Slowly Getting Faster

Sunny run in St George with my bro. Part road part trail. Easy pace

Lake-to-lake relay. 3 legs instead of the usual 2. It's hard to sprint 2 legs then finish with a 7 miler.

I was on tap to do Leg 5, Leg 7, and Leg 10 but ended up also doing 1.27 of Leg 3 due to a restroom emergency. Leg 3 was a 7:30 mile

Leg 5: the plan here was to start slowly so that I would have something left for the other two sections of this run.  My brother Robert and his team went out just in front of me though so my ego and pride got the better of me and I turned it on right out of the gate.  He had a good head start on me and I wanted to catch him.  I almost pulled it off.  He crossed the finish line for this section just moments before me.  I could even see him with about 600 yards to go and thought I was going to get there, but I think he saw me too and picked up the pace.  I ended up finishing this leg in just under 30 minutes; a 7:20 pace. 

Leg 7: This was much harder than I expected it to be. Mostly, I think, because I had spent so much energy trying to catch Robert on the last leg. I passed 9 teams on this leg so I wasn't the only one struggling. I pulled this one out in 39:51; 8:14 per mile.  Slower than I would have liked but I was also really trying to pull it back because I knew I still had Leg 10 to run. I think, had this been my last leg, even being as tired as I was, I could have made it under 8:00 miles. 

Leg 10: the longest leg in the whole course. I was dead tired before this started.  I thought some food and caffeine would help get my energy level back up so I ate 2 peanut butter sandwiches and ingested 250 mg of caffeine before I started.  It didn't help that much.  I've heard a lot of ultra runners mock these relays because the mileage is so short, comparatively, but there is something to be said for the difficulty level of stopping, resting, and then starting again.  I've run 17 miles straight on many occasions and never felt as spent in the last 7 miles as I did here. I tried to keep the speed up, and I managed to pass 2 people, but this was my slowest lap.  I was passed 3 times, something that hadn't happened on either of the previous two laps. In the end, I pulled this one out in 1:03:54; 9:05 average. If we do it again next year I think I will spend more of my winter doing endurance-speed work to get ready for this sucker. 

All in all this race was awesome.  It's a good opportunity to get to bond with people while running. Plus, it's a good excuse for a vacation right at that time of the year when the cold and snow have taken all the pleasure out of the outdoors and you just need some sunshine, 70 degree temps and a mixture of asphalt and trails.  

I didn't run yesterday because I was pretty tight in my calves and inner right thigh from the weekends activities. Something about trying to run fast that really stresses out the muscles. This morning I decided to work out the kinks with an easy run on the TM. 7 miles in 1:05:00 @ 1% grade. Felt pretty good.  

7 in 1:02:00 on the TM.  Faster today because I mixed in some speed work after 30 minutes of warm up.

7 on the TM again in 1:02:30.  First 4 miles at around a 9:30 pace, next 2 miles at 8:50 pace, last mile at a 6:40 pace.  All at 1% incline

Tending today while the wife is at work. Only time for a TM run. 10 @ slow pace; 1:35:00; 1% incline.

Wanted to get out on the road or trail today but I couldn't sleep last night and thus didn't get up this morning. So, I hit the TM again and pushed the pace a bit. First 3 at 10:00-9:00 per mile, second 3 at 8:20-8:00, last 1 at 6:40. Overall pace 8:24 per mile.

I'm going to transition back to outside by the weekend. Time to start getting used to distance on the trail again.

5 miles and just under 2,300 feet of vertical gain and loss, very slow. 

I read an article a while back by Karl Meltzer in which he described his training technique.  He said the best way to get ready for a long mountain run is to really practice the down hills.  Everyone, he said, focuses on running up but most people end up walking up the hill, or at least the steep sections.  It's on the down hill that you are able to make up the time, if your legs are ready.  

I also understand that the best way to train for a race is to mimic the race conditions as best as possible during training. Speedgoat, my next race, is a lot of steep up hill followed by steep downhill, all at elevation.  At the present time, running at high elevation is out of the question because there is too much snow up there still.  But running up and down steep hills is very do-able. Right out my font door is a 1,000 foot vertical climb, over a mile and a half, up to flag rock.  So, the training plan for the next 4 months will be largely using this as my treadmill, ala Scott W. and Mount Wire.  

2 laps today, the second one was much harder than the first.  

1:17:52. I really should have done more distance, and maybe I'll go back out and run flat at some point today, but my legs are beat. The double up to flag rock yesterday has my quads screaming. Not too bad on the up hill, but coming down is rough. I thought 4 months of training would be enough for speedgoat but now I'm beginning to wonder.  

I wore the hart rate monitor to see if I could keep my hart rate in the aerobic range, I think I failed.  At least if it is accurate. I think I will either take tomorrow off or run flat on the treadmill. Legs need some recovery time.  

5 on the TM at 10 pm. 

Horrible day.  Sometimes I think I should go back to selling boilers. In the meantime I guess I'll just put down some miles.  

 6 on the TM after work in 55 minutes. If the snow stops and the temp goes back up I'll get back to the mountain.  

The advantage of being at work at 5:30 AM is that I am done by 3. When I got home I decided to go for a run, even though I was very tired.  It turned into a slow run, but it felt good. I decided to start by heading down the fire break road and, after 2 miles, decided to do some exploring.  I found a pretty cool little road on the upper bench above centerville that gave me some nice vert, and after I explored that for a bit I decided to go up into pretty valley.  I haven't been there in a long time and I forgot how pretty it is.  I think I will definitely be doing this route again.  I can get an easy 10 miles with some fun single track mixed into the road and some good vert. 

Easy run down the fire break followed by a trip up to flag rock.  Right at the base of the switchbacks I ran into a heard of deer.  I counted 8.  They ran away quickly. 

I did a Pretty Valley loop this morning and ran into another heard of deer. It's very nice up there in the pre-sunrise hours. I wanted to also go up flag rock but ran out of time. 

6 on the TM. @2% incline for 5 miles then 7% for the last 1.

This run is awesome!  I'm going to add one more section to this run and name it the Farmington Crown (because that is what the GPS tracking will look like when it's done, 3 points on a crown). 

I start on the firebreak road and go south toward davis creek trail.  I bypass the trailhead and go up around the back into pretty valley and up to Hell's Hole. Hell's Hole is beautiful by the way.  Pine forest single track trail within a few miles of my house. Then I cut back down to the davis creek trail and back to the firebreak.  

From there, I head north to the south flag rock trail and head up to flag rock.  When I complete this route I will head down the north side trail back to the firebreak, but there was too much snow on the north side still for me to run it today. I got about .1 of a mile down the north side trail before I turned around and went back the other way.  

Although this is as far as I got today, I think I will add a trip over to farmington canyon and up the Sunset trail to the sunset campground and back down either the canyon road or sunset trail to the firebreak.  Then cut across the firebreak back to my house.  If I take the canyon road back down I think this course will be about 16 miles and have around 5,000 feet of vertical gain. Pretty awesome to have this kind of trail access right out my front door!