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Hill Repetations - 2 miles easy, 6 x 2 min. uphill @ 10K effort w/jog-back recoveries, 2 miles easy.

Weather starting at about 7:30 am: low 34°F, high 46°F, 20% humidity, wind 12 S.

I thought on Saturday that I didn't make any holes in my gloves when I fell, but I was wrong. I washed the gloves after Saturday's run and this morning discovered one hole in the palm and one hole in the thumb of the left glove. It's too bad because they are my SmartWool glove liners. Maybe I'll try to sew the holes closed. That's what I did with my SmartWool socks when my toe made a hole.

I really felt sluggish when I started out this morning, probably because of my hard run last Saturday. My legs were leaden for the first two miles and then at the end of those two miles I went down the hill that I use for the hill repetitions and at that point I started feeling better. Still running uphill at a decent pace for 2 minutes was really hard. I made it up to the top of the hill in that time, so if I ever want to do longer hill repeats, I'll have to find another hill (no problem there). However, there are no more hill repeats on my current training schedule. In any case, my pace on the hill repeats was 8:56, 9:05, 8:54, 9:10, 8:59, 8:47. According to McMillan, my 10K pace is 8:56, so I was pretty close. I'm sure I went faster on the first minute of the hill repeat than on the second, but that's how it averaged out. I felt a lot better running the two miles home than I did running the two miles to the hill.

Tomorrow schedule says 10 miles, with the last 8 miles hard. That sounds scary to me. If my legs feel anything like they did today, I may delay the start of the hard portion or do away with it all together and run 10 miles easy. We'll see.

I didn't have to go to work today, so it was nice to be able to sleep in and run a little later, but that accounted for the relatively significant change in temperature over the course of my run.

Progression run - 10 miles, last 8 miles hard. Average pace: 9:11.

Weather: 40°F, 26% humidity, wind 20 mph SW, clear skies with a waning crescent moon. I guess it was fairly windy, but I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to the wind.

Yesterday I was questioning my ability to complete this run and was thinking about modifying it to make it easier. But then I remembered that I had to be back from my run in time to drive my oldest son and a string bass to school before 7:00. I usually get home from my runs around 7:30 or even 8:00. My first approach to this issue was to try to be like Snoqualmie and get up absurdly early. I got up earlier than usual, but not quite early enough. I was out the door by 5:15, but needed to have been out by 5:00. So the only recourse left to me then was to either cut the run short or run fast. I tried to run fast. I was home from the run by 6:50 and when I got here the boy wasn't even ready to go. Here are my splits: 10:30, 10:11, 9:40, 9:11, 9:38 (now it changes from generally uphill to generally downhill), 8:48, 8:20, 8:26, 8:39, 8:28.

I wish I could just hang out at home and take it easy and take a nap after I've done hard workouts like this, but alas, I have to go to work and sit at a desk all day. I'll probably have dead legs the next couple of days because I really pushed it today.

Easy run + 10 x 8 sec. hill sprints. Average pace: 10:43.

Weather: 35°F, 34% humidity, wind 6 NW, partly cloudy with a waning crescent moon.

I drove thing 2 to seminar at 6:00 this morning before my run and while I was driving him I had an intense desire to go back home and go back to bed. But I went back home and ran instead. My legs actually felt better than I thought they would, but I had a general tiredness and so I made sure to stay at an easy pace. None of my mile splits was under 10:00. My pace on the hill sprints ranged from 8:10 to 9:12, with seven out of the ten under 9:00 pace. Since I was a little late on my run I didn't encounter any middle schoolers on my hill. I saw the last of the middle schoolers walking down the hill as I approached it before starting the hill sprints.

I was thinking about treadmill running vs. running outside yesterday. I realized that when I run outside I really have no sense of the passage of time. I wear a watch and so I know what time it is and I know roughly how long the run will take me, but most of the time I'm focusing on distance and don't notice, for example, when I've been out for an hour. When I run on a treadmill, it's all about time, trying to keep going for 30 more minutes or something like that. I find it much more pleasant to focus on distance rather than time.

Objective: Threshold Run - 2 miles easy, 5 miles @ half-marathon pace, 2 miles easy. Average pace: 9:47.

Weather: 22°F, 52% humidity, wind 4.6 SSW.

I've been running slight variations of the same route a lot lately. I could have done that again today. Instead, I ran a route that I haven't run in a while. It basically goes from my home to my office and then back home. It's generally downhill from home to my office and uphill coming back. I tried to keep myself from going too fast on the downhill, but then I pushed it a little more on the uphill because I was closer to being done and I was feeling pretty good. I would have called it a moderate effort, not a hard effort. Based on my last 5K, McMillan says my half-marathon pace is 9:27, but I think it's a little faster than that. In any case, my splits were: 11:13, 10:48, 9:32, 9:15, 9:17, 9:12, 8:49, 10:02, 9:52.

I'm working at home today so that I can get laundry done. I go through running clothes really quickly with running 6 days/week and wearing two shirts on every run.

Easy run. Average pace: 10:36/mile.

Weather: 28°F, 22% humidity, wind 10 mph S.

I drove thing 2 to seminary, then came back home and went in the house for a few minutes, and then stepped outside to run. It had been dark when I drove him to seminary at 6:00, but I was surprised how light it was when I stepped out of the house at 6:15. I've been getting out in the morning every weekday, but when I get out earlier while it's still dark, I guess I don't really notice at what point it gets light. The sun wasn't up at 6:15 this morning, but it was starting to get light. We get earlier sunrises (and earlier sunsets) here in Denver, than in some places such as Salt Lake City. We're on the eastern edge of the time zone, while they're on the western edge of the same time zone. We have flat plains to the east while they have mountains to the east. These two things combine to make quite a difference in the time of sunrise.

I ran my trusty old 4 mile loop that I used to run all the time when 4 miles was a common distance for me. It was definitely easier today than it used to be.

I've got a crazy workout tomorrow during which I have to alternate between 1 minute at 10K pace and 1 minute easy over the course of 5 miles. I suppose if I don't alternate precisely every minute, it's not a big deal.

I've got a really easy week next week. This Hudson plan seems to be throwing in an easy week every 3rd week at this point.

Fartlek + Progression. Average pace: 9:43.

Weather: 27°F, 63% humidity, wind 7.5 SE.

I ran on the Highline Canal Trail. It was covered with a thin layer of fresh snow when I started, but most of the snow was gone by the time I finished. When I got up this morning I didn't really want to go out and run because it looked so snowy and cold, but it turned out to be a beautiful day with clear blue skies and sun.

I ran the first 6 miles at an easy pace (10:24 avg), then for the next 5 miles I did 24 repeats of 1 minute at 10K pace (I shot for about 8:30, but might have been a little faster some of the time) and 1 minute easy. Then I did 1 mile easy (10:44), and finished with 2 miles hard (8:37 avg). I really pushed hard at the end.

To keep track of the 5 mile fartlek portion, I set up a workout out my Garmin that had the first 6 miles as one lap, the next 5 miles as one lap, the next mile as one lap, and the last 2 miles as one lap. During the second lap, I put my watch on a display that showed current pace (so I could try to get the right pace on the fast portions), lap distance (so I would know how far into the 5 miles I was), and lap time. Each time the seconds on the lap time got to 00, I would switch pace. If the minutes on the lap time was an even number, I ran fast, and if the minutes on the lap time was an odd number, I ran easy. I didn't track individual laps for each minute in the fartlek portion because that would just be way too many laps. This system won't quite work when I have a similar workout again in a few weeks because that time the fartlek/easy intervals are supposed to be 90 seconds.

I've got a really easy week next week. I'm feeling fairly strong and not particularly like I need a rest, but maybe I should take advantage of the easy week so that I'll be ready for the hard weeks that follow it.