"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves"

6 miles in 45 minutes. That's a very good 7:31 minutes/mile pace.

4 easy miles with my friend Avery. Nice recovery pace of 8:46.

This cold weather is depressing me. I know that I need to run and I keep telling myself that I will, but it's going to wait until this afternoon when it's as warm as it will get. What happened to the nice warm weather we had the other week?

 Edit: Wow, I have such awesome friends acquaintances. One of my friend's moms got conference tickets for her to take her friends to conference with, she invited me a week or two ago, and now I am sitting in my room while my roommate and a bunch of other people are going to conference. woot I am so loved. Oh, and to add to that, they are staying at my friend Avery's house tonight. I run with her every thursday, and thought we were friends, but I vividly remember being invited to come up some weekend to her house too. I am ready to leave BYU and go home. I cannot wait to leave these people.

To celebrate, I punished my body through a 6.69 mile run averaging 7:40. I was exhausted after simply 50 minutes of running and my knees hurt pretty bad. This is just not working.

Rest day.

 Hoping for some better weather this week and some great running.

I ran East of BYU campus this afternoon. I just wandered around for a bit. I found a nice hill that I've ran up before, and told myself I wasn't going to do it, and then proceeded to do it anyway. Nice eh? That took me over to the Temple, and I ran up to Rock Canyon, which is another brutal hill. Then just back down to my dorm. I was in no hurry, and kept my pace one that felt easy. Going up the hilly parts, my average pace was like 8:40, but for the rest of the run, it was 7:30.

Roughly 7 miles. My GPS says only 6.7, but I went out 3.6 and then turned around. I did go a different way back, but it should have been the same distance.  Ah well.  The 6.7 miles on my watch, I averaged 7:40 min/mile. It was hot, and very tough to keep on going and I ended up stopping 4-5 times on the way back.

Although I say/think this everyday, I need to up the mileage and start doing some speedwork. Hopefully, that will start once I get home from school.

I don't know what's up, but I had the hardest time with my run this morning. Roughly 4.5 miles in about 33-34 minutes. Not as good as I wanted it to be, but at least I pushed through it.

Took it easy and ran with my friend, Avery. Slow and easy along the Provo River Trail.

Took it very easy today with barely any mileage at all. I was tired and wanted to just get in something of a run today. I went to the Provo River Trail again, I thought it went farther North, but ended up running in the same place as yesterday. Average pace was about 7:35

My shins are feeling much better, and I slept forever last night. I was up trying to study until 11, but couldn't focus and went to bed. I woke up at 8:30 with a bloody nose, but went back to sleep until 11. The extra rest was much-needed, and I'm feeling ready for a hard day of studying and writing to finish up my classes.

5.5 along the Provo River Trail. I hit an amazing speed of 7:17 min/mile, which I think is most likely a record easy run pace for me. As I mentioned before, my shins are doing much better today than they have been, and now I know how to remedy shin splints without stopping training. Just take it easy, hold off on the miles, and gradually increase the stress as they heal. 

Oh, funny story. I went to the shipping place in the bookstore yesterday, and I had my shins wrapped up. Some guy there starts talking to me about shin splints and then asked me what I ran for the track team. I said "what track team?" and he had assumed I was on the track team as my legs were wrapped. Weird.

Yay finals week. Woke up at 5:45 to go running with my friend, who was a no-show, and then studied for an hour before my final test of the semester.

  Average pace was 7:31.

Wow that was tough. It was absolutely beautiful outside today, perfect temperature, and there was just a light drizzle of rain. I decided to just go out and run a nice and easy 7 miles or so, but once I about 10 minutes into the run, I felt like going fast. A little voice in my head said "Let's do a tempo run!" and so that's what I did. 20 minutes out, 18 minutes tempo, and 24 minutes back in. It felt wonderful, and I averaged 7:13 min/mile. That's 8.3 mph! Fastest I've ran for an hour since the Marathon! 

woot.

Provo's weather is terrible today. It should be a nice spring morning, maybe some showers, but it is SNOWING. I left my dorm expecting a nice run in a light rainshower, and within 5 minutes it started snowing. I was originally going to go 5 miles or so, but I had to turn back early for the safety of my future children. I didn't wear proper clothing for a snowstorm.

Just a short run again today. It was warmer, but my body felt pretty horrible. Now, in addition to my shin pains, my calf feels like I pulled it.  It hurts on the back of my ankle during plantar flexion.  Not fun. Still hit 7:47 average pace.

5 nice and easy with Avery. Average 8:49 min/mile for her.

Did not feel good today. My shins are hurting very bad. It's becoming a trend in my running to have one good run a week and the rest are so-so to bad. Ah well, at least I hit 30 for the week. 

I just lump everything into easy miles unless it is threshold now. Soon I will start figuring out how fast the other paces are and do actual workouts instead of just running distance.

Great run today. Averaged 7:21 min/mile for an HOUR! So good. Ended up being 8.16 miles. Slowest mile was 7:43 and fastest was 6:59. I got to mile 6, and knew I had 2 left to go with only 15:30 to do it in to maintain the 8 mph pace. I sped up and held a good 7:10 pace for the last two miles, and am very pleased with how I responded.

Felt good for the first couple miles, and then just ran out of gas and couldn't keep on going. Cut the run a mile short.

I felt really bad again today. I'm not feeling sick or anything, but I had a hard time getting out of bed. I left to run and after about 20 minutes I started to struggle to keep on going. I stopped a bunch of the way back home too. I don't know what the problem is. I thought I was finally on track and would be able to start running more than 30 miles a week. However, I don't know how I'm going to even hit 30 good miles this week.

 I really need to find a job too. So if you live in Saint George and are looking for a very good, dedicated, hard working employee, talk to me. I have experience using a cash register, cleaning, selling to customers, food preparation, and customer satisfaction. Plus I type about 90-100 words per minute.

Taking the day off in hopes that I will be able to run better the rest of the week.

Felt a bit better today. I still had some diaphragm problems around the 4.5 mile mark. I stopped 3 times and took some big, deep breaths, and also tried breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. It worked somewhat.

Average pace of 7:42 over 7 miles is pretty good too. Tomorrow I plan on running indoors on my treadmill so I can better control the pace and see how my breathing goes and other pains. By the way, can you run barefoot on a treadmill? I see no reason why I can't, but just checking.