4.6 miles right after work, from the lab, all I had time to fit in.  Ran in the old red Kinvara 3s and my hip, which felt slightly wonky, got the tightest it's been at any point in this training cycle.  I think running on the super sloppy trails last Friday put it in a sensitive state, and these shoes messed it up.  I finished the run, saw how unevenly worn they were (they were literally forcing my foot to buckle in, which was what caused the extreme hip pain before), and chucked them in the trash to avoid the temptation of wearing them again and really messing myself up.

Later, 6.1 miles more in my Zoom Streak LT2s.  The hip was touchy from earlier, but I could tell that it wasn't getting any worse.  Still, I kept it short to be safe.  I'm pretty confident that I won't have a setback, but I'm going to be EXTREMELY cautious over the next few days.  I'd like to get in a long run on Saturday still, but if I can't, I'll accept that.  I'll probably double tomorrow to avoid going longer than 8 miles in a single run. In any case, if being cautious means having a second week in the training cycle under 70 miles, so be it.  My #1 goal of this season is to stay healthy, not to rack up mileage.

Very thankful for Matt Poulsen today, who may have saved my upcoming marathon.  I was getting pretty worried about my hip, but then remembered the night-and-day difference made by methylprednisolone prescribed by Matt back in the summer, which allowed me to start training again, finally, after a summer of hip pain.  I emailed Matt, he got back to me right away, and I had my prescription a couple hours later.  I took the first dose and then started watching Lost, which is quite addictive, so I didn't get out the door to run until an admittedly absurd 12:45 am.

In any case, I decided to do an easy run on some iteration of 9th East just to feel things out and go as much as 12 miles if I felt great.  After the first mile, which is very hilly (my place to 9th and south temple, nearly 100' up and 100' down, with a slight net up), I looked at my watch expecting near 8:00 and saw 7:02.  At that point, I realized that my body just felt awesome tonight, so I decided that if my hip was still feeling it by 21st south, I'd do the long run, and maybe even put some fast miles near the end like I had wanted to do a few days ago.

At 21st, I was feeling great and averaging 6:46s very easily, so I turned up towards Highland and then took that all the way to 45th, where I still felt good, other than having to make a 5 minute pit stop at 711 to use their bathroom.  I had been debating the merits of going hard from 10 to 15, but by 9.5, I still felt good and decided to give it a go.  I turned on to 5th south and hit 10 miles shortly thereafter, and picked it up.  I decided I would go a little harder than marathon effort (6:05 at sea level would 6:23-ish here, so I decided to push nearly sea level marathon pace into a minor-to-moderate headwind).  11, 12, 13, and 14 were 6:08, 6:13, 6:12, 6:09, and then I got tired of running so easy, so I pushed mile 15 in 5:47.

I ran the last 2.1 miles at 7:40-ish pace, uphill, which felt really slow after the faster miles, and now I better get to bed since it's after 3 am.  Average pace 6:40.

In any case, I'm extremely grateful today just to be able to run and I felt exhilirated for that entire 17 miles, which probably kept from falling asleep on my feet before I finished at 2:30 or 2:40 am.  Thanks to Matt Poulsen for his help and generous giving of his time, and thanks to modern medicine for keeping me off the sidelines. :)

AM: Ski day #29.

11 miles with Holly at 7:37 average pace.  To 9th to 27th (with a pit stop over to 8th en route to get some poop bags, since Holly wouldn't stop going to the bathroom... hah...) to Highland to 21st to 9th, back home.  Legs felt tired, but hip was fine.

Easy run, 7:4x average pace (Josh had 7:38, but had to play a little catch-up), with Josh, Jake, Mystery Runner Nate, James, and Allie.  Liberty to Memory Grove and back with a loop at the end.  Legs were still a little tired, but hip felt OK.

10 miles on the treadmill.  Didn't start running until 8:55, and the gym closes at 10, so I decided to run fast.  First 7.5 was at 6:05 average pace, last 2.5 was at 5:35 average pace.  Legs were a little tired at the beginning, but loosened up and felt good.  I spent the entire time rocking out hard to some new tunes from Cynic, a really fantastic group whose style has changed a lot over the years while still retaining a really recognizable quality that is truly their own: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDNr3p6jQ-A

10 at the gym.  Had a little less than 2 miles done on the treadmill when I spotted James running fast on the track overhead, so I jumped off, did the last 1.2 of his 75 lap workout with him (I wasn't wearing a watch, but I guess it was a little under 6:00 pace), and then went back to do another 7 on the treadmill.  Treadmill miles were about 7:10 average pace.

10.6 miles at 6:39 average pace, so on the faster side of easy, but easier than MP, with no miles under 6:20, and no miles over 7:00.  My place to 9th East to 27th South to Elizabeth to Highland to 21st south to 9th east to my place.  Glute/right leg felt a little tight, so I'm stretching hard now.  I need to make sure that I'm consistent about stretching over the next few weeks.

11 miles, treadmill, high 6:30s average pace.  Nice chill run.

Easy 8.6 at 7:42 average pace with Holly.  My place to 9th to 21st to 11th, gradually back to 9th, to my place.  Pretty windy out there tonight... tomorrow's 10k is going to be interesting. :)

Meh, not my best race.  1 mile warmup + winter series 10k in 36:51 + 3.5 mile cooldown with 5 x 30 second pickups (maybe a half mile?).  Slept as late as I could, woke up, and legs just felt tired and stale, which wasn't a great sign.  Showed up at the race pretty late, warmed up a mile, then got started.  In the out portion, I settled in behind Sasha, Dennis, and James, but when Sasha and Dennis (both of whom I beat 2 weeks ago in the 5k) pulled away from James, I let them go.  Hit the 5k pretty easily in 17:25, with a nice tailwind, turned around, and just immediately lost motivation when the rather large headwind hit me in the face.  I passed James right after the turnaround, but never made any ground on Sasha and Dennis, and they gradually got away and I couldn't get myself to care.  I felt like the wind started to settle a bit in the last mile, but I never really picked it up and just slogged it home with a 2:01 positive split.  I'm not happy with this race, but I also don't care very much at all, which is probably part of why I didn't really push it.  The last 3 days were too much (2 days of 10+ at sub 6:40), and last night's race was far too close to the race, so that didn't help.  I'm going to probably up my mileage a bit this week and then taper for 2 weeks to be really fresh for the marathon, which, as I keep reiterating, is all I really care about at all.

PM: Ski day #31.  Legs were tired!

AM: 20 miles with James and Allie, who themselves did slightly more.  Pace was easy, probably about 7:40-7:45, which felt extremely pleasant, although I forgot my watch, Allie didn't have one, and James accidentally stopped his for 5.6 miles in the middle.  Route was SE Liberty to JRP to 4500 south, up along the above road, back to 4500, along to 9th, back to 9th, back to Liberty, loop of Liberty, back to James and Allie's for Allie to grab her Saucony test shoes, and back to my car.  Legs were tired before I started, but the run didn't make them more tired at all really, which is good, considering that this is probably my 2nd to last long run before Phoenix.

PM: Ski day #32 of the season.  Legs were actually not so tired, but now that I'm home, I'm ready to be done with physical activity for the day. :)

Later PM: I lied about being done with physical activity for the day. Haha.  Walked Holly to Memory Grove and wanted to get her to really burn off some energy, so I did ~30 hard sprints (50-ish meters a piece) with her, wearing jeans and moccasins. Hah.

Same loop as Friday (9th/21st/11th), but legs felt super tired, so I took it extremely slow (8:13 average pace).  Brought Holly.

11.8 miles, 7:18 average pace.  Quads were still somewhat sore from doing a bit much over Wed-Sunday, but loosened up throughout the run.  My place to 9th to 33rd to 5th to my place.

Took the day off.  Only looking for ~80 this week to avoid overdoing it, and I still have another workout planned, so figured I'd take the day to rest.

10 miles in a little under 67 on a treadmill at the gym.  New A6 felt good.

Now THAT was a workout.  Left the lab, did 9 miles on roads at 7:02 pace (through campus, to Sugarhouse, around the park, back to campus, mini campus loop to wind up at 9 at the gym), immediately onto a treadmill for 10 miles in 58:54 (5:53 pace), and then 1 mile cooldown via a roundabout route back to the lab (extremely slow, 10:15 pace, to really shake everything out).  I took 1 gel at mile 9 and that was it.  I felt really smooth, but had to dig pretty deep (not marathon racing deep, but pretty deep for a workout) over the last 2 miles of the tempo portion.  I just wanted to get that 10 mile portion under 60, so to have under 59 was extremely encouraging.  At this point, the hard work is done, so I'll probably do ~10 tomorrow (likely with the group), and then it'll be taper time.

AM: 11 miles with Holly in addition to a decent sized group (Jake, Jon Kotter, Josh, Rob, Kramer, and one of Rob's other athletes whose name I didn't catch).  HHS to Tanner to Wasatch to Zoo loop, to Foothill, back to HHS, finishing with a little loop to get it up to 11.  Holly stopped to poop about 20 seconds into the run, so I started by playing catchup and didn't get back to the group until almost the mile mark, after losing a full minute.  When up on Wasatch, Holly stopped to poop again right as the guys were picking it up a little bit.  This time, her poop bag had a hole in it, which I didn't initially realize, so I ended up finishing the run with dog crap on my hands.  This was not pleasant.  Also, I lost another minute+ here and ended up having to drop the pace into the 5:40s on a long flat section to catch up.  My legs were pretty tired from last night's workout, but it was nice to see that I could comfortably get it going that fast.  Overall pace was 7:04 for the 11 miles with 775' of gain (775' of both gain and loss is only enough to slow the run down a hair over 2 minutes, but that's still significant), so probably not as easy as it should've been after the workout, but whatever.  Taper starts now, so I have 2 weeks to recover. :)

Looking back at the last 14 weeks, I've only had one week lower than 70 (the week of my dissertation proposal), giving me a total of 1 week in the 50s, 9 weeks in the 70s, and 4 weeks in the 80s.  I think this has been perfect for me.  I've averaged 73.5 miles/week for 14 weeks, 75.3/week discounting the one down week, and have been remarkably consistent from week to week.  My biggest week has been 87 miles, so I've avoided the temptation to overdo it.  This week, I saw myself going over 90 if I didn't take a day off, so I made the smat decision to take a day off.  Overall, this is both the smartest and most consistent training I've ever had for a marathon, so as long as I don't do anything stupid in the next 2 weeks (which I won't) and as long as I show up healthy at the starting line (will be washing my hands a LOT over the next 2 weeks to avoid a repeat of last year), I should be ready for a very nice PR.  My legs were tired after today's run, but they just feel strong and I have the sense that they will be ready for something special as soon as I get to the starting line in 14 days.

PM: Ski day #33 of the season.  Legs were really tired and the snow was really heavy due to high temps, so it could've been better.  Only stayed there for like 90 minutes.

Later PM: 3 mile hike/walk with Holly in City Creek Canyon.

Really tired now.  Time to watch Olympics. :)

AM: Taper has begun with an easy 7.5 at 7:37 average pace.  Since it's Sunday, I brought Holly and communed with a good group of folks, with whom I did 4 laps of Liberty, then a little out and back on 6th, then a mini lap of Liberty.  Others were going farther, but Holly was tired and starting to drag on the out and back on 6th, so we turned it around.  When we got back to Liberty, she had a drink and got some energy back, so we did one more mini loop of the park for 7.5 total.

PM: Ski day #34 of the season.  It was horrible at first (very windy with graupel snow that stung the face when riding fast), but it quickly tranisitioned to nice powder, making the last 2 hours of my 3 hour ski session remarkbly fun.  Legs felt infinitely better than yesterday and I rode pretty hard.

Ski day #35 of the season (thanks George Washington for having a birthday!), took the day off of running.  I'm only planning on running 5 days this week, since it's taper time.

Hah... didn't get home until after 10 PM and just didn't feel like running in the dark.  Guess I got my 2 days off this week already. :)

PM: Brighton night skiing.  6 degrees at the peak with 45 mph wind, gusting to 75 put the windchill in the -20s.  Pretty cold!

Later PM: 8.1 miles at ~marathon effort.  Course had 300' of uphill and 300' of downhill, so 6:18 pace was worth 6:12 on flat.  Altitude adjusted, if I could hold this for 26.2 here (I think i could, or very close to it) this would be worth 5:56-5:57 pace at sea level.  Interestingly, I timed it from home, but intentionally didn't wear a watch, so it was purely based on feel.

Holy crap.  Such a lazy taper.  I guess my body needs rest!  I haven't gotten enough sleep this week, but got in ski day #37 for the season in the AM before going to the lab.  I won't take another day off this week...  I swear.  I only wanted 40-50 miles, and I'll still hit 40 at least.

2 miles from campus (downhill) in 11:04, then 4.5 more easy miles.  Didn't have much time to run due to entertaining prospective students, but stopped by home and let Holly do 2 of it with me.

9 AM to 4 PM: long ski day at Brighton with prospective students.  Ski day #38 of the season and #5 of the week (also Sunday, Monday, Wednesday evening, Thursday AM).

5:30 PM: 8.2 miles easy with Holly.  Didn't wear a watch, intentionally, to avoid thinking about pace.  On 5th to Liberty, 2.75 trail loops, back on 7th/South Temple.  So warm out that I got to run without a shirt!  Apparently not all the locals liked this, as a drunk old man on a bicycle, who cut me off in a crosswalk while he was running a red light, called me a word inappropriate for posting on fastrunningblog (having to due with sexual orientation) and offered to fight me.  Interesting times. :)

Very light week of running, but I skied 5 times, so it felt like more than 30.3 miles.  Basically, I just decided to do what I felt like doing this week (other than doing workouts), and due to a few late nights, that only resulted in 4 runs.  I've been itching to run fast quite a bit this week, so I think my body is really getting primed up to race!

Ready to go for Saturday.  Wouldn't have taken yesterday off, but put in a 15 hour work day between lab and tutoring, so that killed off running.  Today, I did 4.6 with Holly with 3.1 easy and 1.5 faster.  I hesitate to call this marathon pace since they were so fast, but they just felt pretty solid and smooth.  First 2 were up to 11th and B, down canyon road, and up city creek a bit, then turned around and ran 1.5 down the 4% average grade at 5:37 pace.  Holly didn't want to run quite that fast and was pulling back a little bit over the last bit, but otherwise, it just felt smooth.  Legs felt very strong today, and I'm excited to race on Saturday.  The only downside at this point is that the weather forecasts don't look great (currently calling for rain and a pretty big headwind).  Considering that we're still 4 days out, I'm not putting much stock in it yet though.

I'll do another 4 or 5 easy miles tomorrow, and then do 2 the day before the race.

5 miles at 6:38 pace with a bit of hills (low 200s).  My place to Liberty, lap, and back.  Rest tomorrow, 2 miles Friday.  Ready to go!

Half mile @ 6:00, half mile @ 6:50.

Phoenix Marathon in 2:42:07. PR despite big headwind and rain.

I was really well tapered, more than usual, as I wanted to make sure that my hip wouldn't be at all irritated going in.  Training was optimal before that last easy 2 weeks, with 14 big weeks of training with all but one week in the 70s or 80s, and 38 days of skiing as hip strengthening/cross training.  In terms of race nutrition 2 hours before the race, I had a breakfast of 2 medium sized bananas, 4 95 calorie granola bars (lactose free), and 32 oz of powerade, so nearly 1000 calories.  During the race, I had Powerbar Gels (110 calories a piece, lots of sodium) at 6, 11, 15, and 21.  I was originally going to do 6, 11, 15, 19, and 22, but my stomach was a little bothered by the 3rd one and I could sense that I was completely fine energetically, so I decided to just do one more intsead of 2 more (it took me about a mile of very small sips to get the 4th one down).  I had about 1oz of water after each gel, and that was really all that I needed since it wasn't hot.  My stomach is normally quite sensitive, but this has worked well in several races straight, so this is going to be what I continue to do in the future.

Race-wise, we started out right after the rain really started to pick up.  It was coming down hard, but the wind was a cross-wind for the first 2 miles (2% downhill grade), so I ran 5:44 and 5:52 very comfortably for miles 1 and 2.  The 3rd mile turned directly into the wind, so while 3 and 4 were equally downhill, they were 5:59 and 5:55.  Miles 5 and 6 were both uphill, but a bit more shielded from wind, with the rain dying down a little bit (average of about 2% uphill, but 6 had more climb than 5), in 6:15 and 6:27.  7,8,9, and 10 got most of the rest of the downhill out of the way in 5:57, 5:54, 6:04, and 5:55, and was relatively shielded from wind.  10 mile split on the garmin was 60:02, but at this point, I was already about a tenth of a mile off  from what the the markers showed.  Somehow, after this point, it didn't get much worse, with the total only coming in at .12 long (compared to .19 long last year).  I think the turns weren't overly long almost ever in the 2nd half this year, whereas a few of the turns in the first half were way longer than the best road tangents.

Anyway, around 10 miles in, shortly after 2 guys came up and started running with me, we turned into a direct headwind, akin to miles 3 and 4, but without downhill, and lost all shielding until mile 22-ish.  13 to 15 was a crosswind, but otherwise, we were looking at full on 12mph headwind for 10 of the next 12 miles.  At this point, the course was very nearly flat, so in a good race without wind, 10 to 26 should be pretty even splits.  Mine were: 6:03 (pushed a little hard into the wind for 11), 6:10, 6:08, 6:11, and 6:08 for splits 11 to 15 (dropping the 2 guys again around 13 or so).  I started feeling a little soreness in my quads around 13, hitting the official half in 1:19:33 (13.22 on my watch), but nothing major.  Around 15, I was starting to get confident on running a massive PR, but started to realize that that I couldn't fade whatsoever if I wanted a sub-2:40.  The first half of this race should about a minute faster under ideal conditions, so I was literally within a few seconds of right on what I needed for 2:39:59 at the half.  I realized that I needed to average about 6:10s through to the finish to just go under 2:40, but this was becoming tough with the wind, and when I turned back into the wind fully on the 16th mile, I hit one more mile right at 6:10, but started slipping just slightly.  17-20 were 6:14, 6:15, 6:19, 6:17, with some pain creeping in more fully.

By about 18, I realized that I could probably hammer out a few more 6:10s without too much consequence, but if I tried to push that against the wind the whole way in, I'd almost certainly blow up, so I just decided to let effort dictate the pace and just hit whatever I could rather than gunning for 2:39:59 and blowing up to a much slower time.  At this point, the most helpful thing I could think of was a comment Andrea had previously made to Jake when he was shooting for 2:19...  If the goal time starts to slip, it is JUST AS IMPORTANT to hit a time 1 minute slower.  If that seems impossible, it is JUST AS IMPORTANT to hit a time 2 minutes slower, etc.  The most important thing is to always keep pushing at 100%.  This really kept me pushing as hard as possible over the last 7 miles or so.

21 and 22 were hard, but not quite full-on suicide mode: 6:19, 6:18.  At this point, I wanted to focus on keeping everything under 6:20 to the finish, but after 22, I just started to enter a whole new world of hurt.  At this point, the course was extremely crowded with half marathoners and I was losing rhythm a bit everytime they got in my way (all the time).  23-25 were pretty ugly in 6:26, 6:34, 6:26.  At 25 miles, I was hurting so badly that I would've almost just been content to keep it under 7:00 pace and get in under 2:43 (calculating for a little over a tenth of extra distance), but knew that I would be unhappy with myself if I didn't give it everything at that point.  26 was back into the 6-teens with a 6:18, and the last .32 was 5:42 pace.  That last 1.32 was pure torture, but I gritted my teeth (quite literally, and I'm sure I looked full on Kawauchi at this point) and got it done to come in at 2:42:07 (6:10 average pace).

My quads/calves/feet were all sore, but I felt like I maintained my form pretty well through to the finish, and a photo by blogger Ericka at ~mile 26 indicates that I was in fact hanging on pretty well.

I felt like I was going to die over the last 3-4 miles.  My splits don't quite indicate that, but I had to dig VERY deep for this one.  The main reason that I didn't fade more was that I had put all of my eggs in one basket with this race and was entirely unwilling to accept anything besides my best possible effort, no matter how agonizing it became.  Somewhat surprisingly, within 5 minutes of finishing, I was feeling pretty OK.  I did a 1 mile shake out about 90 minutes after finishing, and my legs were tired, but not all that sore, in very direct contrast to how I felt after last year's race.  I'm not sure why I hurt so much less afterwards despite feeling equally thrashed over the last few miles, but I think it was a combination of not being sick this year, more consistent training, having been back in the saddle for longer, and my pretty extreme taper.

As a whole, I think that going slightly more conservatively in the first 14 or 15 miles might have netted a time as much as 1 minute faster overall, but I'm not disappointed in my choice to go after it.  I wanted 2:39:59 or faster, and while that wasn't quite possible in this weather, I'm proud of myself for not shying away of my goals in the face of inclement weather.  The rain itself probably wasn't a factor at all, but I didn't expect it to be.  I do think I could've finished somewhere in the 2:39s or possibly even 2:38s without the headwind, but not quite getting there will motivate me to train hard again next time around.

Next up: rest until I'm sufficiently recovered and this marathon is completely out of my legs, and then hit sub-2:40 at Utah Valley in early Summer, with a half marathon (hopefully a one minute+ PR) and a trail race along the way as tune-ups.

Finally, thanks everyone for running with me and encouraging me the last few months!  I was 2:08 off what I wanted, but given the weather, I'm confident that I had the fitness to hit my goal under ideal conditions.  It was really nice to see how well consistency worked.  I'd never really lined up at a marathon with a long string of consistent mileage and workouts like this before, so I finally understand the following now:

-Consistency is almost certainly most important thing in marathon training.

-Being well rested for workouts is important, so going easy on easy days really does matter.

-I don't need to kill myself in every workout.  The goal is to perform well in the race, not the workout.  It's OK to push a couple of them to nearly race effort in the training cycle, but doing this too often isn't necessary or good.  That's probably part of what got me injured last year.

-Doing crazy things in training isn't necessary.  Sticking to a reasonable plan is.

Up at 4:15 AM to fly back to Salt Lake.  What a beautiful afternoon to spend actively recovering in the mountains with some skiing at Snowbird after spending the morning playing with my pup.  The skiing was mostly mellow, but I got in some great lines on Upper Cirque, Mach Schnell, and Dalton's Draw.

I took a single dose of tylenol before skiing and it wound up being very pleasant, although my legs were quite tired afterwards.

Ate a bunch of chocolates from http://www.chocolatierblue.com/.  This is basically the same as running, right?  Let me be honest: these chocolates are mankind's greatest achievement.

Lifted today (as well as yesterday). Totally fine in day to day life post-marathon at this point.  No tiredness at all anymore.  Ready to get back to running, but I promised myself a minimum of a week off, so I'm going to wait until Saturday.  First couple weeks back will be light!

First run back, then 40th day of skiing for the season!

My place to Memory Grove, up to City Creek, and then on the trail, out and back, with Holly.  A hair over 8:00 pace.  Felt like I hadn't run in a week, but essentially recovered from the marathon other than a slightly tight left calf.

41st ski day of the year, then lifted weights (seems to be my go-to off season exercise), then did a hair under 4 miles with Holly at 7:29 pace.  My place to Memory Grove, up to City Creek, around the capital, down to North Temple, and back.  Nice short run, and the left calf tightness from yesterday was gone.  I felt game for plenty more, but there's just no reason to push it right now.  I'd rather stay healthy than risk flaring my hip by jumping back into things too fast.

Lifted, then, 5 miles on a treadmill at 6:35 pace.  Feeling totally smooth, although this pace is still harder than it was prior to the marathon.

Parents in town, no run.

Ski day #42 of the season, with my parents at Deer Valley.

Ski day #43 of the season, with my parents at Park City.

Lifted weights, then did an easy 4.5 miles at low 7:00 pace, from campus to Sugarhouse and back.

First, ski day #44 of the season at Snowbird.  Lapped Wilbere Chute and Bowl off the Cirque the entire time.  Skied quite hard actually.

Next, lifted weights.

Finally, easy 5.2 miles with Holly at 7:17 average pace.  To Liberty Park, one lap, and back.  Could be doing more mileage right now, but there's no point, and it's probably a bad idea, as I might as well have a real off season of a couple weeks.

Ski day #45. Lazy with my running.

Off season has been good and lazy. :) First run in a few days... Treadmill... First3 @ 6:00 flat, 4th in 5:49, 5th in 5:14. Overall, definitely harder than it would be if I were in shape. :)

Early PM: Ski day #46 of the year.  All I ski lately is stuff off of the Cirque.  It's pretty awesome.

Later PM: 6 miles, longest run in 3 weeks!  Hah!  Did the first few at trail marathon effort, but rolled my ankle on a rocky section at about 3.5 miles (badly enough that I had to sit and stretch it for 10 minutes) , so I just kind of ran easy from there.  7:59 average pace for what happened to be exactly 6.00 miles.

Ski day 47 at Park City with old college roommate.

Was actually ready to start back up early this week, but my massively swollen rolled ankle on Saturday forced another week off.  5.7 miles of hilly trails with Nate and Josh at 8:08 pace.  They did more, but apparently I'm going to attempt a long-ish run with them tomorrow, so I opted to keep today short.

Ski day 48 at snowbird. Snow was sadly really bad...

Windy 9.1 with Fritz and Josh. Ready to start training again. I'm off for ski day number 49 of the year now.

Registered for Provo City Half and am still planning on the low-key BOSHO trail marathon next weekend, so better start training well again now that I've spent some money on the season. :)  

Worked 15 hours, but still fit in both a run and a lift, so that was good.  The only catch was that I didn't go to bed until 5:30 AM. Hah.

Run: 6 mile TM tempo after lifting.  5:57, 5:54, 5:55, 5:55, 5:55, 5:43.  Felt harder than it should've, but I'll be back in shape soon enough!

6.1 with Holly (to South Temple to 9th to 13th to 5th and back with an extra 2 blocks for good measure) at 7:24 average pace.

7 ish at lunch with Nate and Adam. Nobody had a Garmin, but we did a few minutes shy of an hour on a combo of roads and trails at an easy effort

Ski day #50 at Brighton (night) with the gf.

Ski day #51 of the season at Deer Valley with the gf, then dinner at Mariposa, which was utterly fantastic.

19.2 miles in MN, from my house to Pine Point Park and back.  Figured I should get in a long run if I'm still wanting to do the BOSHO trail marathon on Saturday.  Probably went harder than I needed to and kept every mile under 7:00, despite a lot of hills and a LOT of slow snow on the trail.  Felt good during the run with an average pace was 6:47, but legs were a little sore afterwards.  I was surprised not to bonk, considering that this was more than twice as long as my next longest run in the last 5 1/2 weeks, in addition to the fact that I only ate 100 calories of skittles over the run (a few 3 times between miles 10 and 17).  I'd like to get another decent effort in tomorrow, but it depends on how my legs feel.

8.3 miles at 7:03 average pace, mostly roads with some trail, relatively rolling, with a fair amount of wind.  The easier your effort, the more benefit you get, pace wise, when running at low altitude, compared to UT altitude.  I was certain I was running no faster than 7:30 pace (didn't wear a GPS), but when I got home, I found it to be 7:03 AP.  Awesome.  Route was to Katherine Abbott, out the far side, up to Chatham, up to Warner, to Gateway, to Jamaca, to 80th, to Hickory, to Park, to Ash, and back home through the Streetcar path and Wildridge.  Legs a little sore from yesterday, but not bad.  Hip is fine, which is good.

BOSHO Trail marathon, basically off the couch, run on all the fitness I could gain from a 19.2 mile long run 4 days ago, and nothing else of value since March 1st.  I got 2nd in a time 6 minutes slower than my 2nd place time from last year, and missed the win by a little less than 4 minutes.  I led for the first 10, shared the lead until 16, lost it on an uphill, almost regained it at 18, but then a gnarly blister on my left heel exploded and it slowed me down.  The trails were in good condition, but it was pretty hot and I think everyone up front got pretty dehydrated over the last hour or two, thanks to all of us carrying only one bottle and there only being aid stations to refill at miles 4, 10, and 21.  I obviously could run faster here if I show up with more than one run of significance in the last 6 weeks.  Legs feel great afterwards (trail races just don't beat you up the same way), but the last 8 miles on the exploded blister were very painful and I couldn't really walk afterwards.  The inside of my Nikes are pretty bloodstained, so I think it's a good time to throw them out and get some Saucony XC flats.  More on the race later.

Photo by Jared Campbell

Heel blister was extremely bad and very painful all week until yesterday/today, and my legs felt more hammered than expected, so I just decided to let things heal.  Time to start training for real!  I'm leaning towards just waiting until the fall to do another full marathon and taking the time to build up a new really solid base in the mean time (biiiiig summer mileage before getting into workouts).  I can wait a little longer to go sub-2:40. :)

8.1 miles with Holly at 10 PM, after day #54 of skiing for the season.  Mostly around 7:15-7:20 pace with a bit of hills, but picked up 5, 6, and 7 at 6:35 pace.  With altitude and a little hills, coupled with my rather poor fitness at the moment, that felt pretty hard.  Hah.  Nevertheless, real training has officially commenced again!

Similar route to yesterday.  My place to 9th/south temple to 21st to 5th, and back.  Mostly low 7:00 pace, but did miles 2 and 5 at tempo (5:49, 5:51) for 6:52 ap.  Pretty warm, even at 11:30 PM!

Lift + treadmill workout.  1 mile warm-up at 6:46 and then 9 miles of tempo.

2: 6:00

3: 6:00

4: 6:00

5: 6:00

6: 6:00

7: 5:58

8: 5:56

9: 5:54

10: 5:35

I felt surprisingly good.  The initial plan was just to do 8 at 6:00 pace, but I felt good, so I just rolled with it.  I definitely had more miles in me at this pace, but the gym was closing, so this was what I got.  Maybe I won't completely die in Provo City Half next weekend after all. :)

2.5 tempo into work at 6:44 average pace (2-3% average grade uphill) to get my Garmin and better shoes, then 1 easy (6:5x pace), then 2.5 @ 5:04 pace (3-4% average grade downhill), then 1.5 mile cooldown.  Actually, on that 2.5, I accidentally didn't start my watch for .5 miles, so I only caught 2 of it, but I figure my pace was pretty consistent.  What's sad is that it's nearly impossible for me to currently run 38 year old Meb's marathon pace for 2.5 miles on a downhill.  Hah.

I don't feel like killing myself in June at Utah Valley Marathon, so instead of signing up for that, I signed up for the Drop13 half on the same day (down BCC).  That race is obviously ridiculously downhill, but I signed up to have some fun with it and try to get an elite status qualifier for St George (1:13:00).  I calculate that a 1:15:00 on a pancake flat course at sea level with no sharp turns (or 1:15:30-1:16:00 on a typical "fast" course) would equate to 1:11:20 here, despite the altitude, so I think I should be able to get it.  I'm really excited about training again lately and, as can be seen from most of what I've done this week, I'm excited about running FAST, so this seems like a reasonable goal for me.  Going to do something long-ish tonight.

Run: Just 10 miles.  Going longer with Fritz tomorrow.  Treadmill at gym since it was windy and I was being a wimp.  64:31, mostly 6:30-6:50, then last mile in 5:31.

With Fritz.  Ran from my place to meet him at Memory Grove, then 5 miles up that and City Creek, then down to canyon road, up to 11th, to Virginia, down to 3rd, and back home.  7:15 AP with all those hills, basically high 6:00s effort, so a pretty decent run.  It was 44 in the city, so probably high 30s at the highest point in our run, in additino to being really rainy. I learned the difference between snow jackets (what I was wearing, and which soaked through), and rain jackets, so I was pretty cold by the end.  Fritz was nice enough to give me socks to wear on my hands as gloves, as I realized by the time i met up with him after .4 miles that my hands were going to freeze.  Overall, felt good.  Time to tutor and then hit up the fresh powder!

With Fritz, Adam, Rob, and Allie.  7:27 AP.  Legs were slightly stiff after skiing quite hard yesterday afternoon, but loosened up nicely.  Now off for ski day #56 of the season.

7 miles easy with Holly at like midnight.  My place to 9th East to 9th South to Liberty, loop of Liberty, and back the way I came. 7:33 AP.

Was going to do 5 at half marathon pace on the treadmill, but I felt good, so I did a pick-up type tempo run instead.  5:49, 5:40, 5:39 (nervous to go much faster, even though it felt relaxed), 5:34, 5:17.  Felt really great tonight.  I could tell I was moving, but it felt fluid.  I'm really excited to be focusing on a half marathon in June instead of a full.  Working on speed with some shorter workouts for awhile is going to be really fun!  In any case, I was going to do something longer, but this was the time I had, so this is what I did.

Ski day 57 of the season, then worked until 11pm.

So busy lately... Ugh... 5.2 with 1 like at 6:00 even on a gradual net uphill (.5% ish). Didn't get to run until 1am.

2 mile warmup, Provo City Half Marathon in 1:15:40 (13th place), 1.3 mile cooldown. Got up at 4:15 AM, left to drive to Provo at 4:30, had to wait until 5:45 to get on a bus, but jogged around down there for about a mile. Waited for a portal potty for almost exactly 30 minutes at the start (seriously, what a mess... these guys need to fix this...), then jogged another mile before starting.

Race went off and I went out hard. I figured I could go sub-1:17 based on my 1:15:33 time last year with a ton of workouts under my belt, and with better baseline fitness this year, but almost no training in about 2 months. I figured I'd have some fun, so I went out in 5:30 and 5:32 for the quite downhill first 2. These didn't feel overly taxing, but my calves didn't feel fantastic based on my current poor fitness and I was nervous about a possible cramp. 3rd mile had quite a few rolls, isn't downhill overall, and is a bit deceiving, so that was a 5:50. 4th mile was back to 5:39.  Mile 5 was a 5:45. At this point, my legs were feeling OK, but not great.  Mile 6 was a 5:47, and 7 was a 5:46.  At this point, I felt like I had a good rhythm going and was getting confident that I could hold it to the finish and somehow eke out a 1:14:xx, despite starting to feel kind of crappy.  Mile 8 kept up this trend with a 5:45.  However, once I turned out of the canyon, I got a blast of headwind and my pace dropped about 10s/mile for a 5:55 in mile 9.  Mile 10, also 5:55, started to feel like quite a fight, and when I saw Spence waiting for the 5k start at the 10 mile mark, I commented that I was "bleeding all over the course at this point". At this point, with a big hill in mile 11, in addition to the wind, I just wanted to keep everything under 6:00, and barely continued that trend with a 5:59 for mile 11.  Unfortunately, the mile 11 marker was way off (the markings on the ground were within .01 of my Garmin for everything up until the last one I had seen at 9, but mile 11 was 11.15 miles in on my Garmin).  I started to realize that even a PR wasn't going to happen, since I was going to have to cover 13.25 miles, but I saw Dave Taylor up ahead and locked onto him, focused on passing him after losing our last 2 encounters by a small number of seconds (Running of the Leopards and Provo City 2013).  I made a big push in mile 12 (5:47) and caught him at about 11.75.  The marker was once again at 12.15 at my watch, and I didn't think I'd catch anyone else, so I made the mistake of backing off a little bit in the 13th mile (5:55).  By the time I hit 13 miles, I realized that the distance actually was correct, and the 11 and 12 mile markers had just been in the wrong spot, but at this point it was too late to really kick in to a PR and I finished up the last .1 in 35 seconds to hit a 1:15:40, 7 seconds off of last year's time and my PR.  Of course, I also just narrowly missed nipping another guy, whom I caught at about mile 13 and then lost in the kick down the stretch (I had no sprint in me today).  Overall, I consider this race to be quite successful given how little I've done lately, but I wish I had found another 8 seconds to nab a PR.

Post race, legs were really beat, and I know that even if I had PRd, I was in better shape at last year's race, when I felt completely fine and capable of more miles in the 5:40s after the finish.  Last year, I went out conservatively and split my fastest miles at the end of the race.  This year, I went out hard, faded, and hung on for a similar time.  I'd rather race like last year's when possible, but it's fun to sometimes push a bit too hard and really test my mettle over the finishing miles.

My girlfriend Daria just flew into town for a long weekend, so I'll take a few days off to recover in order to avoid a massive injury like what I got after last year's race, and then I'll hopefully be able to finally hit some consistency with my training again for the first time in 2 months.

Oh, and great job to everyone that ran fast times here today.  This is really not the fast course that people make it out to be.  If you plug it into Daniels, it's nearly a minute slower than a pancake flat course at sea level (a little over 2 minutes gained from the net downhill, but 3 minutes lost from the altitude), which means that guys like Fritz and Nate had some ridiculous monster runs today.  There's debate among some Utah runners over how much altitude affects longer aerobic performances, but I can say that my experience very closely matches the Daniels tables I use to calculate my conversions, well within a typical day-to-day performance margin.  For example, a tempo / half marathon pace effort on identical terrain, ie on top of the line $10k treadmills, at sea level is typically 14 seconds per mile faster for in MN than in Utah, converting to almost exactly 3 minutes in a half marathon.  However, 5k races for me are run in a time different by only 5 seconds per mile, while my easy runs with identical effort are the better part of a minute faster at sea level.  The easier you're going, the more the altitude slows you down.  People don't always want to believe it, but running a monster time here would indicate even more ridiculous fitness on a half marathon course along the lines of that found in the Dubai Marathon.  Of course, there are very few sea level courses that are legitimately pancake flat, and even fewer that are as straight as Provo City, so a "fast" sea level course may actually be closer to comparable, but a few really fast, but totally fair, courses could yield 1:06s for someone like Fritz, and you can take that to the bank.

Edit: To give additional backup to my last paragraph, I've plotted out Daniels' calculated effects of 5000' of altitude, on various distances from 1 mile to 50 miles, for racers that could, in a maximum effort, achieve 6:00 pace at each of the race distances.  The x-axis is the distance of the race in miles, while the y-axis is the number of additional seconds required, per mile, to complete the race at 5000' instead of at sea level.  The result we see is interesting.  Obviously, the longer the race, the more aerobic the effort, and the more the athlete depends on oxygen levels.  This is why sprinters and jumpers can fare better at altitude, while distance runners fare worse.  This part is not surprising.  What is surprising is that the curve, if plotted to longer distances, reveals an oblique rather than a horizontal asymptote.  Of course, this is purely hypothetical, as it is likely impossible to be properly trained to race a distance of 100 miles.  Beyond 50 miles, aerobic potential becomes less important in the face of muscle cramps, nutritional issues, etc.

Please note that this relationship assumes that the athlete is completely acclimated to 5000'.  If the athlete is not acclimated, the results will be far worse than what I've indicated.

Nice day:(Daria in the photo above).

Hiked with Daria, Holly, and Nala (we were doggy-sitting) in North Salt Lake, but it started raining hard, so we ran a few miles to get back more quickly.  3 miles in jeans and leather boots, but at least the boots were comfy!

Avenues loop without a watch.  Raining hard during the run.

Natural History Museum to Mt Wire trailhead, up to the peak, and back.  Somehow did it in 50 minutes, but I guess I was pushing pretty hard.  The run only converts to 6:06/mile effort on a flat course (ie without 2200' feet of uphill and 2200' of downhill) at sea level, but considering the technical nature of the trails, it seems pretty good.  The soft trails are good for avoiding injury this week. 

6 miles, easy, with James at 7:20 AP around campus.  It was raining pretty hard for some of the run.  The weather sucks this week!

Ski day #59.  Legs were sore afterwards.

11.6 miles with Jake and Fritz from Highland at 7:15 AP.

Finally get to run St George!  Got in via the lottery today!

Run: 12.6 miles at 7:09 AP.  My place to 9th East to 33rd S, around Harmon's, on 13th E to Highland, to 21st S, to 9th East to South Temple, back home.

Lifted weights very briefly in the middle of working, but got home late and was lazy.  Was OK, as legs were sore.

Little Black Mountain up and down from JCC parking lot, 3100'+ net climb, probably about 3300' total with a very minor amount of roll in a couple places.  Hit Dry Creek (official start for this run, at least for me) in 2:00, Unkel F...er Peak/Ridge in 24:18 (22:18 dry creek to Unkel split), and the pseudo-peak with the logbook at 50:16 (48:16 total climb from Dry Creek).  Both the split and the pseudo-peak times were the fastest I've hit.  Hip was a little testy near the top, after 3100' of net climb, but was OK by the time I got down.  Total Dry Creek trailhead to trailhead was 1:17:27, with a JCC parking lot to JCC parking lot in 1:21:06.  Run down would've been faster if I hadn't accidentally packed Kinvaras, which are horrendous on trails. Hah.  Want more specific GPS data, but I can't seem to find it since getting home.  Hope it turns up...

Also, found this incredible study today: 

A bit more than 3 laps of Burke Lake on the muddy / hilly xc path at 5:58 pace. A hair harder than marathon effort. Felt honestly pretty relaxed, which is awesome. Sea level makes such a massive difference for half marathon + distances.

Mahtomedi loop with Daria riding a bike alongside me.  I feel super out of shape after not running for 3 days (drove halfway across the country in the last 2 days, and have been extremely busy otherwise).  Somehow, however, easy pace was 6:25 / mile, even with a little bit of rolls.  Woohoo, sea level.

Testing out the new Saucony Shay XC3s.  North Salt Lake, along Bosho up Guinea Hill, stopped at Guinea Point, up to the ridgeline to the radiotowers, along to the highest towers, too far along the ridgeline, back down some pseudotrails and then bombed down a nice trail-less slant back into the neighborhood, then back.  With Holly.  Liked the shoes a lot.

Skied for the 61st time of the season.  Was planning to run later, but just got really tired after dinner and went to bed.

Averaged about 7:00 pace for the Jeremy Ranch run (finally did this) with Fritz, Jake, Josh, Rob, John, and James.  Felt great through all the hills, although the faster last couple miles felt a bit tougher.  Skied for the 62nd and final time of the season afterwards.  Since it was closing weekend, I rode in my galaxy print shorts and no shirt, which was pretty awesome, at least until I realized that I had gotten a moderately bad sunburn.  Wish I could ski more...

A little under 9 miles at 6:46 AP with a couple hundred feet of hills.  Came within less than an inch of being hit by a bicyclist who was cutting a corner through the tip of a sidewalk while running a red light to make a right turn without even slowing down.  A mile later, I got cut off badly by an SUV in a crosswalk (once again, they were trying to turn against a red light).  I am exceedingly aware of what's going on around me when I'm running, but I have close calls on a very regular basis.  I seriously don't understand how so many people here make it through life without killing a pedestrian.

Half mile warmup, Wahsatch Steeplechase Course (16.3 miles), half mile cooldown.  Didn't eat beforehand, and managed to bonk only a bit over an hour into the run, which made it pretty miserable.  I was planning to time trial it, but managed to get into "just complete" mode before I even got to the peak, so it was exceedingly slow to complete the course (2:46), with a lot of time lost in the last half mile of climb, the crag section, and the descent down Smuggler's Gap.  Once I hit the road, I fumbled 6:20 pace on the nice downhill and then ran low 7s down the trail portion.  Not my best day, but at least I didn't end up hammering my legs as badly as I could have.  I'd like to run this course again at some point when I'm feeling better, as I think I could run somewhere close to 2:25 on a good day.

Felt pretty beat up from the Steeplechase bonk outing the night before, so my outing with Josh and Fritz felt quite rough.  Mueller Park / North Canyon loop.  I let Fritz and Josh go on the climb and then ran with them on the descent until we were halfway along the road.  We were only going 7:10 pace or so (on a downhill, at that), but my feet felt pretty beat up from 2 days in a row of pounding on rocks in very minimalist shoes and my quads felt trashed, so I told them to go and just jogged in 7:45 pace for the last mile.  Getting back into shape is a blast! Hah.  Total loop time was 1:44.

6.4 up and down Grandeur with Daria (very easy pace, but still fun).

Morning run with Josh, James, and Adam (until I missed them after stopping at the 711 bathroom and had to run back on my own).  Last 2 averaged 6:15-ish.

PM: 1.8 miles to Liberty with the first at MP (6:11), then 3 easy miles with Daria.

9.4 miles with the 9th mile at 6:05 pace.  My place to South Temple/9th East to 21st South to 13th East to South Temple, to C, and back.

Lazy.  Felt drained from the heat after playing a handful of rounds of disk golf.

5.4 miles from home to Hancock Fabrics to pick up some needles for Daria.  Ran there at exactly 6:30 pace, which actually felt pretty darn easy, but still promised myself that I'd run slower on the way back since I'm racing on Saturday.  5.4 home at 7:20 pace.  Then did 2.4 miles with Daria up and down D at 9:20 pace.  Hit 70.1 miles in the last 7 days.  First time I've broken 70 in a one week span since February. Hah.

6 with Josh and Adam at 6 AM.  West High to Memory Grove, up City Creek a bit, and back.

Another mile on the Diskgolf course collecting items I managed to lose.

Was an idiot and thought the Drop13 half was Saturday, when it was next Saturday.  Otherwise, I'd have run more.  Hah.

A lot of active time outside, but no run!

Bottom of City Creek up the road, and then another 4.35-ish miles along the trail at the top before turning around and coming back down.  Interestingly the trail at the top is officially only 2 miles or something like that, but it goes much much farther than that, just not particularly well maintained.  Watch had me at 7:50 pace up the road, and then was screwy above that on the trail in sections with lots of turns and lots of branches overhead (everytime it started turning much, the pace would just dramatically, so it was measuring a little short).  I turned around when it was at 9.8 and figured that I was at least 10 miles into the run, based on how much faster the pace was registering when the overhead was clear.  In the last mile on the way out, I ran into a few patches of snow, which was kind of fun.  I turned around and came back down to the road, seeing a massive moose on the trail in front of me half a mile before I hit the road (just a bit before Smuggler's Gap).  Surprisingly, it was more scared of me than I was of it, so I didn't have an issues.  Once I hit the road, I kept it easy for a tenth or two and then launched into tempo mode for 4 miles (14 on the watch, probably more like 14.5).  Mile 15 was 5:15, mile 16 (downhill, but a couple nasty-ish rollers compared to the uphill) was 5:35 (yeah, probably backed off too much), mile 17 was 5:03 (nice gradual downhill), and mile 18 was 5:08 (2 significant uphills mixed in but pushed it quite hard).  Hitting this 4 mile stretch in 21:02 (5:15 AP) was certainly encouraging and actually faster than I expected to be able to comfortably hit.  Last 1.5 was a cooldown. Partway through mile 19, my watched screwed up and randomly added on two tenths, so that mile got screwed up (was running over 7:00 pace, and it jumped down so much that it logged me as 5:42 finishing the mile, ie .8).  Watch finished at 19.8, which should've been 19.6 with the shortened upper city creek, which should've been probably 20-ish.  Even if I was slightly short, and only hit 19.6 (I'm very sure this is wrong), I still hit 14 to 18 in 21:02 at what felt like half marathon effort and sustainable for 13 miles if fresh, which even with copius downhill, is extremely good for me right now.  Overall, definitely an encouraging run.

Had moderate soreness in my right hip (the long time problem one) after the previous day's run, so I took a day off.  That said, I'm not particularly worried about it.  It never felt misaligned or off balance, even afterwards, and it felt more just like a localized soreness than an injury.  It's hard to describe exactly, but basically, there's a certain sort of off-balance feeling that really indicates possibility of injury, while general soreness in the area isn't necessarily so bad... I did a hard run on Sunday, and my hip is still the weakest link, so that's probably why it was the only really sore part of my body.  With all of that in mind, I still really want to be careful, so I'm not going to take unnecessary risks.  I spent close to an hour doing a couple sets of stretches (both static and active), which made things feel a lot better.

7 miles with a moderate bit of hills (my place up to M, down to South Temple, along 9th to 17th, to 7th, to south temple to E, home) at a steady state pace (6:43 average).  Would've done more, but couldn't get out the door until 10:30 and didn't want to be up super late.  Hip felt fine.  Worth noting is that I've started taking the Meloxicam prescription again just to be safe.  Now that ski season is over, I don't have that twice-a-week physical therapy bolstering things, so it's really important that I'm proactive with stretching, strengthening exercises, and taking anti-inflammatories until ski season starts up again.  I don't expect to have any setbacks this summer and am pretty confident in my ability to manage it, but, that depends on being careful.  Unfortunately, I doubt I'm going to be able to really kick my mileage up super high from now until the end of July like I wanted, but we'll see.  In any case, I think St George training is officially starting.  I'm glad that I've been pretty lazy for a few months.  I've somehow managed to maintain fitness pretty well with minimal mileage and now I have the opportunity to start from there and take 4 months to really get myself ready for St George.

One other note: why do my Kinvaras never last as long as other peoples'?  My current pair has 330.5 miles on them and they're getting pretty thrashed.  Lame.

Hosting a few of Daria's friends who were traveling across the country.  Took the night off.

To Liberty, 2 laps on/outside the mulch, to State, up State, back home.  Didn't wear a watch in order to not be tempted to run fast.  Nice and easy.

A little jogging before the start, then Drop 13 Half Marathon win in 1:10:40.  This course is very aided.  I went out very easily in 5:03, and no-one was within 30-40 seconds, so I backed off and settled into a mid-5:20s average.  I'm not sure what to say about this race.  I really didn't feel like I cared much once I knew it would be an easy win.  Time trialing seemed irrelevant, as the time is obviously not something I could run on a fair course, and winning wasn't going to be too hard, so I just settled into 90-95% effort.  Around mile 7, I started to feel a hot spot under my right foot, which got a lot worse over the last 6, but never slowed me down.  At mile 9-ish, the screaming downhill after the Stairs plant really hurt my quads, but they recovered once it got back to a 4% grade.  At mile 10, the cop escort slowed until he was alongside me and told me that I had a 5 minute gap on 2nd place.  I debated just backing off to avoid injury and speed the process of recovery, but figured I'd keep the effort consistent, as I was on track for sub-1:11, which sounded awesome.  Mile 12 was very annoying, as I had to run down a 2-flight set of stairs to get onto a bike path, which broke up the rhythm.  If I'm not mistaken, I was supposed to join the bike path 20 feet further along on the other side of the road, but the volunteers seemed adamant that I had to go down the stairs, so I did.  I realized I'd have to work a bit over the last mile to get under 1:11, so I pushed the 13th mile.  When the course flattened out for the last mile (less than .1% downhill, so very nearly flat), I kept the pace in the low 5:40s, so that was good.  All that said, I'm pretty sure that the cops at the last turn sent me into the wrong lane, as the last 1.1 ended up being only 1.05, and the markers, while slightly variable when meeting up with aid stations in the canyon, were previously quite accurate, at least on average.  So yeah, I had 13.05 in 1:10:39 (granted, I did briefly lose signal after going under the bridge in mile 12, so that's probably part of it), and they had me as 13.1 in 1:10:40.  Either way, I'd have been in the high 1:10s, with a slight negative split, so I don't really care.

In terms of my time, I calculated that a 1:09-mid/high (a little under a minute faster) would've been equivalent to my Provo City half time, aerobically.  The difference here is the need to have the ability to handle all of the pounding, so I figured that an equal pain effort would probably be slightly slower than the equivalent time.  My quads/calves held up remarkably well, but I have a massive blister on the bottom of my right foot, and one of my left toenails has blood coming out of it, so my feet didn't take it so well.  With all this in mind, I think a full on honest effort could've been as fast as 1:08-high, but I'd have been significantly increasing my chance of injury by doing so, so I'm glad that I ran as I did.  In the end, I won by 8 minutes in a field with just shy of 1000 registered (maybe only 600 actually running, somehow), so that seems pretty solid to me.

It'll be interesting to see how my recovery goes.  I'm a bit more sore than after, say, Provo City, but not by much, other than the mangled feet.  In any case, I'd say that the overall takeaway is that I'm happy with how I ran today.

Oh, and also, major shoutout to my girlfriend Daria for getting up at 4:15 to drive me to a 4:50am bus pickup, and being one of only a few spectators around when I finished.  She's pretty awesome.

Leopard print paid off today:

With Holly and Daria. Bowman Fork to Alexander Basin and back on Mill Creek road. Legs were pretty beat up.

Took off most of the week due to soreness that didn't seem worth running through - it was actually quite bad during and after Sunday's run.  I've been active outside (I've really taken a liking to disc golf lately, and play 2 rounds most days), but haven't run since Sunday.  Downhill is hard on the legs, even at a sub-maximal aerobic effort!  Anyway, I did 7.2 on JRP with Adam and James at early o'clock. Felt good for the first couple miles today, but then felt the soreness creep back in.  I think I'm past the worst of it though!  Wasn't really paying attention to pace all that carefully and don't have my watch handy, but the first mile was high 7s and the last was right around 7 flat, so I'm guessing mid-7s average.

Up and down Bowman Fork to Baker Pass. 57 up at what felt somewhere in the ballpark of marathon effort, 33 down, easy. This used to seem like a serious climb, but it's pretty routine now. Min elevation 6275', max elevation 9369', total climb of 3300'.

In Dallas for the Neural Interfaces Conference and forgot my shorts.  I have shoes, Garmin, running socks, ipod, but forgot shorts.  Seriously?

Still in Dallas for the Neural Interfaces Conference with no running shorts.  Didn't want to miss another day, so I asked around and borrowed a pair of basketball shorts.  Ran 8.4 miles easy (my hotel to downtown, halfway on a rather muddy bike trail under a ridiculous amount of construction, and then randomly around a surprisingly crummy downtown) at 6:31 AP at 11 PM in disgustingly humid conditions (98% relative humidity).  Garmin had 8.21, but I lost connection for over a minute going under a bridge (it dropped satellite and didn't add the lost distance when it recalculated, so a mile previously at 6:20 pace prior to dropped satellite ended at 7:40, so I just applied the average pace for that mile over that gap in time).  Once again, despite disgustingly humid conditions, running in basketball shorts and a t-shirt that got obscenely drenched (needed one since I was staying in a hotel and had to walk out through the lobby), and having had a massive dinner and 2 beers shortly before my run, the pace for an easy (ie, very aerobic) run at nearly sea level (400') was SO MUCH FASTER than in Salt Lake.  This effort would not have been within 20 seconds per mile even under ideal flat conditions in Utah.  Altitude makes all the difference in the world.  That said, despite the fast sea level pace and the ability to run on very flat terrain if so desired (I literally had zero feet of elevation change registered on my Garmin in the first 2.12 miles, which was mostly on a toe-path, and the high point and the low point of my run were only 28 feet apart), that humidity was so disgusting that I have very little interest in ever running here again.  Excited to get back to Utah tomorrow.

Other notes:

1. Boy is it humid here.  This is 5 minutes after finishing my run:

I'm pretty sure I'm actually in a swamp.

2. Do Texans not care at all about the Mavericks?  I thought they were popular, but their stadium, at least from the outside, appeared really tiny.

Tempo run on trails at 6000' with almost exactly (just over) 1000' of elevation gain (pipeline plus some connectors).  I hadn't really attempted to run Pipeline fast previously, but looking at the GPS data, I feel relieved.  Average pace was in the 6:20s and felt pretty hard, like actually half marathon pace, but it's a lot more undulating than I realized.  Correlating to flat and sea level (assuming actual half marathon effort) would give 5:55 pace, which sounds very slow for a half marathon, but considering that it was quite rocky and full of turns, that's actually not bad.

Rather serious trail and road run.  16 miles, 4000'+ up, 4000'+ down. From Brighton, up Milly, through SolBright to Twin Lakes Pass, down to Alta, up Cardiff Pass, down the BCC side into Cardiff Fork.  This part was a little treacherous, as I had to sidestep across some very steep snow slides, which I'm not a fan of.  Down into Cardiff road eventually, a little loop of that campsite right before Big Cottonwood Road, and then Garmin died .2 miles from the road (9.8 on the Garmin).  Then, 5.8 miles back up the road with a .2 mile venture into Spruces to refill water.  The road portion was longer and steeper than I remembered and I really pushed myself hard on the 2nd big climb (Cardiff), so I was really out of it on the road and even had to walk a couple of the steepest sections.  Finished in sort of a daze, but hey, that sometimes happens when getting endurance back and doing 2 1/2 + hour outings.  Total drop was 3990' in the first 9.8, and I'm sure I had more than 10' of drop in the last 6.2 miles, even with an almost pure uphill, so given a loop and equal up down, total gain and loss were both somewhere between 4000' and 4100', ie, not easy.  My feet held up fine in the 5.x oz Shay XC shoes, but I found myself being quite careful on rocky sections, so I'll just get some Kinvara TR2s for Speedgoat in a month.

GPS of the first 9.8:

Elevation of the first 9.8:

The last 6.2 miles really sucked.  I seemed to recall Brighton being 8500 and Mill D being 7800, for 700' of climb on the road, not 8750 and 7300 for 1450' of climb.  Hah.

Lazy.  Felt tired after playing a lot of disc golf.

11.7 miles, 7:24 AP.  Legs were a little sore starting out (quads were I guess a little beat after Sunday's run, which is a bad sign for my ability to run well at Speedgoat), but loosened up a bit and felt better at the end.  My place to M to 9th East to 33rd South  to 7th East to South Temple to E to my place.  At about 7 miles in, I looked down to check my watch, extended my elbow to the left, and immediately smacked my forearm into a stationary garbage bin.  It's still pretty sore and has a nice bruise.  Nice work, me.

Other note I was thinking about tonight... My A6s have over 250 miles on them and are in really good shape still.  It's amazing, but I'll probably get roughly 500 miles out of them, which is likely to be more mileage than I'll get from my current Kinvaras.

Didn't get out until after midnight; kept things really chill.  10.2 miles at 7:47 AP.  My place to 5th East to 27th South to Main (saw like 8 cop cars swarming some truck near 27th and Main, which was kind of nuts), and back home, with a couple extra blocks in the avenues for no particular reason.  Not my most inspired run, but they're usually a slog when I'm out this late.

Still trying to figure out the balance between wanting to spend all of my time with Daria and training properly.  Didn't run.  Oops.

Josh tried to transfer me a 5k race entry, but the race director never replied to my multiple emails about the transfer, so I decided not to wake up at 6 AM for a race that I probably wouldn't even get to run.  I haven't done much of anything fast in ages, so it might not have been an exceptional race for me anyway.  Josh, if you read this, thanks for trying.

Instead, did 11.6 at 7:28 AP.  Midnight run to see all the drunk celebrators and also to avoid the heat, but it was still in the mid-80s when I started.  Wore my 'Murican flag print shorts and got some high fives from drunk people.  Sweet.  Route was my place to 5th East to 33rd South (with a detour halfway into Liberty to use a restroom, and then into that park at like 3000 South to get a drink from a drinking fountain), to State, back up State, and back.  Run was fun, but I was really thirsty by the end.  Going to do a big one tomorrow.

So much for a long run. The plan was to play a round of disc golf at Solitude and then run from mill D to desolation lake, down little water, and to my car parked at the bottom of mill creek, but hiking and playing the incredibly difficult and busy course took 4 hours, so I didn't have time to do the run before dark. Just ran most of the course instead, and put off the longer day for Sunday.

Big water to dog lake and back with Holly and Daria, then ran down the canyon solo. 9 miles of tempo, very downhill, 5:30 pace. Felt pretty aerobically easy for a tempo, but an old blister kind of blew up, so that was annoying. Had to stop for 30 seconds around 8 miles in when I flew around a corner and saw a skunk 10 feet in front of me. I really don't want to get sprayed by a skunk, so I gave that sucker plenty of room.