Everything Counts

AM: 12 miles easy with Dave and Bret into North Ogden from 21st Pond.  My legs felt a lot better than I anticipated after Saturday's long run.

Lunchtime: 5 miles easy with Dave on the base perimeter road.

AEROBIC BUILDER

Another solid outing with the guys.  Jason, Ken, Bret, Dave, Jon, and Ben all showed up for an aerobic builder.  Three mile warmup including three strides and then we were off.  I did the same route as last week.  I did 9.5 miles in 49:08 or a 5:10 average.  I felt pretty decent.  The last two miles into the Southern headwind were a bit tougher, but other than that it felt pretty solid.  The guys all seemed to have pretty good workouts as well.  Ken had his best builder in almost a year or so with a 5:31 average for 8 miles.  So maybe we can get him rolling again.

Oh and I forgot to mention I passed my yearly mileage from all of last year today!  So new yearly mileage PR!

AM: 10.25 miles easy with Ben and Ken up the Ogden Parkway to the canal trail, back down to Monroe, back to parkway, and finishing up with a loop of the pond.

I keep going back and forth on what to do with workouts between now and STG.  Part of me wants to just lock into what I plan to run at STG (5:10-5:15 downhill or 5:20-5:25 flat) and not go faster than that from here on out.  The other part of me wants to sneak in another faster workout tomorrow.  The problem is that 5:20-5:25 pace flat doesn't feel too difficult (a good thing) after hitting my recent aerobic builders, but only hitting that pace makes me feel like I'm backing off too much and losing fitness.  Man I hate the last few weeks before the marathon.  I also can't decide how hard and long to go this Saturday...taper decisions.

PM: 3 miles easy.

2-MILE REPEATS

I met up with the guys (Ken, Ben, Jason, and Bret) at the Riverdale Parkway to do a workout.  It was substantially colder this morning than it's been since maybe April?  I warmed up with arm sleeves and I wore gloves for the whole run.  The plan was to do 3x2-miles in a progressive manner.  The plan was to run the second mile in each rep five seconds faster than the first miles, and to run the next rep ten seconds faster than the previous one.  I don't know if it was the cold, running against the flow of the river (so slight uphill UPDATE: I looked up the elevation and you gain 35 feet over this 2-mile stretch, so reps 1 and 3 slight up and rep 2 down), or the fact that I wore trainers instead of flats, but that first rep was slow and it felt hard.  Luckily I got going a lot better on the second and third reps.

Splits:

#1 - Plan was 5:10/5:05 for 10:15; Actual 5:15/5:08 for 10:23

#2 - Plan 5:05/5:00 for 10:05; Actual 5:01/4:59 for 10:01

#3 - Plan 5:00/4:55 or faster for 9:55 or faster; Actual 4:57/4:53 for 9:51

10.5 miles on Upper Upper Pipe as the guys at Weber called it. I always argued it should just be Upper Pipe.  Lots of climbing the first two miles and then nice long gradual down.  I got out at 10:30 and it was a beautiful late morning temperature to run in.

pm 4.15 miles easy with Dave from my place.

LONG RUN

Ken, Dave, Ben, Jason and I drove up to Sardine Canyon and Mantua to run our long run. We warmed up two miles and then did a 3-mile MP push down to the lake.  I wanted to simulate STG pace as best I could.  So I started somewhat conservative and then warmed into the pace by mile two, which is what I'd like to do in two weeks.  This first 3-mile felt very EASY.  I was surprised, but very happy, with how easy this felt even with 10 MPH headwinds. 5:19 5:04 5:04

Then we did two laps around the lake in the 6:20-6:30 range. Once we got back on the highway we did another 3-mile push to finish the run. First two miles were good downhill and then the last mile was uphill, similar to the hills in the miles after Veyo (not as steep as Veyo, but still good uphill).  Once again I tried to simulate MP and not go any faster (though I was tempted).  5:16 5:02 5:26.  The 5:02 was really good downhill and felt easy.  The 5:26 may have been a tad fast for the uphill for MP, but it was close enough.

This run was encouraging in that running 5:0x pace downhill into stiff winds felt very easy. The question will be can my legs/GI system hold up at that pace, because I'm certain my cardio won't have a problem.