Everything Counts

AM: 8.2 miles easy on base perimeter road.  I was pretty tired, I need to focus more this week on getting sleep.

Lunch: 6.11 miles easy on base perimeter. Felt better than this morning energy-wise.

BIG WORKOUT: 4-3-2-1 BREAKDOWN

I met up with Ken and Jace at the 21st Street Pond for a hard workout.  The goal was to hit 10 miles total: 4 miles at 5:20 3 miles at 5:10 2 miles at 5:00 and 1 mile at 4:50.  Ken planned on sitting out one mile in each set.  We got started and the 4 miles felt harder than it should and I figured I was in for a long morning, but after that the rest of the workout felt great.   The rest was mostly a slow jog.  Here are the actual splits:

4 miles: 21:24 (5:24 5:24 5:20 5:15) - 4:30 rest

3 miles: 15:19 (5:06 5:09 5:03) - 3:30 rest

2 miles: 10:04 (5:03 5:01) - 2:30 rest

1 mile: 4:44

The good news is I nailed this workout and felt great doing it, and I didn't have to stop at all for GI issues.

The bad news is my knee HURTS.  It has been sore since after Saturday's long run.  I told myself yesterday that if it still hurt this morning I would still do the workout but promise myself to take Wednesday off.  So, if anyone sees a running entry on this blog tomorrow be sure to get on my case.

No running today (and maybe not tomorrow).  My knee is more sore than I'd like to admit.  I will do a good core workout later this evening.  Anyone have any strength exercises they would suggest that don't involve bending the knee alot?

Probably going to take another day off.  My knee is still sore/swollen, but it feels better than yesterday.  It kills me to skip two days of training (at least, if not more), but the long-term view is more important here. 

If the knee feels better I will try an easy run tomorrow and if all goes well then I may still try to run the half marathon on Saturday, we'll see.

3.43 miles easy.  Just testing out the knee to see if I should attempt racing tomorrow.  It felt much better, but it's still a little inflamed.  I am leaning toward running tomorrow, we'll see how it feels when I wake up.  It didn't hurt today, but I could still feel it a little bit.  No pain, just minor discomfort.

Besides I don't run on Sundays and Monday will almost be impossible to squeeze a run in (I just found out yesterday I have to go to Dayton, OH for work next week and have a 6 AM flight out of SLC).  So, even if it's sore after tomorrow I will have at least two days off again.

STRIDER'S WRC HALF MARATHON

Well I went back and forth yesterday on whether I should race or not.  My knee has been pretty sore all week and I had missed the last few days of training.  My wife, Amy, advised against running as did Bam via my comment section yesterday (Steve on the same comment section said to go for it) and I told Amy that was the correct and sound advice.  It's the advice I'd give someone if they asked me, but for some reason I couldn't take the smart and conservative advice.  I guess I learned to race through injuries in college and it's stuck with me (I ran a whole cross country season with a stress fracture once).  So, I took the risk and ran this morning.  It wasn't my best effort, but it was still pretty solid and the knee held up pretty good.  The quad did tighten up a bit above the knee in the second half, but nothing I couldn't run through.

I met up with Brett Hales and Bryant at Rainbow Gardens and we carpooled up to the race from there.  We met up with Ken and Steve and got on the buses and were on our way.  Once to the top the lines for the port-a-potties were long so we ran up to the campground 3/4 miles up the road and use the facilities there.  Knee didn't hurt at all on the warm-up...good news.

The gun went off and Bryant, Jace, Brett and I formed the lead pack with Ken and Steve forming their own little chase pack.  By the mile I had gapped the others just slightly and kept a small gap through mile 5 of so, though it was only about 10 seconds or so.  My 5k split was 15:48.  Around mile 5 I heard footsteps and looked down at my watch, I was running about 5:03 pace, so whoever was coming was running sub-5.  By mile 6 Bryant caught up to me and we ran together until 8.5 or so before he started to pull away.  My 10k split was 31:36 (so another 15:48 5k).

My legs felt really heavy and fatigued.  It's always weird when your breathing is fine, but your legs just won't cooperate.  I was battling the best I could but I kept bleeding time.  Around 11.5 I heard footsteps again and knew Hales was gaining on me.  Brett passed me at like 12.4 but I didn't let him get more than 5 meters on me and with .25 to go I kicked hard.  He didn't really want any part of kicking and just kind of let me go.  So, Bryant was first with a 1:07:38 give or take 3 seconds, I was second with a 1:07:53, Brett 3rd in 1:08:02, Jace 4th in 1:08:15, Ken 5th in 1:11 and Steve 6th in 1:13 (old Weber teammates taking the top 6 spots).

My knee is a little sore but actually not as bad as I thought it would be (we'll see how tomorow feels).  This was over two minutes faster than I ran last year when I won this race, so great improvement.  Here are my times and splits from the last three years running this race:

Mile	2011	2012	2013
1	511	514	503
2	512	518	507
3	514	518	507
4	520	512	503
5	525	521	507
6	530	523	505
7	525	520	506
8	539	516	507
9	549	529	519
10	547	526	516
11	559	535	528
12	552	534	526
13	543	525	516
13.1	35	33	27
Final	1:12:39	1:10:24	1:07:53

1:05:xx next year???