Wheeler Farm Loops

AM - 21 miles. Started from SHP w/ Fritz, Allie, and James. Ran south to Cottonwood Complex, at which point Fritz and I broke away (sorry JA - we didn't necessarily mean to bail on you!) and ran back via Wasatch. After 19 miles I turned home and Fritz ran to the gym. Averaged ~6:15 pace for the last 12 miles, so a pretty good clip for a casual Sunday run. Felt good as I usually do after running the 5K yesterday.

Pictures from snowshoeing yesterday 

PM - 5 miles shakeout, easy breezy. 

AM - 8.6 miles up to work, slowly.

PM - 11.2 miles home. Nice outside. 

You might have seen in the news over the weekend that there was an avalanche fatality in Big Cottonwood Canyon. We saw the rescue helicopters flying around while at Alta on Saturday, and a patroller filled me on the news. It wasn't until we got home that the name of the victim was released... Alecs Barton (KSL article). While I didn't know him personally, Andrea and I did run into him one day last February while touring in Beartrap Fork (our recap of that day). It was one of the "perfect" days where every photo we shot was good enough to go on the cover of a ski magazine. When we crossed paths with Alecs, I could sense his excitement and enthusiasm (you immediately could tell he was a great guy), and he wanted to shoot some photos of me skiing down towards some low clouds in BCC. He sent me several photos that night like the one below of me skiing:

These kind of tragedies hit home especially hard when you know who the person was. It sucks. Backcountry skiing is very scary this year. We are taking no chances - and pretty much just waiting until the spring (and after Boston) to do any real serious BC skiing. 

AM - 10 miles up to work, easy pace. 

PM - 10 miles home.

January roundup - 589 miles run, 3050 perfect pushups, 610 perfect pullups (more pullups than miles!), averaged 8.5 hours of sleep per night, and drove my car to work 4 times. Good start to the year.

AM - 9 miles. Short and to the point this morning - warmed up a mile, then right into a 6 mile MP tempo (that ended up being more of a progression run) - splits were 5:28, 5:23, 5:19, 5:16, 5:13, 5:02 (5:16/mi average). I was planning to run this a little bit slower, but once I got rolling it felt easy and the pace dropped naturally. Cooled down 2 miles. Glad to get this in, because I feel like my body is trying to fight off the sickness Andrea is trying to pass along to me, so who knows how I'll feel tomorrow.

PM - 8 miles. Double session today. Warmed up 2.5 miles, then ignored the no trespassing signs and hit the new Olympus HS track (its nice but not as soft as I hoped it would be). Workout was 12 x 400m @ 5K pace (no faster!) w/ 200m float in-between. Averaged 72.8 seconds for the reps, so I managed to keep it perfectly under control as intended. Jogged some laps the opposite way for a cooldown.

There was a method to my madness today with the double workout. The idea comes from what Renato Canova is doing with his athletes. Granted, I did a hobby-jogger version of the "special block" compared to what his guys do, but I just wanted to try it out and see how my body responds. In certain situations, it makes sense to stack the workouts back to back, and then take a day or two of very easy recovery running afterwards. Neither session today was very hard so I'm guessing I'll feel good tomorrow. If anything, the quarters were a little boring. I'm looking forward to eventually starting a weekly "track night" this spring and having groups to do workouts with.

AM - 8.5 miles up to work. Ran slow - as expected I picked up Andrea's chest congestion, but I don't feel too bad. The knee that has been bothering me a bit for the past two weeks was not even noticeable (I mean, I noticed that I had a knee... you get my drift!). I guess the double workout yesterday was what it needed to go back to normal.

PM - 11.6 miles home. Feeling a little sick/lousy, but not bad enough to run directly home. I meandered a bit through Sugar House. 

The plan for Saturday's long run is to meet at Riverton Town Park - run the 1/2 marathon course, then the 10K course. We're going to start at 7:30am. I'm guessing the run will probably break into different groups. Based on what happened the last couple times we got so many good runners together on a Saturday morning, the pace will probably end up being pretty honest.

AM - 8.8 miles. HCI/Sunnyside/Wasatch. Spent the first 3-4 miles coughing the junk out of my chest. Everyone I ran by probably thought I had just polished off a pack of cigarettes. I put about zero percent effort into that run, just going through the motions. I don't get sick very often - when I do, it usually hits me really hard for a day, then I bounce back quickly. Hopefully that will be the case this time. 

PM - 7 miles. Met Andrea at the Olympus track and we ran 2 miles together to warmup. I was originally thinking of doing a short tempo, but settled on something even easier - 12 x 200m w/ 200m jog... averaged 33.1 seconds for the reps. Not really impressive considering I picked the direction w/ a tailwind, but honestly I kinda feel like trash right now and that was about all I could manage. The workout accomplished the goal of clearing a lot more junk out of my chest. Jogged 2 miles on the artificial turf to cooldown.

Some weekend motivation. Desi Devila shared a journal entry from March 2006 with Running Times. A snippet from what she wrote:

If we will all eventually walk away disappointed, then what is the point? Why do we step out the door each day?  If only one person can be the best, are the rest of us essentially failing?  I certainly don’t have the answers, but today I’ll walk out the door with my Burns tied tight and hopes of setting the world on fire firmly engrained in my mind. Odds are I’ll never wear an Olympic medal around my neck, but maybe…just maybe, I will. With that in mind I’ll take off down the road and put in the days work.  If we don’t try we’ll never know. At least I can find out how good I can be.

AM - 21 miles. Met up with the biggest long run crew ever down at Riverton Park. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that there were ~35 people there. Obviously I'm not going to list all the names, but we had a ton of bloggers. It was a lot of fun and a great group of guys to run with this morning. We started off by running the Riverton 1/2 marathon course, which has a bunch of short, steep uphills. The first 12 miles were at ~6:30 pace, then Matt decided to string it out, so we ran the 13th mile in 5:25. Got a drink at the cars, then headed back out with a goal of going slower, but everyone remaining in the group was feeling pretty good and we ran ~6:25 pace for the next 7 miles. Fritz was willing to throw down a slightly faster last mile (5:12) with me to finish it off.

Thanks to everyone that came out... good synergy out there this morning! I love when we can get so many good good runners, working towards a common goal, out there pushing each other. 

PM - 4 miles shakeout, very easy.