A.M. The morning started with a dream about being stuck in some Russian town on the Black Sea, an hour until the flight back to America, and driving our Ford Escort 93 Wagon to the airport. All of a sudden, the engine light goes on, the temperature indicator goes way into the hot range, and the car refused to go more than 20 mph. I began to calculate how much the airline was going to charge me as a consequence of missing the flight. Then I started trying to figure out how I was going to get to the airport period. Then I found a very simple short cut to my home in Provo - wake up. I have very many blessings in my life. Not that I am plagued by nightmares, in fact, things are never particularly bad in my dreams, but I always feel happy when I wake up - reality is beating the dreams quite often. Ted came this morning and reported 29 degrees outside. I figured the roads would be clear enough for a tempo. Then I looked for my fast pants, and could not find them. I did not want to run in the slow ones, they are too heavy. Spent about 30 minutes looking for them. Finally said, forget it, and put on two pairs of shorts, three long-sleeved shirts, a pair of racing flats, a pair of gloves, and a bank robber hood. What a combination! The idea was to keep the upper body warm, and transfer some of that to the exposed legs. It worked! I was warm the entire time. Ran the warm-up 6.22 in 45:18. With the freedom of shorts, racing flats, and decent traction, the horses were neighing, and the legs were singing BINGO and were interested in a Swahili lesson. Ted was not feeling as feisty with his hip tightness and decided to take it easy, so I ran alone. Warmed up the first 2.5 in 14:21, 180 turn on ice was interesting, but otherwise the road was very decent except for occasional patches of snow and ice. Picked up the pace on the second 2.5 - 13:57, 28:18 at 5 miles. Decided to try to not be slower on the last 2.5, and was moving along at a steady 5:34 pace building a bit of a cushion for the 0.5-1% rise at the start of the last mile and the snow and ice on the last 100 meters. Ted, in the meantime, timed his turnaround so that I would be catching him on the last mile. With a quarter to go, I entered the greyhound-rabbit gravity zone, and there was nothing I could do. Some magic force started pulling me towards him against my will. This would be fine, except that force was coming from my legs, and he started running 5:20 pace to make me work. Last quarter was 1:17 in spite the snow and ice on the last 100, which made the last mile 5:25, and the last 2.5 13:48, last 5 27:45, and total time of 42:06, 5:36.8 avg, unintentionally and unexpectedly only 14 seconds slower than course PR in spite of the colder temperatures and slippage. Felt that relaxing the quad, pulling up the foot with the hamstring, and using hip adductors to bring hips closer together helped with the form, and allowed me to run faster. Ran 1.38 cool down, total time for 15.1 was 1:38:29, 6:31.32 avg. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:54 0.7 by myself in 4:51, 1.05 with Julia in 10:48, 1.5 with Jenny in 14:25. Time to put another plug for the Training Review Requests Board. I used to be able to follow everybody's training almost daily when the blog was small, but now as big as it is I cannot keep up any more. Plus, we now have a lot of others who are knowledgeable and willing to review your training. One of the expectations we have of the racing team members is that they will regularly help other runners with training advice. If you post on the board, you will get their attention.
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