My Running Log

It was a busy but productive day (finally on a Saturday!). I started running at 10:40 PM. I had wanted to run again on a track, but it didn't happen, so I reverted to the treadmill. But it was an excellent workout. I had on the schedule to run 6-8 x 800m repeats. But since the fastest the treadmill goes is 6:00 mile pace, I thought I would see about running more.

The first repeat was 3:10. The rest of them I ran at 3:00. After 5 repeats, I took a bathroom break and was feeling pretty strong. Then I made it up to 9 repeats, and I was feeling decent still. On the tenth one, I was struggling but decided to keep going a bit longer than 800m. I extended it to a 1200m. The interesting thing was that on that last 400m, I felt like I was in the runner's high.

I feel great about this workout and this week. I ran more miles than I had though I would and was able to run through soreness. 6:00 mile pace isn't feeling as much like a sprint as it has felt.

Here's great news...my Garmin 205 came today! Now I can be a groupie with all the other large watch wearing runners. But seriously, this should be a great help in guiding my outdoor runs.

P.S. I don't know what the deal was with my weight. Suddenly I jumped a few pounds the last couple days.

I ran outside this morning. It was a damp day but not rainy. I used my new watch, and it worked out really well. I'll have to get used to it more and figure out the best settings, but it's a fun new toy. My average pace was 8:08. I ran too slow on an uphill part of the run. But a good first day of the running week.

I did the same loop as yesterday. This was supposed to be a tempo run, so I pushed the pace. My legs felt like lead in some places. In other places I was moving pretty good, and it felt natural. My body has to adjust to running outside rather than the treadmill. The overall pace was 7:35. Not that good but faster than it felt.

I've really felt a lack of motivation the past few days. Maybe it's because it seems like a harder challenge to get outside and push myself rather than have the treadmill push me. It would probably be easier if I had a running partner or group at least a couple days a week. Anyway...

I convinced myself to at least run on the treadmill tonight. I figured I'd try to get in at least 4-5 miles. Starting out, I still wasn't feeling that great. But I increased the pace a little each mile and ran the same distance as the last two days (8.25 miles). The pace for the last mile was 6:45, and it felt pretty smooth.

So I made it through another day of sticking with my consistency goal. That works.

I did a hill workout on the treadmill. This time it was the random hill workout, which seems to be a bit harder. This was a tough one, and I struggled quite a bit at points but was able to get through it. The mileage was slightly longer on this run than it was last week, which is what I've been trying to do lately. I'm ready for a day off to rejuvenate. I know some people think six or seven days a week is the only way to go, but five days a week is going quite well for me right now.

The weight was under 177 for the first time today.

The weight was slightly lower than yesterday.

Pretty sore. Resting up...

Went and ran on the track today. I love running on the track. I ended up doing a total of 12 miles there. Half of them were one direction. The other half were the opposite direction.

I wanted to do 5-6 one-mile repeats. Below are my times.

6:31 - wanted to start conservative and did

6:29 - pushed the pace a bit

6:27 - this one felt hard

6:19 - I counted how many steps I ran each 100m, and it helped me stay focused

6:27 - pushed through the discomfort on this one

6:29 - didn't think I was going to be under 6:30 but was!

I did 1.5 miles warmup and 2 miles cooldown and 800 meters between each repeat. This was an excellent workout for me. I will do a similar workout in a few weeks, so hopefully by then my times will be faster.

This week had some ups and downs. I ended up with 45 miles of training, which ties my best for the year. My weight is slowly dropping after plateauing for a few weeks. I probably have at least another 5-10 pounds that I can lose (and still be healthy).

This was a fun run. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go short today, so I decided to get started and see how it went. I went east toward the mountains. It was a very gradual but steady uphill for about 4 miles. Then I ran into a city recreation area that has some dirt trails. One of them follows along a little stream and ends up at Wasatch Blvd. I took that and then came back a different way.

The uphill felt pretty good. I felt like I could keep going up without slowing down too much.

This ended up being a 10 mile run, which is a big jump from what I've done on Monday so far this year. I felt it the last 2-3 miles, but it still felt great overall. I love this weather!

And some great news to end with...I got accepted into the St. George Marathon!! So there are about 4 1/2 months left of training. I'm going to work hard to blast away my current PR.

I ran 2 miles warmup at 8:00 pace, then 5 miles of "tempo" run at 7:26 pace average, then cooldown at around 8:00 pace. The tempo part was hard for me to do. My legs were hurting. I have some sore muscles and my shin was bothering me a little. Hopefully someday it will clear itself up. Good mileage so far this week. Might take it easy tomorrow.

I pushed it pretty hard the past 3 runs, so my body wasn't feeling too great today. So I ran easy. Actually, I did 3 miles on the elliptical and 3.3 on the treadmill. That's the easiest I've run in many weeks.

I decided to experiment with running during the day up by the University of Utah where I study. We are right up against the foothills, and I always see runners and bikers around. So I found a trail that looked good, but it was blocked. So I turned on what I thought would be a way around the blockage. It kept going UP and UP and UP and was STEEP. It was so hard and my lower calves were burning badly, so I walked. Eventually I got to the top (it was more of a hike), and it was beautiful overlooking Salt Lake. I got up to 6400 ft (starting at 5000 ft). I tried a fork in the road, but that was taking me too far, so I turned around and went down the other side.

At the bottom I found another path that looked promising, so I took that for about 3/4 mile, and it was excellent. That got me up to 5400 ft. That will be the path I focus on next time. I don't know if I will do this every week, but I would like to go again. It's an amazing experience to run in the mountains and in nature.

My mile splits were extremely slow, but I think my workout was worthwhile.

Good luck to those running tomorrow in the Ogden marathon!

I went down to the Hillcrest track again this morning. It was about 3 miles to the track, and it was an absolutely beautiful morning. I did 12x400m repeats. And then ran home.

It was a nice workout, and I pushed myself, but I just can't get my speed where I want it to be. My fastest (and it was wearing racing flats) was 78 seconds. I guess I'm comparing myself to high school when I could get some of my repeats down around 65-70. So that's not a fair comparison right now. But I just want to get faster. Patience is a virtue...

1 - 82

2 - 84

3 - 82

4 - 81

5 - 82

6 - 84

7 - 82

8 - 85

9 - 82

10 - 78 (wearing racing flats)

11 - 78 (flats)

12 - 79 (flats)

On a positive note, my times were very consistent.

This has been a very enjoyable week for running. The weather has been gorgeous, and I have found some new training routes, which is a huge plus because it motivates me to get out the door. I think it was 44 miles for the week, which is right where I wanted to be.

I ran the same 10 mile route as last Monday. It's basically 5 miles of gradual uphill, turn around and come home. I loved being out early and hearing nature and running part of it on a trail.

I felt strong for the first 3 miles and then had fast spots at times on the rest of it but also struggled for parts of it. My average pace was about 8:20.

I did my 11400 south loop. The first two miles were warmup. Then 5 miles at a faster (tempo) pace. Then cooldown for the rest.

The wind was blowing 20-30 mph into my face on the first four miles. I was happy to run under 8 minute pace for the 1st and 2nd miles of the tempo run because of the wind and going slightly uphill. The next two miles were close to 7 minute pace on the downhill and with the wind at my back. The fifth tempo mile was a difficult one. My body ran out of gas. Some of the difficulty today was probably from also running out of gas yesterday.

The average tempo pace was about 7:30-7:35. The average overall pace was about 8:20. I hope to improve on this in future weeks.

Today is my easy day. I did 3 miles on the elliptical in about 24 minutes. I can't get my heart rate as high as I used to on these machines, which hopefully means my cardio is getting stronger. Then I ran 4 miles on the treadmill with 7 surges of about 60 seconds each (between 6:00 and 6:30 pace). The surges felt surprisingly easy. I think I am getting better even though it hasn't felt that way lately.

I ran along the Bonneville-Shoreline trail, starting behind the University of Utah medical campus. It was incredibly beautiful and a great workout. I got up to 5880 feet, which was about a 900 ft elevation gain. The average pace going up was 10:03/mile. The overall average was 9:00/mile, so coming down it was a little better than 8:00/mile.

I think these types of workouts are really going to pay off in the long run.

Today was a big workout for me. I did "ladders" on the track. This consisted of 400-800-1200-1200-800-400-400-800-1200-1200-800-400. It tires me out just to type of all of that, so you can imagine it was tough to run. First I ran 3 miles to the track for warmup. And afterwards I ran 3 miles home. I rested half the distance of each speed portion.

My initial goal was to run 6:00 pace and stay with it.

400 - 92 seconds

800 - 3:00, right on pace

1200 - 4:45, couldn't keep the pace

1200 - 4:48, not too bad

800 - 3:11

400 - 97 seconds, that stunk

400 - 93 seconds, that was better

800 - 3:14, averaged 97 per 400

1200 - 4:59, the worst so far, averaged 100 seconds per 400

1200 - 4:50, pushed better on this one

800 - 3:24, running out of gas

400 - 89 seconds, at least it finished strong

Wasn't able to keep the pace that I intended. But this was my first time doing this workout, so I didn't know what to expect. It was hard to get in a good rhythm because the distance changed so much. I might have enjoyed it better if I had just done 8x1200m. And it would have been just as good a workout. So I might ditch the ladder workout. We'll see. Also, other people were on the track and getting in my way, so that made it more difficulty.

Let's say I roughly convert this run to 12x800m on paper. So a little more than the Yasso's 800m workout. It would be may 3:20 per 800m repeat. Which, according to his theory, would convert to a 3:20 marathon. That's probably not too different from where I am right now. But I'm training SOOOO much better than I have for my previous two marathons, which were right around this speed, so I'm hopeful I can improve on those times substantially.

This workout gave me a lot of miles. I was super tired by the end. But I'm happy that I ran my highest weekly miles of the year (49) and had some great workouts. Next Saturday I'm doing a 5K on the track, so that will be fun.

Ran on the trail behind the U of U again. Went with my friend Ryan, who is better than me, and he pushed me. That was nice. We went all the way to the end of the trail and back. On the way back, I felt that I pushed myself mentally. I would remind myself that it wasn't really that painful, and it wasn't. It was just uncomfortable, and I was breathing hard, but that's something that can be pushed through.

I was feeling somewhat groggy and disoriented this morning, so by default I stumbled over to the gym and ran on the treadmill. It turned into a pretty decent workout, in which I ran 9 miles. The average pace was 7:30. Not too shabby.

I did another 9 miler. I was feeling sore, so I started off nice and easy. I ran along a nice paved path that I hadn't run on before. I'll have to try it again. Beautiful morning! My average pace was 7:59, and for the first time in awhile I ran negative splits as I started feeling better.

8:13
8:07
8:07
8:06
7:58
7:48
7:48
7:55
8:09 (cooldown)

During the run I envisioned running the 10K I'll be doing in 5 1/2 weeks.

Did 2 miles on the treadmill at easy pace. Then 3 miles on the treadmill at about 9:00 pace average. I was going to go a mile longer, but I felt horrible, so I stopped. I haven't felt this bad on a run in a long time. I got to thinking about it, and it was probably because I haven't been eating enough. My weight dropped to the lowest it's been this year by a full pound, and it must partly be due to not eating enough. So after my run I ate a bunch and realized how hungry I was. So hopefully getting that back on track will help me be ready for my race on Saturday.

I feel sore and under the weather a bit today. Hopefully I can rest up and get ready for tomorrow's race.

I ran at the USATF meet at Timpanogas High School in Orem, UT today. It was a 5000m race on the track, and they allowed old guys (masters) like me to run, too. I was hoping there would be a group of people who would be running, but it turned out to be two runners--me and my little brother. I was pretty stoked because I knew I was guaranteed to get at least second place. :) But I was kind of bummed that we went to the effort of going to the meet but didn't have much competition.

Anyway, I started feeling better (after being under the weather yesterday) as the day went on, so I felt like I could do OK. My goal was to be under 20:00 for sure, and I would have loved to be under 19:00. We started out quick (for me) with an 87 on the first lap. Then the laps got slower as time went on. My brother is pretty fast (just graduated high school and ran for his school), but he hadn't run in a week. I could see him about 50-100 meters ahead of me for most of the race, but I couldn't muster much strength to try to reel him in.

My time was below 21:00 but not near my goals. That bummed me out. The thing that is most frustrating is that I just couldn't get myself going with a good tempo or with good mental strength. I felt like I was dragging along. This is similar to how I felt in the half last month. Even though my time was about 70 seconds faster than my last 5K, it just didn't feel satisfying. I know I can do better. I think the heat played something of a factor, but it wasn't that bad.

I think I just need to keep pushing past this plateau, and it will come.

But hey, it's not everyday that you finish 2nd (or last) in a race, eh?!

P.S. I did enough of a cooldown to get to 40 miles for the week, so that's good.