The sun is up, the air is fresh, the stone is old

What a sweet day!  Spent the day with the family and headed out for a long run about 7:30pm.  Did the Providence Trail, Logan River Trail and the Bonneville Shoreline Trail in sunshine the entire run!  Holding about an 8 minute pace.

8 miles at about 60% effort in DC.  Real busy around the Capitol tonight with all the news today!

16 miles on the Mt. Vernon Trail in Washington.  Pyramid fartlek 1-5 minutes, 50% effort on rest segments and 75% on fast ones.  Super humid and 84 degrees!

10 miles on the Bay Trail in Seattle early morning.  It's been a great week for some trail runs.  I'm feeling the mileage though.

30 minutes lifting

8 miles early morning on a rare sunny day in Detroit.  Easy pace, enjoying the miles.

7 miles afternoon at marathon pace.

5 mile Tempo run butt crack early in the morning at 10 seconds below marathon pace.  Sure is hard to run at this pace during a high mileage week. 

5 sets of strides, maybe 80% effort and 20 minutes lifting.

3 miles evening pushing the double stroller, kids and the dumb dog.

Off to Provo with the kids to stay the night with cousins. I'm doing a long training run in the morning to wrap up this training week.  Could be the most solid week of training I've been able to put in for a while.

I had my last long training run scheduled for today and needed an icreasing pace run, 16 miles easy and 10 miles at goal pace so I decided to do it with the Provo Marathon.  There are two weeks left before the marathon, so I knew that I needed to be careful and slow with this one.

We stayed with family in Provo, which the kids loved but was a disaster for race prep.  Everybody was up until midnight playing cards and visiting, there's not a whole lot of understanding about this running thing in my family.

I got in a few hours of sleep and headed into downtown in the morning for the race.  I was able to sleep on the bus up the canyon all the way to the start, which was sweet.  It was a pretty small marathon and not really anybody that I knew.  I did talk to Ken Richards at the start and he seemed pretty amped for the race so I knew he could take this race, seeing the field.  He asked what I was shooting for and I told him I was using it as a training run to get some pace practice towards the later marathon miles and he laughed and said awesome! 

Goal was to stay at a relaxed pace and not accumulate fatigue.  Most likely around 7 minute, but I was not going to worry about the speed, just run what felt like a consistant recovery pace was and then get some pace miles in.  I'm not sure of splits because I have set aside the Garmin for a while and there were no mile markers until the halfway point.  It was probably just above a 7 minute pace because I came through the half at about 1:33, dead on target.  For the first 11 miles, there was a huge group of guys and the lead girl who were pacing to get just under a 3 hour marathon.  It was a lot of fun to just visit for a bit as we ran and hear  how all the different training methods everyone had used.  However, eventually I think only two of the group managed to get under the three hour point, probably due to a second half much more difficult than down the canyon for the first 12 miles.  That was by far the most enjoyable chunk of miles I've run in a marathon before.  When I saw the 15 mile marker I had to pick up the pace by about minute a mile.  It wasn't at all what I expected; I just had a lot of energy and none of the overall fatigue that I usually have at this point in a marathon.  The pace just clicked in.  This is definetely a type of training that I am going to find a way to work in in the future.  We'll see how it affects the taper.  Right now, a day later looking back, there was so much to learn from that run.  It's amazing what staying just 15 seconds above threshold does for your endurance.  Holding back for 15 miles in a race is very strange, not to mention how odd it is to run a fast pace through the last 10.  When I stopped at an aid station for a banana, the volunteer said that I better get going since I was the second marathoner.  That was something to process for a bit since I was balancing in my head my training goal, how far ahead was the lead runner and how fast did I want to run.  It wasn't to hard to take the easiest choice, just finishing the training goal. 

It was neat passing the lead half marathoners going the opposite direction.  Fritz, Fiddy and Teren were just hauling.  I still can't believethe times on half marathons that guys run here in Utah.  That was a hard half marathon course and there were some great runs.  Great job guys, I'm glad I wasn't running that one today!

My 10 miles at pace was right on so I was happy with the run.  As always it's just good to finish without breaking something, and in the money!  Must be the slowest 2nd place marathon finish in Utah history. 

3.5 easy miles in the afternoon with the kids and bikes.   

Off day.  Hung out with family today and just relaxed.  I took the dog out for a three mile shakeout run and seems that I survived that week of running.  Last week was about 106 miles and some pretty decent workouts.  The formost goal is always to keep just out of the injury range at my age and I have managed that.  I'm still 6 lbs over race weight and it looks like that's a benefit that I just won't be able to realize this marathon.  It's actually kind of cool to know that it's still in my back pocket as a gain I can get in the next few months.  If I had any kind of discipline I would just get it done.

I am still thinking through the training run from yesterday.  I gained a lot from that run mentally and maybe not so much that can be used to improve my running as just understanding about what marathoning is about.  Just a few thoughts that have been bouncing around my skull:  First, I don't think that it's uncommon for  me to run a bit faster in some races than I have the talent for.  It has led to some crashes.  I think that most guys that I end up running next to across the finish line are much fitter and possess more God given ability.  They certainly run with better form and are more consistant race to race.  Every runner who feels that he or she takes this sport seriously must wonder at times, whether they run from ability, training or can just take more pain on a certain day.  I can't say that I've figured that out, or expect to, but it was a new experience for me to run under effort and have a chance to consider what could be done different.

Second, is the look at speed training for a marathon.  FRB gives you the opportunity to see what guys do to train for some real marathon speed.  There are some times here that I'll never touch and I love the work of looking at how they do it.  There are also some folks who really know their stuff as far as physiology goes.  I've been wondering something and bouncing it around for a while.  I'm only two years into the marathoning and would appreciate any opinions on this.  It seems to me that the 10 mile distance Tempo run is the Holy Grail for a marathon.  If you spend several months working that pace down with the right kind of training to what you feel is the maximum training effort that you can do it at, you have reached a pretty valuable number.  The real work for training should be to get faster at this distance.  It's the information and tool to carry with you on race day.  Running race distances under the half marathon you will go under this pace since your effort level is higher.  In a marathon, you can hit it even if you are running 26 since you are willing to hang out there farther.  It's your "care" number, if you will.  You can run it in a marathon, or even run under it a couple of seconds a mile, but you will pay a price one way or another. 

If you drop even as little as 5 to 7 seconds below that pace in the first 13 miles, you are going to pay the price seriously the second half.  You never gain time in the first half of a marathon, you only create potential problems.  So, if you are looking to run a marathon 3-5 minutes faster than your 10 mile speed you better look to running that in the last 11 miles.

6 miles early at the gym with some light lifting.

Enjoying another beautiful day on the Seattle Bay.  Just hiking, no real mileage.

9 mile easy run after work.

10 mile Tempo run at 5:44 average.  First run at speed since the marathon and nice to feel no soreness at all.  30 minutes of core excersizes.

Skied at the lake all afternoon on an 80 degree day.  The kids were nuts about it.  I even got the dog up on the kneeboard. 

5 miles early morning in the gym and some lifting

6 miles after lunch on Mt. Logan Trail

Off to the lake again..

I think this was the race time, no watch today.  I was not sure about running this race after the marathon last week but I thought that I felt pretty strong and I knew everybody would sleep in at the house so I might as well go run.  I did a three mile warm up and my legs were pretty sore.  It was probably from my tempo run Thursday, but as we got into the race I just had a pretty dead set of legs!  The race goes straight up the canyon for 3 miles and then comes down and it was a long three miles, right into the morning canyon wind.  I thought we were doing 8 minute miles going up but Conner had a GPS and at the end he said they were 6:30s.  It was great going down but I just couldn't get that soreness out of the legs.  Not even close to Conner.  I even asked him to go slow today since I was tired and he obviously didn't listen.

As usual it was a lot of fun talking to all the locals and FRB folks after the race.  Scott, Keith and Dave ran great races today.  When I got home everyone was still asleep so no family time lost for running, that's a bonus!

Spent the afternoon waterskiing and buzzing fishermen with the boat at Newton Dam.

5 miles along the Deer fence trail in Logan with Jessie.

5 miles easy, 2X1 mile repeats at 5 min pace, 6 strides.  Trying to shake out the soreness in the legs.  Just a little tune-up..

30 minutes lifting

8 easy miles in New York.  Pretty day and felt great.  So nice to have a no purpose run in such a cool city.

Tomorrow I fly the transcon from New York to Los Angeles.  That means I get to get up in the morning and run along the Bay in New York and then in the afternoon I'll be jogging along Venice Beach in LA.  It never gets old..

Had to get up at 3am this morning to get in a run in New York before our flight.  Then had to run in the rain freezing the whole time.  When we got on the plane it took me 20 minutes to get Laguardia clearance to clear our flight plan because of the weather and then we had to sit 40 minutes in line at the runway behind Donald Trump's 727 because they were changing their flight plan last minute.  Probably rescheduling the hair appointment for the fox on his head.  One of those mornings.  Thank goodness for 3 cans of diet coke and chocolate chip cookies.

Late afternoon I was sitting on the beach in LA and trying to decide if I should stay on my schedule, which was nothing, or go run.  The sunshine won out and I went for an easy 9 miles. 

5 miles along the deer fence trail

4 miles on the treadmill at the gym and some easy weight lifting.

This race was just a lot of fun.  The best people to hang out with and a perfect race day. 

I'm not sure about the race time since even by the awards at 2:30 m the directors had not been able to post any results, so I'm taking my Garmin time.  I'm pretty sure that I now have the two slowest 2nd place finishes in the marathon in Utah history.  I had two goals going into this race; finish in the top three and run that elusive 2:30 marathon that I have been trying to get for a year.  Oh well, as my brother told me after the race, you never know with the marathon.  Every race can be a surprise.  This one set me back a bit and energized me to continue training for that goal.

I took up a blanket and fell asleep at the start for half an hour which was a first.  It was the third night of less than four hours of sleep and I could really feel it.  The pre race was a great time.  I met Chad, who was stoked for a shot at a sub 3, talked to big Rob, said a quick Hi to Teena and learned from Rob M his technique for bathroom breaks sitting down, not a method most of us guys get practice at.  Seth got yelled at for warming up across the starting line of the chip timer reader and it was perfect when he told them how to reset it because he owned one.

The first 7 miles were on pace and felt just perfect.  I was slowly beginning to pass people and ended up just tailing Ben and Riley.  As I caught up to them Ben had to hop off the road for a bathroom break, what turned out to be one about about five before he felt the day was done and stepped out.  I think he had a good shot at winning this today so that was a bummer.  I pulled ahead of Riley and then he passed me at mile 11 and handed me the water bottle that his support group gave him.  That was great timing.  I crossed the half a 1:15:02, dead on pace and pretty stoked about it since I felt great.  As we went around the lake Riley was coughing a lot and missing some strides but would catch back up and pull in ahead of me.  It was good to have someone to talk to through these miles.  Then by mile 16 he stepped out.  By 18 I was losing 15 seconds a mile and felt that kind of overall fatigue that just doesn't let you get a rythm.  My legs felt great but I couldn't put any use into the great downhills after 18.  I actually slowed down going down the canyon.  I did however, start getting glimpses of a yellow jersey that I was pulling up to and knew it had to be the second place runner.  That was way surprising since I was running so slow.  I could see my goal time dissapearing but at this point couldn't have cared less.  I was just going to hold on to some rythm.  At about 22 miles Seth walked off the course, sat down and waved at me as I jogged by.  For the next four miles I was sure he would be blasting by me with a big grin.  And that was it.  Very strange race for many of us and definitetly long.  All three of us at the front compared Garmins and all showed 26.47. 

We partied at the Marriot with the Murphys and my kids now think marathoning is cool again.  As long as it involves hotels, swimming pools, ice cream and friends.  We bought a frisbee and the kids played on the grass for two hours waiting for the awards.  Rob's wife Joanne stopped and gave me a ride to my car as I was attempting the long walk back.  Then it was off to Roosters for a huge cheeseburger.

I love this sport.  What other sport can you race so hard against yourself no matter what your ability and even run the same race with some of these guys that are so good at this stuff?  what a run by Fritz, a new PR I think and a race ran all by himself over 10 minutes ahead of the rest of us.  There were some other great races today, Rob Mantz, Chad R and some others.  I know Rob M. could easily have run a 2:40 but still beat Scott by 10 seconds for the Masters win.  The rest of us kind of got our shorts handed to us.

I'm ready to start training again for that 2:30.

5 miles along the trail behind the house with Jessie this morning while everyone sleeps.  I can't get this marathon stuff.  Yesterday was all I could give in that race.  I was completely fatigued but still got one of my slowest times.  Today, the day after, my legs feel great which never is tha case.  I gotta be doing something wrong.

6 slow miles on Deer fence trail

Did some hiking with the kids.

8 easy miles on the Portland river trail.  Lazy day.

Does anybody know how to paste pictures on your blog entries?

4 miles in the morning in Denver before work.

6 miles super slow in New York in the evening

7 miles up the Providence Canyon trail.  What a beautiful evening.  After living in some 7 countries in my life, sometimes I can't believe how lucky I am to live here.  We are heading up for a night ride with the Jeeps to Mount Logan tonight.

Day off, camped out and went waterskiing.  Downed two packages of Oreos singlehandedly and a steak as big as my head.

Sitting around after church today with my feet up on the couch, wondering if I would ever get the motivation to get a run in with all the rain all day.  Then work called and asked if I wanted to do a short turn, so I jumped up and took my son with me to Denver.  Wouldn't you believe it, the weather in Denver was 75 degrees and sunshine and I got the nicest 6 mile run in before heading back to Utah. 

We get to spend Memorial Day with family at the cemetaries in Salt Lake and then I have a three day mini vacation in Fairbanks, Alaska.  Actually it's work, but one flight up Monday night and one flight back Thursday morning with nothing in between.  I'm excited to catch some of the best trail running in the country for a few days.

Flew into Salt Lake last night and hung out at the hotel instead of driving home to Logan since the whole day was family activities in Salt Lake for Memorial day.  I got at least 4 hours of sleep before I headed up for an early run with Rob Murphy up City Creek.  He wanted to go 12 miles which was nuts since we ran a marathon a week ago but I trust his judgement since he is so old.

It ended up being a perfect run and pretty weird to run into the snowline 6 miles up.  It is also so much nicer to do distance runs with some company!  On the way back down I could definetly feel the effect of the marathon in the legs.  It's time to start the training back up and I pretty much don't know which races to run the next few months!

Right now I'm sitting in the plane typing on the laptop, getting ready for a six hour flight to Fairbanks.  It's only two more weeks until we have WiFi on the planes and a whole new dimension of inflight entertainment opens up.  We also got Toblerone chocolate in the cabin, which is pretty much as good as life can get.

I must be in heaven.  Out of all the places in the world that I have run in, Alaska just blows my mind.  I never get used to the flight up here first of all, no matter how many times I have done it.  Usually when we fly westbound with these faster generation planes and it's during the sunset, the sunset can take up to two hours since we are flying at close to 650 miles per hour in the same direction as the earth.  But when you fly northwestbound across Canada into Alaska the sun holds still on the horizon like a great flaming ball and then it slowly rises and moves across the mountain line for the next 5 hours.  This time of year Fairbanks is getting almost 20 hours of direct sunshine.  It's also hard to comprehend that we cross most mountain ranges in the United States in about 5 minutes at this speed.  The Wasatch range in about 3, and the Rockies and Uintas combined in about 20 minutes.  But when you fly across Alaska you are over what seems like a continuous mountain range for three hours.   It's so big it just makes you grin.

I landed the plane with the sun blazing on my right side at 11pm, 1am mountain time.  When we got to the hotel (cabins on the river actually) I knew that I had to get out for a midight run in the sun even though Rob and I had run that morning in the snow up City Creek in Salt Lake.  I threw on a pair of shorts and my sunglasses and went for a quick 4 miler.  It was about 75 degrees and not a cloud in sight.  I have three days here and I'll be running them all!

In the morning I hit a huge breakfast of reindeer sausage and pancakes with the crew and made some phone calls to Running Club North, the local club to see what the locals were doing.  Today was a track workout with intervals and I had no interest in that, but did get some good info on trails along the ridges.  I headed out for an easy 14 on some of the nicest trails I have seen.  A bit sore from the marathon still, but this is just the life.  No way I'm not going to be on the trails.  When I got back I had a message from Dan, a local trail runner who wanted to do a long overnight trail run tonight starting at 10pm.  That is going to take a few hours to think about, but since I don't have to fly the plane back for a few more days it's pretty tempting.

It was so hot after the run that I swam a good 30 minute workout in the river to the side of the cabins.  Man is that water cold.