A.M. The Big Workout. Alone at 6:40 AM. Wore shorts, long sleeved, a jacket, and gloves in the warm-up. Ran 6.22 in 42:45. Then figured the weather was warm enough to take off the gloves and the jacket for the tempo. More leaves on the ground than Tuesday, but not the highest I've seen. Tempo run was 5 miles. Started at the Utah Lake trail gate as usual. First mile was leisurely - 5:37. Felt good, but not looking forward to picking it up. It was still quite cold. Gave myself a bit of a kick in the pants, and that kicked me into gear. Next mile in 5:34 with some uphill in it. Ahead of the 5:36 guy, that's good. Next half in 2:47, 13:58 at the turnaround. Good recovery from the turnaround. First quarter in 1:23, then got into a good rhythm, no quarters slower than 1:21 all the way to the end. 16:42 at 3 miles (5:31), then 5:21, and 5:19. On the last mile hit the leaves in the first half and slowed down to 2:42, but then made up with a 2:37 closing half. 27:22.8 for the whole run, avg. 5:28.56, last half in 13:24, avg. 5:21.6, actual negative split of 34 seconds, profile-adjusted negative split of 27 seconds. I am starting to wonder if the difference between directions for the 2.5 stretch is 10 seconds rather than 7. I am fairly certain about 7 seconds for the first mile starting from Geneva road - I've done mile repeats on it and consistently hit splits that were 7 seconds faster going towards the lake than the other way. But I am starting to suspect that the remaining 1.5 stretch favors the direction towards the lake by a couple of seconds. It looks flat, but I know that one quarter of it favors the direction towards the lake by 0.5. I also noticed that I hit slightly faster splits with the same effort when going towards the lake regardless of which direction I go first. I was happy to have run the last 4 miles in 21:45. Last year I raced the Thanksgiving 4 miler in 21:50. Around the same time, I did a similar tempo run with a positive split in 28:18, hitting the same 4 mile stretch in 22:33. Ran 3.88 cool down in 26:34. Total time for 15.1 was 1:36:50, avg. 6:24.77. P.M. Ran with the kids and some on my own. Total of 5.25. Kids times - Julia 1.05 in 11:38, Jenny 1.75 in 16:24, Benjamin 2.1 in 17:22. Benjamin wrote a song "Twelve Days of Running With Ben" about our friend Ben Crozier. It should appear in his blog shortly. Well, it all started with Ben writing "Twelve Days of Running With Sasha" back in 1999 when we were running together in Provo. Ben noticed that I had a standard set of phrases that I used repeatedly during a run, so he expressed his observation in a song. As I said earlier, he provides great running entertainment. It goes like this, if I recall it right - Dallen might be able to fill in the gaps: On the first day of running with Sasha Sasha said to me - Ben, you are running too slow. Then it continues in the format of the "Twelve Days of Christmas". The other things I say are: - I need to water a tree.
- Let's do an acceleration.
- I'll pick you up at seven.
- Five mile repeats.
- Ben, why aren't you married? (He still is not, single women interested in a 30 year old guy in good condition, take notice).
- No apostate running! (He used to go off on unmeasured courses, run for 1:10 at 8:00 pace thinking he was running 7:00, and call it 10 miles instead of 8.75. I called it apostate running)
- Wooh! (A noise meaning the horses are neighing or I am ready for the run to be over, so let's pick it up)
- Let's run a five mile tempo!
I am missing three days - have to ask Ben and Dallen to see if they still remember.
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