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

I had to sleep in this morning and go running for my jogging class.  Just a little jog from the SFH and around campus and then a half mile cool-down in the SFH. I love the banked turns.

I was trying to keep it slower, but my body's new "slow" seems to be 7:40 min/mile. I'm not mad about that, I just feel like I should be running slower now.There were some faster VO2 max portions too. I walked back to Helaman with a cute girl in my class, and had to rush back to make it to my weight training class.

Other than some lingering pain in my shins I will be 100% by Saturday. I cannot wait.

I might go mess around on the track tomorrow and do those 4x400s I talked about on Sunday.

 DS Trainer 13 - 107.81

Wow.  This was an absolutely amazing experience and I am hooked on running marathons now. 

I woke up at 4:30 and was shaking like crazy.  I guess I was just worried about what was going to happen.  Had some oatmeal and then my dad and I left to pick up his friend and go to the buses. 

I was still scared about what was to come until the race started.  Luckily I had my warm-ups on because it was cold and rainy at the starting line (and for the entire race). I thought I was going to freeze if I took my stuff off, but it actually felt good, like the weather in Provo.  I never had any harmful effects from the wind, and I think that the weather helped me more than hurt.  I was just disappointed that people not native to Saint George didn't get to see how beautiful the course really is.

There were so many people there and it took about six minutes before I crossed the starting line.  I should have gone up and started with the elite runners instead of back in the pack. 

Here are my mile splits.  I hit the half at 1:36 and thought I was looking for a negative split to qualify for Boston, but the second half was 1:48. Maybe I went out too fast, but I think I got caught up in the race and when some FRB members passed me, I sped up to stay with them for a half mile.  I think that doomed by sub 3:20 time. I still took second in my age division (15-18) and second in the Spectrum Silver Shoe, losing to the 14 year old who got 3:08.

 1 - 7:20 - Running on the shoulder and sometimes the dirt. I passed hundreds of people here.

2- 7:17

3 - 7:08 - Passed my three friends that were running too.  I ended up beating them by half an hour.

4 - 6:56 - I found my weight training teacher and ran with her and her friend until Veyo Hill. It helped me so much to have someone running with me.

5 - 7:04

6 - 6:47

7 - 6:53

8 - 7:43 - Veyo Hill. My training lacked any emphasis on hills and as you can see, it took 4-5 miles to recover.  I still took it hard and fast and left my teacher behind.

9 - 7:51

10 - 7:42 - Somewhere around here I noticed a guy was running with me.  I started talking to him and we ended up pushing each other the next 8 miles.  I saw him at the end of the race and he wanted my phone number, gave me a big hug, and had his wife take a picture of us.

11 - 7:51

12 - 7:42

13 - 7:24

14 - 7:29

15 - 7:00

16 - 6:48

17 - 7:14

18 - 7:52 - Death.  Some FRB guys passed me right here. I still felt really good and was hitting good splits so I thought I could speed up with them.  Horrible idea.  Maybe I was just burning out anyway, but this was the point I will remember losing it.

19 - 9:20

20 - 8:26

21 - 7:57

22 - 9:01

23 - 9:05

24 - 7:35 - My weight training teacher and her friend caught back up to me here. I stuck with them for the mile going into Saint George and then hit the wall.

25 - 10:13 - Yuck. I walked a lot of this mile.  The last two miles seemed like they would never end, but I knew I had only this little bit left to go.

26 - 8:28

26.2 - 1:48 - Sprinted into the chute w00t. 

DS Trainer 13 -  134.01

Yuck. I hate hobbling around campus like a handicap.  I stretched out pretty good in weight training and tried running around a little on the way back to my dorm.  I've heard it's a pretty funny sight to watch.  Depending on what comes up, I will probably go walk around the track and try getting my body to run.  The pain is so annoying, but definitely worth it.

 I also bought Advanced Marathoning from the FRB store and got Daniels' Running Formula from the HBLL.  I'm looking at what other marathons I could get into sometime next year, and I'm super excited to try and break 3:10, or maybe even 3:00 if I work hard enough.

Do they have a rehab system for running addiction? I need it. Now.

I still am suffering from major post-marathon pain, as I believe many others of you are.  I want to go out and just stretch the legs, run a bit, but I've decided that I need to wait. I need to let my body rest so I can start performing at my best as soon as possible, without injury. 

Looking ahead to future races . . . There are two good looking marathons in Utah next summer I could do. I should be leaving on my mission in early August so that's my deadline to run another one  (or two), otherwise I would try and run Top of Utah.  I'm deciding between the Ogden Marathon and Salt Lake Deseret News Marathon. Which is better? More people? Faster course? More scenic course?

Slow, easy run for my jogging class.  We were supposed to Fartlek, but I just kept a regular pace.  We went down University Avenue and over to the Provo River Trail for 4.16 miles.

Splits:

1 - 8:23

2 - 7:57

3 - 9:37

4 - 8:15

.16 - 8:22 min/mile pace

I had some major quad pain in mile 3 and walked for a bit.  I'm struggling to maintain a good pace, but that should clear up as the month progresses. 
I think I'm going to take tomorrow off and then run on Friday.  

Rest again today. It's going to be hard to get my body up out of bed at 5 again next week. Cold too.

I've been reading Daniels' Running Formula and I'll try to have a very good, specific training program prepared by the time I feel like actually training again.

I'm going to "jog" 5-6 miles tomorrow morning. I would say I'm at 90% today, and hope to be back up to 100% by then. Just  a little soreness left.

Slow, easy run today. I thought I would be recovered more by today, but it hurt more than Wednesday's run.  Just 3.55 miles around campus in an amazing fast time of 32:02. That's 9:00 min/mile! I'm happy that I can run this soon after the marathon though.

 I need to go buy some cold weather gear, but I'm not sure what I should really get.  It gets way colder here than it ever did in Saint George. I thought it would be freezing this morning and I overdressed, adding to the pain already in my legs. Hopefully I can get my parents to take me shopping for cold weather running clothes and they can subsidize it.

I went running with my jogging class today. It was nice because it let me wait until the sun had come up and warmed it a little. I couldn't maintain the pace that I wanted to, but in fact went much faster.  Perhaps I've reached a new level of fitness?

Average of about 7:30 min/mile, with a high of 9:38 because I didn't stop my watch while waiting to cross the street.

Finished off my run with 4 laps around the indoor track, striding out for the straight portions.  I should have done 100 meters, but forgot that the indoor track is only 65 metres or so on the straights.

Ouch. I planned on doing an hour-long run this morning, last night.  After looking at the weather forecast, I was totally psyched and ready to go find out what sub-freezing temperatures feel like.  When I woke up (5:22) I felt like crap from working out my legs yesterday and just didn't feel like running.  I said my morning prayers, of course asking to be motivated to push myself to the best of my ability and to be safe. I got up to get ready and pondered if I really should go, or just wait until tomorrow, finally deciding to go back to bed, my body was too sore for a good run.  But, after five minutes in bed, my body let me know that it wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon. Good thing I said my prayers this morning, eh?

Got seven miles in going up Timp View Drive.  They were tough, and I had to continually push myself to even continue running. Average pace of 8:28 min/mile.  I didn't maintain the same pace for much of my run, but I feel like I maintained the same intensity for most of it.

I'm having weird problems with my knee.  It hurts pretty badly and I'm going to take it easy tomorrow and then take Thursday off. I'm going to a Silverstein and Chiodos concert at the Salt Air on Wednesday, my very first real concert, and I don't know what my sleep will be like.

 DS Trainer 13 - 155.43

Woke up this morning and felt sore, and not like going running. I went back to sleep and barely made it to class.  Post-marathon training sucks.

 I went to the BYU weight room and rode the elliptical bike for about an hour. 20 minutes biking =1 mile running right? That was hard, but it was hard without stressing my legs.  Good workout.  I just have to mention that I was completely drenched in sweat when I was finished.  There were no fans nearby, and it was . . . way cool, I thought. 

I tried to run on the treadmill for two to three miles after, but I just can't do it.  I ran for about 30 seconds and then decided to stop. I always feel like I'm going to fall off the front by running too fast or fall off the back.  I'm going to work on my treadmillophobia this winter though.

Yuck. Nothing to call home about today. Felt like going straight back to sleep when the alarm went off, but found myself outside 15 minutes later. I feel like crap. I can't run. I have no motivation to run. I don't want to get out of bed. Maybe it's the cold, or maybe just the doldrums of post marathon training.

To fix the problem, I'm going to get more sleep. That's the biggest priority right now. More sleep will hopefully equal better, and more, miles.  I have a big test in biology coming up today, but once that is out of the way I'm having a nap.

  DS Trainer 13 - 160.91

Great run today! I'm finally feeling better today.  I slept in (thank heavens, I didn't fall asleep until after midnight) because I had jogging class today.  I started out 30 minutes before class and went up Canyon Rd. for 13 minutes.  Turned around and pushed it up to threshold pace until I got to class.  I had to have a little break while we took roll and talked about what we were doing today; something I wasn't happy about, but it all worked out fine.  Then I kept up the tempo to the BYU Intramural fields and pushed it going around the perimeter.  I hit my goal of 25 minutes of tempoing, then stopped, took off my shoes, and cooled down for one lap.  

Amazing.

The cool, wet mud on my feet felt beautiful. Hopefully my blisters have healed enough that I don't get some crazy infection.  While I was running I saw a bunch of white things on the field, that I thought were shoes. Weird.  As I got closer I saw that they were actually birds! Ha ha, I ran right through the middle of them, scattering them all over the place.  Definitely summarized the awesomeness of today's run. 

I did 6 striders also.  Not sure about the distance, but they were good and fast.  Worked out my legs in weight training and had some great pasta, a BLT, and a nice chicken salad for lunch.

I'm playing soccer tonight too, so I need to go easy on my legs tomorrow.

I went out with two kids on my floor this morning.  I asked who wanted to be the pace setter, and he absolutely took off! We're talking like 6:45 pace.  I wasn't physically or mentally prepared to run that fast today, as I was just planning on an easy run.  Kept it going at a pretty high intensity for most of the run.  Ran around campus up 9th East and around the Provo Temple, then back the same way.  Almost died up Temple Hill, and then finally died when we got back down to University Avenue. I was not ready for this today, but it was good to run with other people. 

Splits:

1 - 8:14

2 - 7:45

3 - 8:02

4 - 7:35

5 - 7:39

6 - 8:18

My knee has been killing me for the past couple of days, so I slept in and went to the weight room after lunch.  I rode the elliptical bike for 45 minutes keeping my heart rate above 150, mostly above 160 and worked hard.  Then I got on the treadmill for 5 minutes to see how my knee would respond to running.  It felt fine, but now my tibialis anterior is starting to hurt.  One pain to another.  That's the story of my running life.

 So my knee started hurting after the marathon, and I figure that it was just from that.  But then I started thinking about it during long, painful walks across campus and I realized that I probably hit it on a cabinet at the cafeteria.  The people who work there always forget to shut the cabinets and I bump my knee cap into them when I get my morning Wheaties.  The pain is on the interior side of my kneecap and it does not feel good.  Any pressure on it makes it feel worse.  I'm really hoping that a little rest will fix it, but I don't know what's going to happen.  I mean it can't be that bad if I have run on it can it?

DS Trainer 13 - 174.66

I'm kinda depressed after riding the elliptical bike for an hour; it just isn't fun at all.My knee is getting somewhat better, but I'm afraid of running on it and going back to square one.  I guess i should be happy that I at least went and got some aerobic exercise. 

 I'm not going to try and run until Monday. Hopefully I'll actually be able to run and start back into a good training schedule by then. I can't wait to start working hard and increasing my speed.

After not running for most of last week, I felt sluggish and out of tune today. Good news is that my knee doesn't hurt very bad (it only really hurt one day, but I was trying to be careful) but bad news is that my right ankle hurts a bit. I will be wearing the wrap around it and probably taking tomorrow off.

 Then hopefully I can get back into a groove and work towards some winter maintenance stuff. I would like to start building a base back up, and then progressing to working on my speed in January and February while it's really cold outside and I'm rejected to the indoor track.  Hopefully I can teach myself how to run on a treadmill too.

 By the way, this shoe tracker is amazing, because I always forget to update the mileage on my posts.

Crazy fast today. I went for my jogging class again.  A mile and a quarter warm-up to the Fieldhouse and on the track.  Did a loop around campus past the MTC and LES, which is roughly 4 miles.  Cooled down for about .6 miles on the track and then ran back to the dorm for a grand total of 6!

 I ended up averaging 7:30, with a fast mile of 6:55 downhill and a slow mile of 8:04 warming up. But the warm-up mile was indoors, so my Garmin was having some issues recording it. I took off much too fast and ended up just taking it.  Hurt by the time I was finished, but it was good nonetheless.

 I saw one of my friends at the MTC today. That was nice. I could very well never see him again. Which makes it even better that I thought he was someone other than he was. How embarrassing is that to call him the wrong name? I now have at least five friends in the MTC. It's crazy.

Beautiful run up University Parkway, past the MTC, and up Timp View Drive and back. I haven't ran continuously for this long for a bit, and it hurt a bit, but felt good.  

My current goal is to get back up to 50 miles a week by December so I am going to try and hit 30-35 next week, then 40, 45, 50.  It shouldn't be very tough, but I need to get used to waking up early again. Thank heavens for daylight savings time.