Everything Counts

AM: 12.27 miles easy on the base perimeter road.  It was pretty cold running into the canyon wind for first half of the run, but the second half was fantastic.  I felt pretty good this morning (must be that gallon of ice cream I downed over the weekend).  It's getting lighter earlier too and that is nice; less time having to run with my headlamp on.

Lunch: 5 more easy miles on base perimeter road.

AEROBIC BUILDER

I met Ken, Hales, and Bryant at 5:45 to do an aerobic builder.  We warmed up two miles and then got into the builder.  Hales and I went a bit quicker than Ken and Bryant and didn't see them again until the last mile on the way back.  We averaged 5:24/mile for 8 miles.  We cooled down one mile afterward and then I drove to work in my heater-less car...brrr.

10.73 miles easy.  I drove into Ogden to meet Bret and Jon at 5:30 am.  Jon has had achilles problems for several weeks now and he went 5.5 miles with us.  Bret and I went back out after Jon left and got another 5+ miles in.  The pace was just nice and easy.  At one point we were running toward a young kid in downtown Ogden and kind of startled him and he clenched his fist ready to strike (until he realized we weren't threatening him).  It was kind of funny, though had he actually struck, it may not have been.  This is a typical scenario for running in downtown Ogden...gotta love it.

AM: MILE REPEATS

I actually ran these in my own neighborhood from my house rather than on base.  Luckily the canyon wind was pretty calm this morning, which very unusual for South Weber.  And 32 degrees felt like paradise!  I found a relatively flat loop that was about 1.25 miles and just did the repeats there with a 2-minute jog in between for rest.  I did 5xmile.  Splits were 4:58 4:56 4:52 4:51 4:50.

PM: 5.33 miles easy on the base perimeter road after work.  Just getting ready now to head to the "Purple Palace" to see Weber vs. Montana in basketball; it's a big game for the Wildcats.

6.35 miles easy.  I hit the snooze button a few too many times this morning, so I had to go a little shorter and faster than I planned.

LONG RUN

I drove to the Dee Events Center and started my long run there so that toward the end I could watch the Strider's Winter Circuit 10k as I finished up.  I warmed up two miles and during that stretch ran into Paul Pilkington (Current Weber State distance coach and former 2:12 marathoner and LA Marathon winner http://articles.latimes.com/1994-03-07/sports/sp-31105_1_los-angeles-marathon).  Paul was an assistant coach while I was at Weber.  He asked what I had coming up and I told him PHX marathon in two weeks.  He then asked what I was doing this morning and I said 20 miles with 16 around 5:45 pace.  He got wide-eyed a bit and I said is that too much.  He said yeah I never went more than 15 miles two weeks out.  So, I should probably listen to a 2:12 marathoner and coach right?  Well....I'm stubborn.  I did my 20 miles still!

After the warm up I did 16 miles at a 5:42 pace and then ran the last hellacious 1.5 miles of the 10k with my sister McKenzie.  She did awesome, ran a 44:11 on that difficult course off of 25 miles a week and six weeks back from a stress fracture.

Oh and this was my first time ever breaking 80 miles in a week!