Slow to fast

I was planning on a treadmill run this morning but at the last minute I checked the air quality and suprisingly it was good.  I did 4 miles a little faster than marathon pace: 6:53, 6:51, 6:54, 6:56. Next week my workout will be some faster intervals.

It felt really cold this morning.  The air quality wasn't great but it wasn't in the unhealthy region.

For my first race of the new year I'm trying to decide between the Riverton Half and the Salt Lake Half.  I'm even considering the Buffalo Run 25k to try out a trail run.  I'm itching to do a race soon and the Riverton Half and the Buffalo Run are both in March.  I'd have to wait until the middle of April to do the Salt Lake Half.

I ran with my neighbor Bryan the same loop I did last week up to Wasatch. It was nice and snowy but I didn't slip too much.

17 degrees this morning and it felt cold.

Last night I registered for the Buffalo Run 25k in March and I'm pretty excited about it.  The only thing I'm worried about is doing enough trail miles.  I mostly run on the road near my house so I'll need to change things up a bit and make time to drive to trails.  And I'll need to find some good trails that aren't covered in snow.  Or at least have tracks.  I also need to get a pair of trail shoes.

3xmi w/3min jog recovery
6:31, 6:31, 6:26

1 mile warm-up and 1 mile cool-down

I used my watch to help keep the pace. It beeps and vibrates at me when I'm over or under the target range I set. It seemed to work well but it beeped a lot.

3 miles on the treadmill at work.  I wore my Garmin and just using cadence it tracked the same pace as the treadmill and the mileage was only off by 0.01 mi.  

10 x 1 min hill repeats with equal jog recovery

0.17mi 3.7%, 0.16mi 7.1%, 0.15mi 9%, 0.14mi 8.1%, 0.13mi 6.3%, 0.13mi 4.8%, 0.14mi 4.5%, 0.14mi 5.4%, 0.14mi 6.6%, 0.14 mi 6.6%

2 mile warm up and a 1.8 mile cooldown. This was a hard workout.

It was pretty slick this morning but not too cold.

I did 15.6 miles with my neighbor Bryan. We went a bit slower than I would have on my own (10:18 pace) but I got a lot of time on my feet. Longer time then I've ever been out and the longest distance I've run. It went by quickly with the conversation.

Jason (from work) and I did 5.3 miles at lunch today.  We discussed training plans from an engineering perspective.  I think we've boiled training down to a quadratic polynomial equation.  Very simple really.  If there wasn't massive potential to be the first to publish these findings, I'd share them here.

3.5 miles on the treadmill at lunch.  This time my watch reported about 0.06 miles less than the treadmill.  I'll keep tracking to see whether they agree.

I did 4 miles on a gradual incline (2.5%) and tried to keep a consistent effort level.  My heart rate fluctuated between 165 and 179 bpm and here are my splits: 6:56, 6:57, 7:01, 5:54.  The last half a mile was a steep downhill so I sped up to keep my heart rate consistent.  I have to say I'm a little disappointed in my splits on such a gradual incline.  I was hoping I'd be able to sustain a 6:45 pace.

Jason and I did the 4 mile lap around work this morning.  Jason reminded me during our last mile that I was planning on doing a fast last mile.  So at 3.4 miles I took off on a slight uphill grade.  My goal was to do it in 6:00 min and I did it in 5:56 min.  Then cooled down for 0.2 miles and walked back to work for another 10 min or so.

Jason and I started out on the Bonneville Shoreline trail at Hidden Valley Park. The trail was nicely packed snow at first but then some ice started showing up. We decided to turn around and then Jason took a bad fall and hurt his wrist. He said it was fine but after the run he went to get an X ray. Luckily no broken bones.

Early morning run today.  The air was in the yellow this morning and I felt it at the beginning of the run (I guess it could have also been a cold that I'm dealing with and my clogged up throat) but when I got up on the bench it didn't bother me too much.  It was nice to be able to run at my own pace today (8:11 min/mi).

I did a workout on the treadmill this morning.  2 x 1.5 miles with equal jog recovery.

Lap 1: 6:42 (watch), 6:18 (treadmill)
Lap 2: 6:55 (watch), 6:18 (treadmill)

I was a little surprized that there was such a difference between my watch and the treadmill. I'm positively sure the watch was least accurate of the two. I was really pushing hard and my effort felt more in the 6:20 min range. Most of my miles are slow miles so I guess I should expect the watch to be more accurate on the slow paces since it self calibrates when the GPS is being used. With less fast GPS and cadence data, there's not much data to correlate to. Inaccurate regression analysis.

After work Jason and I ran up Little Cottonwood a couple of miles. We were kind of out of the bad air but not completely. We averaged a 10:00 min pace up and an 8:00 min pace down.

12 x 30s hill repeats with 1 min jog in between on the treadmill. I started at 11.5% incline and 7:30 min pace. At the end I started doing 10% incline and 8:20 min pace. This was a hard workout and I probably should have gone with a more moderate incline. It was a bit of a pain because the treadmill took about 7 seconds to change the incline from 1% to 11%. I just made sure I was doing 30 seconds of effort after the treadmill got up to the full incline.

On Saturday, my normal routine was interrupted and I never got out to run the 13 miles I had planned to run.  I told myself I would run a few extra miles this morning to make up for it, but when I woke up the air quality wasn't really that good so I kept sleeping.  I ended up running on the treadmill and did 2 fast miles at the end (6:31, 6:35).  Two days off and I'm feeling great.

4 miles with Jason this morning. Conversation topics included the similarities between cops and criminals and Jason's missed calling as an attorney.

I did 5 miles at marathon pace (6:55) after a warm-up mile.  Andrea reminded me this morning that this was my longest tempo run.  I don't have the mile splits because I forgot that when I setup the workout in my watch it turned the 5 mile portion into one long lap.  But I think I was fairly consistent.  It felt good and I think I could have kept going at that pace.  I dressed like I've been dressing for a 20° morning and soon realized that the temperature was much warmer today.

4 miles on the treadmill.  I saw a few little drops of rain outside and just didn't feel like going out.  I just bough a pair of Peregrines and tried them out.  It wasn't on a trail but they feel good.  I like how the heel isn't too high.

5 miles up and down 106th South. The roads were pretty slick.