Run fast

Ran north through Sugar House to Liberty Park and back.  Looking forward a few lazy days to absorb the training and recharge before Ogden.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the amazing moms out there!

1 mile of rowing on my off day then weights.  Days like this are great except that I get into work too early and I still end up leaving at the same time.  Dumb, I know.  Workout this afternoon involves tackling the sprinkler I couldn't fix yesterday after 3 trips to Home Depot and drenching two pairs of clothes.

Fairly casual run up to Foothill, north to 13th and back.  Legs are feeling pretty good and most importantly I have no lingering aches or pains.  The hip is an ongoing work in progress but it has improved since SLC.    

Sprinkler is operable once again.  I might be to the level that I can add sprinkler repair to my resume.

Standard easy day 3 days before the race.  Ran into the JAJAK crew as they finished up their track workout.

Great article about Abdi the 35 year old 4 time Olympian who owns 20 pairs of Air Jordons.  This is already posted elsewhere but wanted to take record of it here. 

Standard day off with the exception of stretching and weights at the gym.

A few pre-race miles on the treadmill in my new blue Lunar Racers.  Now I am much more color coordinated.  Mixed in a few fast 400s.  Legs are feeling good.  Rain tomorrow?   That would just be a repeat of the race in 2003.  

Good luck to everyone running tomorrow.

Today was the eighth time I have run this race (only missed 2005, 2006 and 2008) and every year I do it I like it more. The weather was perfect once again and the organization was flawless as usual.  I got off the bus at about 6:30 and then spent a much reduced time of 5 minutes tying my new blue shoes.  I jogged about a quarter mile past the start and then lined up.  Ben, Seth, Steve, and Paul were all there as well ready to go.  The gun went off and I soon found myself all alone.  I didn’t really think I was going to fast so I just didn’t look back and kept going.  I went through the first 5k as planned (slower than the Fritz 5k time of 16:19 from last Saturday) but 4 seconds faster than my 5k split from last year. I was feeling just ok at this point but once I hit the flats I my stride started to smooth out.  The rollers at mile 9 and 11 through 13 slowed me down but I didn’t want to push it too much and I knew that I had banked some good splits in the early miles. I went through the half in just under 1:11 which was about 20 seconds faster than last year; fortunately I don’t think I had to work as hard to hit that time. This is where my buddy bike pacer Corbin from last year picked me up and I told me that it was his job to make my second split faster than last year.  It felt doable at that point but how much better was TBD.  The 14 mile split up the hill was 9 seconds faster than last year which was a good sign until I hit the peak. My quads felt trashed. It took about .5 miles to get the lactate acid out of the quads but I guess that could have been worse.  At this point I kept hearing cheers behind so I thought someone was gaining on me. I didn’t dare to look back nor did I ask Corbin so I guess I will never know if someone was there.  I just kept motoring on around the damn and then tried to push the down hills as much as possible.  Maybe I got a little carried away because mile18 was a 5:09 compared to a 5:19 last year.  At this point I hadn’t had a gel in about 5 miles so that became the most pressing concern.  Fortunately the aid station had mile 20 had one but I executed the grab terribly and had to stop to turn around to get it.  Then once I grabbed it my new blue shoe traction failed me and I slipped to my hands.  No real damage done, except for losing exactly 9 seconds J (stay tuned for why that matters). The next miles felt good and I was doing my best to hold back something for the last few miles.  Unfortunately I hit mile 23 and suddenly my right hamstring got really tight.  A strained or torn hamstring was the last thing I needed at this point but there was really nothing I could do but keep going.  I slowed quite a bit as my splits would show, mostly as result of the flattened terrain, fatigue and to a lesser extent the hamstring.  My biggest mistake at this point was not looking at my watch because I really had no idea at that point how close I was to coming in under 2:23 and rivaling Seth’s course record of 2:22:51.  I pushed the last mile as much as could and then as I approached the finish saw the big clocking ticking 2:22:55,56, 57….Bummer!  I pushed through the line and saw 2:22:58 on the clock and later the announcer said my official time was 2:22:59 (exactly 8 seconds off the CR).  RunRaceResults shows 2:23:00….which is el wrongo :)

Although it wasn’t flawless I am still very happy with the 2 minute improvement over last years’ time and the 30 second PR.  Of course it would have been cool to also get the CR but I guess that will just have to be a goal for next year. 

After the race I ran into Scott, who put up a big PR in half, Seth (2nd in marathon),  Bryant (1st in half), Riley (2nd in half), Chad (big PR in marathon), RAD (huge PR in marathon despite the bum knee), Rossy (close to PR I think) and marathon man Steve (4th overall and master’s #1). Once again Ogden put on a great event and I can’t wait to do it all over again next year.