With Holly.  Actually felt pretty darn good today, despite yesterday's race being in my legs.  I was a little stiff for the first mile or so, but after that, I honestly didn't feel any different than normal.  I promised myself that I would keep the run as short as necessary to ensure that I was getting a good recovery, but before I knew it, I was up at the city creek watershed boundary with Holly.  Having been 4.6 miles out at the turnaround, and still feeling good at a bit short of 9 miles before making my final turn onto 4th ave, I decided to do a tiny bit extra near the end of the run to get the run up to 10 (I seriously hate ending on an incomplete mile), so I did a slight loop through the top of downtown. :)  Run was extremely easy, so I literally took 1:27 to run 10 miles.  Granted, it was mostly on trail (7 of it, with 6 on singletrack) and had 1000'+ gain, but still, it was really casual.  I've come to realize recently that doing a run this easy is just exactly what the body needs sometimes.  My legs feel pretty much flushed out from anything lingering from yesterday, and, while I'll wait until probably Thursday to run another workout, I just feel hungry and ready for more high-quality, intelligent, and fun training.

Easy effort 14, my places in the aves to 5th East to 45th South and back.  1:42.  Legs were relatively tired over the last couple miles, but overall good for having raced 2 days ago.  I'm not planning on going past 75-ish this week, so after already popping out 24 in the first 2 days and with a longer workout planned for later in the week, I'll probably take 2 shorter days between tomorrow and Friday.

5 miles @ ~ 8:15 pace.  Just 2 1/2 weeks of big training left, and need to make sure that I don't overdo anything.  It was raining and humid, which just felt weird. Hah.

9 with Kevin, and then 2 more by myself.  A hair over 7:00 pace.

1 mile to Kevin's house and then 9 miles more with Kevin.  From his place up N, up to 11th, to City Creek, up the trail to the Shoreline turnoff, along BOSHO to the radio towers access road (right below the towers), down that, through the gated neighborhood, down to the capital, down State, and back home.  10.03 miles (on GPS, which I trust over mapmyrun, which says 10.23) in 80 flat with a lot of single track (not always very smooth), which was equivalent to more like 7:00-flat effort on average for a more generic flat road run.

Pre-run: Well, this is not what I wanted to have happen with 2 1/2 weeks left to train hard for Utah Valley, but my hip just got slightly flared up in the past few days and now my lower back (back right side, above the hip) is pretty tight.  I haven't had any pain whatsoever in my back or hip, but the tightness is obviously problematic.  I'm going to go in for a deep tissue massage today and, if that doesn't work, I'll see a chiropractor on Monday.  This is a very bad time to back off the mileage and I think I'll still be OK to run on it, but I don't know that it would be wise to do the workout I had planned for this evening.  We'll see after the massage I guess... 

3:00 update...  It's loosened up somewhat already, which is nice.  Let's hope the massage will take care of it the rest of the way!

Run: Got a massage and actually felt about 75% better.  Decided that most of my running should be on trails for the next few days to avoid pounding, so I went up to Mill Creek Canyon with Holly.  A bit of a warmup, then ran up Church Fork Road.  Started my watch again at the big yellow trail gate and ran Grandeur in 38:44.  Effort felt pretty casual and my hip didn't really bug me at all.  The one thing that made it non-casual was the fact that the weather started to get pretty bad about halfway up.  I really wanted to see what type of time I would run on an average day right now, otherwise, I'd have turned around with a mile to go when it started all out hailing (keep in mind I was wearing 1" inseam shorts and a very light singlet).  I was focused on getting to the top (with the mindset of "it's all easy and downhill from the top", not really thinking about the fact that crazy winds and hail hurt whether you're going up or down).  Got to the top in 38:44 without really pushing it effort wise (honestly a hair easier than a typical tempo effort), didn't even pause for a second, as the last few minutes up were extremely painful weather-wise, turned around, and started running down.  Of course, the trail was very slick at this point, so I couldn't run down fast without risking slipping and injuring myself.  The thought of dying in the spectacularly terrible storm up there crossed my mind a few times (say, if Holly suddenly refused to run and I couldn't make her continue, if I tripped and broke a leg, etc, basically if anything happened that prevented me from running and therefore not freezing as much, I was pretty sure that the consequences would be pretty bad).  I was in pretty rough shape by the time I got to the more sheltered part of the trail, about a mile from the top, but the weather let up with about a mile to go, at which point I started to notice my hip a little (steep downhills seem more aggravating than anything, and grandeur is, on average, at a grade of mid to upper teens, percent-wise), so I just jogged it in.  Now that I'm done, everything feels pretty good, but still a little bit off.  Still, it's much much better than earlier today.  As for climbing stats, the FKT for my route is 33:40.  I think I could do a sub-36 pushing it race-effort right now, but I almost certainly could not get sub-35 at this point and I'm really developing some respect for that time.  Still, I'm going to put in a few high efforts up this mountain this summer and try to see if I can get my legs into at least sub-35 shape before the summer is over.  Oh, and I'm relatively certain that Holly is the fastest dog ever up the mountain (none of the other guys running sub-40 do it with dogs), and she was off leash the whole way, so she didn't get an unfair advantage of being dragged up. :)

Going forward, I am going to be exceedingly cautious with my hip, but I'm optimistic that it's already getting better and won't prevent me from getting in a little over 2 more weeks of good training.  I'll probably do a flatter trail run in Mill Creek tomorrow (Pipeline?), and just take it from there.

Well, my season is probably over.  Hip essentially died on today's run.  Ran a lot of uphill (most of the way up city creek from my apartment) and it felt irritated but consistent.  Within a mile of downhill, it was done, except that I was 5.5 miles from home.  Definitely walked a fair amount on the way back and the running was borderline excruciating.  Yes, it was a poor choice to go out and try 13 miles today, but in reality, it didn't matter.  My season was trashed before I laced up my shoes today.  The damage had already been done and today just confirmed the problem.  Utah Valley is almost definitely out of the picture, even if I feel healthy, just for the main reason that I need to rehab this properly and get it behind me before I risk additional damage.

As a scientist, I'm not the type of person that attributes any explanations of dreams or subconscious feeling to the supernatural - in fact, I find such reasoning to be illogical and irresponsible.  However, I do think that dreams are a good reflection of the needs and status of the human body, even in allegorical form.  The human brain has an extremely good capacity to understand its body's state on a subconscious level, with this understanding sometimes showing up in dreams.  Ever since last summer, I've had a bit of uneasiness about this hip thing and have kind of just always sensed that it probably wasn't 100% better, even when it wouldn't bug me for months at a time under a heavy training load.  The thought crossed my mind a few times that I might be building my fitness on a poor foundation, which could crumble at any point.  Just a few nights ago, right after sensing just a light bit of tightness in my right hip, glute, and back, I had a dream about selling a house.  I had built the house myself in my dream, but just when I was about to start displaying it for sale, I realized that I had built it on a poor foundation and it was starting to crumble.  At the end of the day, all my hard work went to waste when I had to tear it down and build it again.  I woke up and realized that this directly paralleled my current running state.  I've put a lot of smart training and careful building into my fitness and wouldn't change anything I've done over the last 2 months, but I built everything on a weak foundation.  That has come back to haunt me and now I have no choice but to fix the foundation and re-build from there, even though I was just about to be ready to display my fitness at the Utah Valley Marathon.  It is quite remarkable that the human body has reached the point in which our brains have this sort of intuition.   I have come to trust mine in most non-running scenarios, and the time has come for me to apply that same logic to my running.  I might not want to listen to it, but I know that it is correct.  Intuition kept all of my ancestors alive for long enough to keep our lineage going over countless milennia, and it's about time that I start trusting my intuition and doing the right thing for my body, even if it means sacrificing what could be a huge PR and having to completely rebuild.  In reality, I don't even really have a choice, as continuing to train hard at this point would likely leave me severely injured and unable to race well at any point in the near to relatively distant future.

The unfortunate reality with running is that we, as runners, have the tendency to try to push ourselves through injuries and many of us can greatly decrease our long term potential by causing serious and lasting damage, going against our intuition with the desire of rapid and potentially unrealistic improvement.  I aim to not let this happen to me in this situation.  I'm going to be smart, listen to my body, and rehab this properly.  I'll probably still try to get my sports med doctor to give me a shot of cortisone (he's not a fan of this) to keep the inflammation and pain at bay while rehabbing it, but I'm not going to enter a state of heavy training again until I'm confident that I will not be likely to have another flare-up of this injury.

The desire to train intelligently and reach the next level has never been higher for me than it currently is.  While it is frustrating to have this desire and be unable to act on it, I will let this continue to build until I am ready to train hard again, at which point I will focus all of my intensity and energy into finally running the sort of marathon that I feel capable of running.