Day 87

Now that I am starting to run at night during the week, I really need to stop procrastinating, especially on my longer runs. My training plan called for 9 miles, so I decided it might be helpful for my fitness to run up 3900 South to Wasatch Blvd. and back. I was completely gassed trying to run up some of those hills and my time going up really sucked. I did, however give my Amphipod Full Tilt Hydration pack another try and had no issues with it at all, so at least I got that out of it as well. I ended up going 9.45 miles in 1:53:07 for a very sad pace of 11:58 (I told you going up killed my pace). I did keep my heart rate down though to an average heart rate of 167 bpm.

Day 45

I woke up early and got in 6 miles before work, it felt great, though I was sure to keep my pace down a little over the first half. My mile splits were 11:16, 11:41, 11:41, 11:16, 10:52 and 10:00. The totals ended up being 6.01 miles in 1:06:53 for a pace of 11:08/mile. My avg heart rate was 159.

Day 38

I stayed up way too late last night, so I was too tired to wake up this morning. So, I ran my 5 miles at night. It was pretty hot, so I waited until the sun went down. Sarah decided it would be fun to bring her and the kids and let the kids play at a playground along the trail while I ran, which did motivate me at the end to push a little bit to get done as it was getting pretty dark. My final numbers were 5.00 miles in 54:38 for an avg. pace of 10:55/mile. My average heart rate was 179 bpm.

Day 24

Today was not a good day. I woke up and got out of bed and as soon as I stepped, I felt a pain in my left knee. I am not sure if I laid on it weird, or if it is something that has just been gradual and it is finally presenting itself, but it's a small but sharp pain on the inside lower part of my left knee. I decided to still go on the run, hoping that it would go away after I warm it up. After about a half mile at a 9:20 pace, the pain was still there and I felt like I was hobbling, so I cit the run short. I've iced it down and also had an ace bandage on it at various times during the day and it is still a little sore, but not much. I think I may need to look into getting some new shoes based on this though. I am an over-pronator and currently run in Nike Air Triax 11s which are stability shoes, but my wear patterns on the shoes still show some very uneven wear, so I will probably buy some motion control shoes to see if they will help. I think that these shoes also are a little narrow which has something to do with the foot pain that I seem to continually get.

My stats today were 0.54 miles in 5:02 for an average pace of 9:20/mile. My average heart rate was 149 bpm.

Day 17

I was a little bit sore today, but once I got out running it all went away and I was feeling great. That was my best run by far up to this point in training. Wednesdays are the training days where I am supposed to push myself as fast as I can handle, it should be at or near race pace. Also, today's run went up a mile (Wednesday runs add a mile every 2 weeks to a max of 10 miles). My run today was 4.00 miles in 38:51 for a 9:42/mile pace. My average heart rate was 170 bpm.

Day 10

I still haven't gotten back to were I was before the injuries 2 a year and a half ago, but I am certainly happy with my progress. In this training program, Wednesdays are the hard days where you are supposed to run at or near your race pace. I still want to get faster than this, but today was my best workout so far. I ran 3.02 miles in 29:52 for a pace of 9:52/mile.

Day 3

Once again I had a poor nights sleep and ended up getting about 5 hours of sleep, so I was not feeling energized this morning, but I still got my self out on the road. Once again the training program called for a 3 mile run, which I was really sluggish in until the latter part of the run. I ended up running a tiny bit faster than I did yesterday, which surprises me, but not by much. My final numbers were 3.16 miles in 34:47 for a pace of 11:00/mile.