Per Aspera Ad Astra

10.12 at 7:30 pace.  7 laps of Liberty Park on the woodchips with Fritz, Jake, Nate Krah, Josh, James, and Allie (for the first couple laps).  I have to admit that I was insanely bored by lap 5. Haha.  Hip felt slightly off by mile 8 or 9, but that's pretty typical and no worse than something that would've resolved itself with stretching for 10-20 seconds if I had needed to go further.  All in all, I felt kind of sluggish today, mostly due to finally getting some decent mileage in for only the 2nd week in 6 months last week.

Also, this is AWESOME: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24953910

8 with Holly.  My place to Memory Grove to City Creek, ran about tempo effort from the bottom of city creek to 5-way in 28:29 with a bit of slush, snow, and mud, but mostly decent conditions (no shortcuts on the route... main trail... I don't recall my fastest time up that, but I want to say that it's 27:xx, and I feel that 26:xx is probably possible right now if just racing this particular section hard), back down the trail and down to the Terrace Hills trailhead, down to 11th, over to B, down to 9th, over to A, down to 4th, and home.  66 flat for 7.9 miles with 1469' gain, and since I called 10.1 "10 miles" yesterday, I get to call 7.9 "8 miles" today.

Late night 11.5, starting at 11:30 PM!  Did the first 6 at average 6:56 pace, then did 4 in 6:15, 6:20, 6:09, 6:14, then backed off and did the last 1.5 at 8:30 pace.  Started at my place, ran up to 9th East, ran to 27th South, up to Highland.  Did the 4 miles of faster pace from roughly 80 and Highland to 4th South and 2nd East.  That portion is net downhill by just over 100', but my route had a significant amount of roll, so it wasn't all fun and games.  Anyway, I went back up into the Aves and then did a ltitle extra loop in the bottom few blocks to get it to end on a half mile increment.

Skiing AM, working PM, running late PM, starting at 11 PM, mostly in pouring rain.  Actually wasn't too bad.  Went to 9th East, to 27th South, to Highland, and back, with a couple extra blocks at the end.  7:40-ish average pace, so nice and easy.  

Oh, and hip felt slightly testy before the run, but it feels better after running, which is good.

Note to self if looking this up on Garmin: Pit-stop at Smith's bathroom at a little less than 7 miles required resetting of Garmin due to lost satellites, so the data is in 2 separate files (plus a hair extra from before I realized that it wasn't logging mileage pre-reset).

Was supposed to meet Josh and Nate for a lunch time run, but screwed up the starting location and missed them.  Winds were pretty out of control up above campus, so I guess I won't mind doing the majority of my running for the day on a treadmill later.  Anyway, I ran up to Red Butte arboretum (instead of amphitheater), then realized maybe they were at the arboretum, so ran back and forth a couple times, didn't see them, and ran back to the lab.  Running against the wind, what felt like an easy 7:30 pace turned out to be 10:30, and running with the wind, what felt like easy 7:30 minute pace was 6:40.  Pretty wild.  By my calculations, that puts the wind at around 30 mph!

Later, I did 7 miles the gym since it was even windier outside than earlier, to the point that I had a difficult time crossing the street from my building on campus to my car in the lot across the street when I went home at 7PM.  Went home and ate a lot of food, which made me feel sluggish for the first few miles, but after 3 miles, I got bored and decided to do a few miles at marathon pace.  I did the next 3 at 6:15, and then did the last mile in 5:23.  The 6:15s felt really really fluid.

I'm going to eat a lot less junk food during this training cycle.  I was significantly skinnier in 2009 when I was running lots of short distance PRs, so I'm going to focus on getting back there.  I figure 10 pounds should do it and, given that I'm nowhere as muscular as I was in 2009 when I weighed 160, I think 150-153 will be the sweet spot.  The old me might have put up sick stats in the bench and shoulder presses, but he was always going to have a hard time running a sub-2:40 looking like this:

Too bad upper body mass doesn't help with the marathon.  :(

Heavy wind seemingly gusting in all directions.  8 miles, down to 9th and 21st, and back, 7:15 pace.  Garmin was screwy in the aves again.  For whatever reason, it has a hard time connecting near my apartment (can take several minutes), and then when I started, right after turning the first corner, it stopped adding distance for about 45 seconds.  When it reconnected, rather than adding on mileage from when it lost the satellites, it just picked up as though I had been standing still for 45 seconds and dropped over a tenth of a mile.  Dumb.  I should eventually get a better model.  Wouldn't mind one that tells me elevation live.

Skiing early afternoon until close at Snowbird.

Got a Jamba Juice smoothie on the way home, then went home, let Holly out, and ran 22 miles immediately thereafter.  2:40, about on the nose, so about 7:16 pace, which felt easy and in control (although running for nearly 3 hours after skiing is still tiring on the legs).  Anyway, I ran from my place to Jordan River Parkway, along the winding path to 4500 south, along that to 1100 east (without a sidewalk in a few places, which was extremely annoying), along that and then up the forced turn around brickyard to 1300 east, to highland, to 21st south, to 9th east (which I've seemed to love running this past week), up to South Temple and back home, looping down to B to get the distance up to a clean 22.  I had gels at miles 11, 15, and 18, so I didn't feel like i was going to crash at any point, unlike on a few of my other recent long runs (about a month or a month and a half back, I did both an 18 and a 19 miler on an empty stomach with no gels, and felt pretty awful over the last few miles).  In any case, 81 miles for the week is the biggest I've gotten in since April, which is definitely something to be excited about, not to mention that I also skied twice and lifted weights three times this week as well, making it a pretty massive week of physical activity.  I did not feel any soreness or tightness in my hip whatsoever at any point during the run tonight, so that's also something to be excited about.  Ok, time to write for a little while on my proposal for grad school, and then relax.