Getting back in shape!

Three seperate runs including a downhill 1 mile race, 4:41.

This is my favorite bike race of the year, but I guess I don't go to many since it is a hard uphill climb from the bottom of the road to Tony Grove up to the parking lot at the lake. After wraping things up at the Cross Country camp with a 1000 Meter steeplechase that I did not take seriously at all, I was doubting wether to go to this race or not. I ended up feeling better after some rest and I felt like taking a shot at it.

I arrived and I quckly saw plenty of talent in the field. USU cyclist Kodey and another stellar cyclist in Tanner were the two main people I was most worried about. Considering how tired I was, my original plan was to just stay in the group and finish in a sprint with everyone else.  So we all lined up and I started in the back according to plan and Kodey was there too. The race starts and I began riding towards the end of a group. I was feeling amazingly better than I thought I would after camp and so I quickly attack and leave my current group to join the equally size lead group with about seven or ten riders. This group stayed in tact until about three miles into the race. I was keeping an eye on Tanner who leading the group and knew he was just itching to take off. He took off while he was leading the pack to my surprise and I wasn't quite sure how to react. But then I saw Kodey who was responding to the attack with an attack of his own. While he was passing everyone to the top, Something just made me go and I quickly pulled left and got behind him. It didn't take us long to catch Tanner and pretty soon it was just the three of us, or so I thought. Up ahead was a Cat 1 rider who rides  for the cycling team, Competitive Cyclist. He had a good lead on us but didn't seem to be getting too much farther than that. Tanner and Kodey were taking turns leading and when it was almost my turn I purposefully started fading away. This made Tanner go to the front and lead, I quickly caught up making, giving myself some extra time to plan out an attack. When Tanner was done leading and started going towards the back I pulled right and just pounded the pedals, trying to take advantage of Tanner being tired. He had beat me the last time and I was worried more about him than kodey, who I have beaten twice in this same race. I dug deep and just kept my attack going with my intentions of having one of the them become weary and want to chase after me instead of working together. I never looked back and made the Cat 1 rider ahead of me my target, hoping to work together with him. I kept pounding but he slowly slipped away from sight and I knew I was going to have to finish it alone. I was less than 400 meter away from the finsih still holding my position and to my surprise Kodey was just right behind me. I tried to sprint but I was already at my limit. He slowly passed me and cheered me on and ended up finishing ahead of me by two seconds.

After the race Kodey told me he had left Tanner shortly after I attacked. He followed my wheel and slowly was catching me. He shortly began vomiting like crazy, which strangely made me feel better about my race because it showed he had pushed himself hard to pass me at the end. Tanner was about 30 seconds behing us. All in all, this was my most excicting race of the year yet due to all the strategy involved compared to my other racees. I will definitely will look forward to next year.

Five mile fartlek. One minute fast at about race pace for the mile, followed by three minutes rest. Only for the middle three miles of the run.

Hill Repeats on Old Main Hill at USU. 5 repeats of about 300 Meters in length each. Pure uphill with about a 13 percent grade. Ran there and back.

Blacksmith Fork ride with Logan Race Club. This TNR was a little long, ran out of water halfway and had to ride a while without it.

Hard six with many up and down hills along the Deer Fence trail. Almost had to walk on the last major hill. Tired from TNR yesterday but was able to keep up with Henry of LHS XC.

Really fast run with the varsity Logan runners, left the pack about halfway into the run and kept the distance.

A few Hills, along campus.

2 mile Time Trial with the XC team. Couldn't keep up with the pack after yesterday's run so I surged really hard to spread it up and then slowed to a snails pace with one mile left. Ended up finishing with a 11:50, about a minute and 30 seconds from the leaders. Then went on a 4 mile run at a very easy pace with no hills.

Didn't feel like running today, played some basketball instead.

Nice, sorta hilly run on the river trail in Logan Canyon with the XC team. Went slow at first than took the trail to Bridgers Look off on a right fork in the river trail. Made it a loop around Spring Hollow and headed back at a faster pace than what I started with.

3.5 at T-Pace

Long run.

First run in my new Asics GT 2160. They seem a bit heavier than my other shoes but it makes up for that in comfort. Running E-pace with them is wonderful while running T-pace in them is not so much. I'm thinking this will be my long run shoe for a while. Today we did 1 mile easy with 4 miles at T-pace (5:54 pace) for 4 miles with a one mile cooldown to end it.

The sluggish feeling I suffered from yesterday didn't go away today and really suffered keeping up with my teamates in this quick and easy run. They all seemed fine and not even tired while I was trying to keep up and take deeper breaths, hope it goes better tomorrow now that it starts with 3 pm practices.

Today we finally started more serious speed workouts in XC. We had five 800s with the varsity pack supposed to be running 2:40s. The first one was a breeze for me and had to keep myself from going too fast. I finished with a 2:31. The rest were in order, a 2:39, 2:35, 2:40, and a 2:40. Finally I'm starting to get back into form after a rough two days.

A slow 4 miles in very hot weather.

A bit longer than I would have liked before a race but felt good the whole way. Running in the sun is going to be hard to adjust compared to running in the morning.

I have a strong tradition of not doing well at the first race of the cross country season. This meet was the American Fork Grass Relays. We came to this meet very shorthanded due to many of our top runners running or helping out in the TOU Half Marathon. Me and Jerrell were the only ones with Varisty expereince in our 5 man realy team. I was chosen to go first and Jerrell last.

I got in a one mile warm up looking around for a bathroom and finally got to the starting line after some delay. A lot of teams put there fastest runner first and so I had some work to do to keep our team alive. The gun went off and everyone took off sprinting. I knew we were all going way too fast for our frist mile but I still kept going probably because I didn't want to let down my teamates. We were all pretty close the first mile but after that everyone started suffering and slowing down due to the fast start. I shared that same fate. The first mile I ran a 5:20 and the second was a 6:13. I was still pretty close to other runners due to them slowing down as well. I felt so bad that second mile that I couldn't believe I broke 12. The many hay bales obstacles didn't help my suffering. Nothing was feeling good and my whole body was screaming for it to be over. After suffering to the handoff with the baton I ran to the nearest shade I could find and contiued cheering on my team.

Turns out everyone on my team ran a slow time for themselves and Jerrell said it was probably beacuse we handn't had many practices in the heat of the day yet. He finished with a 10:30 and 14th overall. Jake Heslington was there and won all comers with a near course record of 9:57.

Workout today was a 3 mile run at E-pace followed by three 800s at T-pace. Felt bad on the run but on the 800s I felt pretty good.

A 4 mile run at E-pace. Pretty easy day for tomorrow's dual meet against Roy at the new USU course. Finally starting to be able to run in the heat without it bugging me as much as last time.

Today was our first dual meet of the season against Roy high school. It was also our first meet on our new course by the Stan Laub center at USU. The course was four loops starting with a small loop and then two bigger ones and then repeating the smaller one.

A girl was suffering heat problems so the boys race was delayed as an ambulance came to pick her up. The heat was blistering and so was the dirt we were going to run on. The race then starts and I get off to a good start. I find myself in a Logan pack and not seeing any Roy kids around I try to keep the pack intact. For about the first mile we were a pack of about 7 strong. A little after the half way mark our pack was strung out and the lead pack was just three including me. It was J.D. who recently ran a 1:19 at the TOU Half and Henry Olsen. With less than a mile reaming Henry began fading and it was just me and J.D. I made a little surge and was able to gap J.D and ran the rest of the race comfortably. Except at the finish I had a little scare from a charging J.D so I had to sprint a little to stay safe. Overall the race felt slow and I feel like I could have gone faster. The heat seemed to affect everyone including the Roy kids. Out team finished with a perfect score of 15-45 on both boys and girls races.

Today we went on a quick 4 mile run along canyon road. Coach let us have a breather after a two meet week. We did have an accelerated last mile.

Slow four mile run to Willow Park, and did some strides and starts there.