Per Aspera Ad Astra

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: