Same Time, Same Channel

Tempo run - 10 miles w/ 5 miles @ 15K-1/2M pace.

5:19 am, 30°F, 85% humidity, winds calm.

Curse you, Daylight Savings Time! I woke up several times during the night and thought that I just should just get up and run in the middle of the night so that I could go back to bed afterwards. However, I stayed in bed as long as I could. One minute before my alarm was supposed to go off, my daughter came into my room because she had had a bad dream. I let her climb into bed with me and I hit the snooze alarm. The next time my alarm went off, I got up and got dressed, but then I had a delay while I ironed clothes for my husband. So I didn't make it out the door quite as early as I would have liked to. Nevertheless, felt like 4:19 to my body, so it might as well have been the middle of the night. Except I don't get to go back to bed now.

We got just a wee bit of snow last night. It's mostly just on the grassy areas, but I did hit a couple of snowy spots when I was running.

I hate the 5th mile on the route that I ran today. I struggle with it every time. Incidentally, my goal pace range was either 7:59 to  8:09 or 7:53 to 8:04, depending which of my race results I put into the pace calculator.

AP: 8:47. Splits: 9:50, 9:50, 9:46, 8:15, 8:22, 8:06, 7:36 (oops, a little too fast), 7:53, 9:05, 9:06, 0.23 @ 8:48.

So I managed to get the third mile, at 8:06, barely into the top end of the slower of my two pace ranges, and the fifth mile, at 7:53, really barely into the bottom end of the faster of my two pace ranges. Mostly I ran either too slow or too fast. Nevertheless, my average pace for the tempo portion works out to about 8:02, and that's in both ranges.

In case anyone is still paying attention, this week's proprioceptive cue is "Pounding the Ground," which was the first one I did before I started doing these cues in order. But I decided to do it again this week rather than skipping it. So here is the description from  Brain Training for Runners by Matt Fitzgerald.

"Most runners are taught to run as softly as possible. In fact, running speed is almost entirely a function of how forcefully you hit the ground with your feet. The typical runner--especially the typical overstriding runner--allows his or her foot to fall passively to the ground with each stride. Instead, practice actively driving your foot into the ground. Be sure to give a somewhat backward pull to this driving movement rather than a completely vertical movement. Also, if you are currently a heel striker (overstrider), work on shortening your stride and landing flat-footed before using this proprioceptive cue, which teaches you to stiffen your stride, thrust earlier, and minimize ground contact time."

I found that I did speed up slightly whenever I thought about and tried to implement this cue.

This is my only real speed workout this week. I intend to run at an easy pace the rest of the week (except for short strides on Friday) in preparation for Saturday's half marathon. Other than that, I'm not really tapering for this race. I'm training through it, I guess.

Happy Ides of March, everyone.

Medium-long run at an easy pace.

6:32 pm, 60-39°F, 15-43% humidity, wind 3 SE.

I stayed up way too late last night for no good reason and I couldn't face getting up to run after 4 hours of sleep, so I slept until time to drive Thing 2 to seminary, then when I got back from doing that, I went back to sleep until it was time to drive Thing 1 and his bass to school about 1/2 hour later. I couldn't run then because I had to get my daughter off to school. I might have run during work hours, but instead I spent the morning getting the rear windshield wiper fixed on my car (I broke it off with the garage door a while ago). It looks like we might have bad weather for the drive to Utah on Friday, and I didn't want to do it without a rear windshield wiper. After spending all morning at the car dealership, I had to work in the afternoon, then I had to take my daughter to her piano lesson. After her lesson, I talked to Michelle, who is her piano teacher, and that talk motivated me to go running. So I picked up some dinner for the family on my way home, and then got dressed and headed out.

When I was getting ready to go out, my daughter wanted to come run with me. So I did a half-mile loop with her, but I paused my watch during the part we walked and ended up running about 1/3 of a mile with her. Then she went back in the house and I continued with my run.

It was still light and warm when I started out. I wore shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, but I also took this opportunity to try out the arm sleeves that I bought last weekend to wear during the race on Saturday. They worked will but during parts of my run, particularly when running through open spaces, I was wishing for long pants and gloves.

AP: 9:36. Splits: 10:14, 9:10, 9:37, 9:37, 9:44, 9:30, 9:53 (my favorite hill on South Quebec St. approaching MacArthur Ranch Rd.), 9:30, 9:15, 9:26, 9:24, 9:45, 9:45, 9:33.

Recovery run + core conditioning.

5:16 am, 39°F, 42% humidity, wind 7 SSW.

How to ensure that you run a recovery run at a very slow pace: run 14 miles less than 12 hours before.

AP: 10:38. Splits: 11:09, 10:40, 10:21, 10:26, 10:35.

The last two miles were in Vibram Five Fingers.

I'm going to change up my training plan for the rest of the week. The book says 11 miles on Thursday and 7  miles with strides on Friday, then 21 miles on Saturday. Instead, I'm going to do the 7 miles with strides on Thursday, do 5 miles recovery like today on Friday, and then try to run fast in a half marathon on Saturday.

I was done with my run in time to drive to seminary this morning, but the boy is not going to school because he is sick. So I'm slightly ahead of schedule so far this morning.

General Aerobic + Speed: 7 mi w/ 10 x 100 m strides

5:14 am, 42°F, 35% humidity, wind 10 SE.

I tried to keep it easy but not too slow this morning. I started out on my normal 6 mile loop, but cut it short and went to the middle school track to do the strides. I had run not quite 5 miles when I got to the track. I tried to do the strides properly and just focus on form rather than trying to run really fast. Also, it was more windy than is typical around here. It was particularly windy on the track because the track is in an open space. I think the wind accounts for my alternating between slower and faster strides (except for the first one, which I must have just pushed the pace on) because I was running the strides on the straight aways and jogging the curves.

AP: 9:23. Splits before the strides: 9:35, 9:26, 9:40, 9:25, 0.86 @ 9:41.

Pace on the strides: 7:06, 7:14, 7:44, 7:16, 7:38, 7:18, 7:38, 7:16, 8:00, 7:02.

Split time for the 1 mile after the strides: 9:24.

I've got a busy day today. There are lots of things I need to get done before going to Utah tomorrow.

Recovery run + core conditioning.

9:13 am, 31°F, 75% humidity, winds calm, light snow. The snow was sticking to the grass, but not really to the streets.

I had planned to get up and run early this morning, but since I didn't absolutely have to, when the time came to get up, I didn't do it. Instead, I slept until about 6:15, then got up and got kids off to school, and then ran. The weather didn't bother me too much, except when I was heading north. It wasn't really windy. Officially, there was no wind, but there was just enough that when I was going north, the snow felt like little pins pricking me in the face. I hardly had my eyes open and my eyelashes were covered with ice. But my eyelashes thawed when I turned and started going a different direction.

AP: 9:51. Splits: 10:35, 9:58, 9:38, 9:27, 9:37.

I've got less than an hour now to get showered, eat something, and get on the road to Moab.

This was a great race. I felt so much better throughout the race than I did in this race last year. The temperature was cooler than last year, and I think that helped.

Another nice thing about this year versus last year was that we actually stayed in Moab. Last year I couldn't get a room in Moab and so I stayed in Green River and had to get up early and drive to Moab. Today, we just had to walk about a block to get to the bus pickup.

I didn't sleep great last night, but that's to be expected. But things went very smoothly this morning. It was cold at the start, but that was typical. About an half hour before race time I took my leave from my friends and took off my warm clothes and tossed my drop bag onto the truck. I ran a mile and a half warm-up at about 10:10 pace with a couple of short strides thrown in. Then I did my dynamic stretches and then lined up just a little ways behind the 8:00 pace marker. It still took quite a while to get over the start line, but once we started, I felt like I had lined up in the right place because I ran about the pace of the people around me and it seemed like the appropriate pace at that point.

I don't really have a mile-by-mile breakdown. I tried not to look at my watch except for at the mile splits. I didn't look at see what my pace was while I was running, nor did I look at the total time until the end. I just knew my splits were pretty good and so I just tried to keep it up. I had a couple of slower miles where there were some hills, but I felt pretty strong on the hills. I'm not too crazy about the last couple of miles where you're out of the canyon and are running along the highway, but I just kept telling myself that I was almsot done. I felt good through out the race and didn't really struggle to keep going until the last mile.

My pace and split times are from my Garmin, which shows 13.2 miles instead of 13.1, so they're a little off from what the official race results will be.

AP: 7:49. Splits: 8:20, 8:05, 8:03, 7:48, 7:49, 7:45, 7:39, 7:41, 7:25, 7:58, 7:58, 7:36, 7:37, 0.20 @ 7:39.

Official results are in.

Chip Time: 1:43:20

Gun Time: 1:44:25

Overall place: 446 out of 3282

Sex place: 116 out of 1942

Division place: 15 out of  221

Here's a photo of the 4 of us (Michelle, Michelle, me, and Carly) right after the race.