Everything Counts

12.03 miles easy on the Riverdale Parkway with Ken, Bryant, and Bret.  The good news is that the weather was warm; the bad news is that with the warm weather come the bugs on the parkway!

AM: AEROBIC BUILDER

We had a great group out this morning: Ken, Bryant, Jace, Bret and even Sariah wanted to join us though she'd be running a different pace.  We met at the Riverdale parkway and warmed up two miles and then went into the workout.  Jace is racing Saturday so he only wanted 6 miles, so the goal was at least 6 miles though Bryant and I were considering 8 if we felt good.  The pace was spot on the whole time and everyone finished the 6 miles on pace, it was pretty cool to have a group of five guys run 6 miles at 5:18 average pace all together the whole way.  At six miles Bryant kept going on for 8, I stopped for a potty break and the others called it good at six miles.  After my pit stop I figured I'd do either two more miles or as far as I could get without having to stop again as my stomach was bugging me.  I did another 1.2 miles in 5:18 pace but then had to stop again and at that point just called it good at 7.2 total miles.

Splits: 5:21 5:16 5:19 5:19 5:18 5:17 5:18

PM: 4.95 miles easy with Amy and while pushing the double jogger.  Nice evening with a little wind.  Amy had us run up the monster hill in the neighborhood and pushing the double jogger up it really works your calves!

AM: 8.74 miles easy.  I met Ben and Jon in North Ogden for a nice, easy morning run.  It was beautiful out there just after the rainfall.  Great to see those two back out running and training again after being on the injury reserve for a few months now.

Update on my knee.  I stopped mentioned my knee as I'm sure people were sick of hearing about it daily.  But, it feels great now.  I think the inflammation is gone, but I am still icing it and treating it as though it's not gone just for safety precautions.

Update on training and Ogden Marathon.  I decided I'm going to do a very minimal taper (at least compared to what I've done in the past) that will start this Saturday.  Two reasons for this: I feel like I've over-tapered in the past and also I want to somewhat "train through" Ogden.  I want to still do well there, but with my lack of volume in April my hopes aren't as high and I don't want Ogden to slow down my training too much for Duluth in June.  But don't get me wrong I will still race it hard and try my best, I just am not going to back off as much leading into the race.

Lunchtime: 5 miles easy on the base perimeter road.

200 METER REPEATS

I met up with Brett, Bryant, and Sariah to do some 200 meter repeats at the 21st Street Pond.  They were kind enough to humor me and do a birthday workout with me of 32 200-meter repeats for me turning 32 today.  We wanted to keep them easy though since we have the marathon next week so we aimed for 35 seconds and did a 200-meter jog for rest at 6:50 pace.

The problem is I lost track very early on with the count.  I forgot my watch had autolapped twice already after the warmup during some strides (and after I had switched it to kilometers and a 0.2 kilometer autolap) before we started.  So later in the workout I thought I could just subtract two (for the two mile warmup) and then divide by two to get our count.  But really I needed to subtract four and then divide by two because of those strides.  So long story short we only did 31 thinking we'd done 32.  But we did do two strides (about 100 meters each) before we started, so we'll count it.

We averaged 34.97 seconds for the 31 reps, so right where we wanted it.  I also planned to do the 32nd one in 32 seconds, but turns out it was the actually on the 31st and I did it in 31 seconds.  So the whole 32 thing didn't really pan out...haha.  But that's all right.  A good workout with good company this morning. 

5.43 miles easy.  So I decided to run on the trails after work.  I really needed to get more sleep, so I figured I'd run in the afternoon.  I planned on just doing an easy 8 miles or so on the Bonneville Shoreline, but when I got to Adam's Canyon I got the irrestible urge to run up it.  It's super steep but not real long (I climbed 925 feet on the run).  Unfortunately toward the top on the really steep part I was about to pass a hiker who stepped to the side to let me by and instead of watching my footing I was thanking him and my left foot slipped off a rock and I face-planted on the rocky trail.  My right leg to the brunt of the fall and it got cut up pretty good.  So after that I headed back down to get to my car to clean the cuts.  By the time I got back it was starting to bruise and it's a bit sore now.  So, long story short I had to cut the run short and before the top of the trail.  How embarrassing though to eat it right in front of that dude!  At least he was kind enough not to laugh!

Hopefully it's just bruised and will heal in the next few days. 

13.39 miles easy.  90-minute run with Bryant and Brett as the three us begin to wind down a tad for Ogden next week.  My leg feels sore from the fall yesterday, but only in the sense it's bruised.  It's nothing that hampers my running at all, so that's good.