In The Long Run

Usual Liberty Park run before a long day of travel.

Nice morning run on the beach in South Padre. Very humid but a nice ocean breeze kept it bearable. Followed by chocolate covered strawberries and an amazing breakfast.

Ran along the beach as the sun was setting. Only had enough daylight for a short one. Did a couple miles of 1/4 mile pickups with 1/4 mile recovery. Afterwards jumped into the pool with my clothes on to cool down.

Sunrise beach run. Ran out to the Ridley sea turtle release and watched the baby turtles go into the ocean.  Spent the rest of the day at Schlitterbahn with the family.

Last full day of vacation at the Paradise Villa.  Ran 5 miles on the beach.  Went parasailing in the afternoon.  

Usual Liberty Park run.  After a long day of travel yesterday, it is good to be home.  It was also nice to run without sand in my shoes and without massive sweating!

AM: Usual Liberty Park run.

PM: Restore yoga 

TNT on the Little Cottonwood Creek trail.  I need to get my trail legs back! Tonight was my first trail run in nearly a month and it was tough.  3+ miles up (~1100 ft gain is what I was told) then a nice downhill back.  I struggled a lot on the up today and even the down was tougher than it should have been, I'm sure spending last week at sea level didn't help.  I'm worried that I will be in over my head this weekend: I'm crewing for and then pacing my husband for the last 18 miles of the Bighorn 100. Gulp.

Still feel beat after yesterday's run so decided to go to spin class today.  Pushed fairly hard. Glad I did something before a long afternoon of travel.

Paced my husband for the last 18 miles of the Bighorn 100.  I ran the 50k here in 2010 and 2011 so I was very familiar with this stretch of the course.  However, it is a stretch that I strongly dislike and swore I would never run again.  The steep downhills just kill me.  

The 100 started at 11am on Friday.  Our friend Josh and his dad Jeff were also doing the 100 and I helped crew for all of them with Josh's fiance Cassie and their friend Jim.  This resulted in a very long day and night with very little sleep (~3 hours total) and wonky eating. I was so preoccupied with everything else that I did not hydrate properly.  

Nate was holding up pretty well when I joined him around mile 82. He knew he would finish well under his goal, so he was content to run/walk the final miles.  I assumed that because we weren't going to be moving very fast that it would be easy. WRONG.  My quads are just as destroyed as they were the previous two years and I'm just exhausted due to lack of sleep. The bottoms of feet also ache likely because of my recent lack of trail running. Walking is very painful right now. So now instead of ramping up my training, I'm back into recovery mode again.  But I'm very proud of Nate for finishing his first 100, especially since he decided on a whim last month to do this.

SLCTC group run.  Today was the first day that I wasn't too sore or too exhausted to get a run in.  Felt good to be out there again and it went much better than I anticipated.  Maybe this recent unplanned break was not such a bad thing after all.

Usual Liberty loop before work.  Really struggling to get on a schedule this week. Hope next week will be better.

I signed up for the Park City Trail Series months ago because I thought it looked like fun and I wanted to check out some new places to run.  The first race in the series was a 5k.  I haven't run very consistently since Ogden so I decided to use this race as a springboard to start consistent training again.  I warmed up for a mile on the trails and my breathing was very labored despite a very slow pace.  I forgot how tough running at 6700 feet is for me!  I really didn't have any expectations or goals for this race at all.  Based on the warmup, I thought I would be lucky to break 30 minutes!

The start was very narrow with 250+ people packed into a chute the width of a narrow jeep road.  Surprisingly, it spread out quickly and I was able to get into a nice running rhythm although my breathing was again very labored and would remain that way the whole time. Garmin split for Mile 1 was 8:17.  Much faster than I expected.  I slowed to an 8:47 pace for the second mile.  The third mile was in 8:31 and I closed in 7:27 pace for the final .2 miles. Cooled down for another mile.

This was a nice race.  The trails were basically smooth, wide dirt with only gradual ups and downs.  I think they would be great trails to mountain bike given my (lack of) bike handling skills.  With as little as I've run lately, I'm pretty happy with how this went. I'm looking forward to the 10k on July 7.  

Hiked up the Peruvian Gulch trail to the top of Hidden Peak at Snowbird then ran down. I'm trying to improve my downhill running so I worked on taking quick, light steps on the loose stuff and opening it up a bit on the more solid stuff.  Total distance was around 7 miles.

AM: Slightly modified Liberty Park run.  Happy that I dragged myself out of bed this morning! Now just need to work on getting up earlier or running faster so that I can run more miles!

PM: Restore yoga.  My quads are slightly sore from yesterday's downhill. 

Usual Liberty Park loop.  Really dragging this morning.

TRX class at 9th and 9th.

Usual morning run to Liberty.  Stacy joined me and it was nice to have some company.

Great morning run on the Pipeline trail with Nate and Kristine.  Had a weird pain in my calf yesterday, but it didn't seem to affect today's run. I'm slowly starting to get my motivation to run back.