Wednesday, April 25, 2012

April 22nd to 28th

Sunday
After a 3:45am wake up, 6am flight, layover in Denver, and drive to Bozeman, we arrived back at about 3:30pm. I was pretty tired and just went about 9 miles in the evening. (9/9)

Monday
Long run 16 miles. This run was a little more difficult because I went in the middle of the day and it was pretty hot, 80 degrees. Was still pretty tired and was pretty much totally spent by the end of the run today. (16/25)

Tuesday
Did a workout with Dan Jackson in the afternoon. The workout was 1200s. I really struggled on the 1200s, which was disappointing because I thought I could pull it together even though I was tired. I only did 4 1200s and they were not fast at 3:22, 3:26, 3:27, and 3:32. It was a little windy, but not bad. After the 1200s, I did a set of 300 cut downs with 1 minute rest. They actually went pretty well which was surprising 45, 42, 40. It was tough to have another poor Tuesday workout, even though this one was probably to be expected. After the race on this Sunday, I will get back into more consistent training after running a lot of races the past 3 to 4 weeks. (9/34)

Wednesday
Easy runs of 7 miles in the morning and 5 miles in afternoon. (12/46)

Thursday
Finished some work up in the morning, so I did my workout with the MSU team in the afternoon. For the workout, I did 4 times a mile with 1 minute rest, 6*200 with 90 seconds rest, and then a 2 mile 'power run'. The tempo miles were all 5 flat or just below, the 200s were mostly 31, and the two mile power run started pretty slow and then picked up. My quarter splits were something like 84, 80, 76, 73, 72, 71, 71, 68. The end of the power run actually got to be pretty challenging with a real strong wind throughout which added to the difficulty. There was a little more volume in this workout than I really wanted to do, but I took it all pretty comfortable until the end of the power run. (11.5/57.5)

Friday
Easy runs of 7 miles in morning and 5 miles in afternoon. (12/69.5)

Saturday
Cat-Griz Dual home meet today! Of course it snowed during the night and the weather was not great. I was up pretty early and shoveling snow by 7:30 followed by other meet preparation stuff. The meet went pretty smoothly. At about 2:30, Sierra, Rowan and left the meet a little early and headed to the airport to catch our 3:50 flight to Oakland and the Payton Jordan meet. We arrived at our motel late, I was exhausted, and I didn't think it was worth it at that point to head out on a run. This is the first time I haven't run at all the day before a meet, but I am not worried about it. (0/69.5)

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

April 15th to 21st

Sunday
Easy run 10 miles. (10/10)

Monday
Tempo run 5 miles. Ran on the old Sourdough Trail 5 mile loop. Not the fastest course with dirt surface and lots of sharp turns, but I ran about 26:15. I have only run this course under 26 minutes a couple of times, so it was an ok effort. Still feeling a little fatigued, but not horrible. (9/19)

Tuesday
Easy run after traveling all day. Drove to 2 plus hours to Billings because the plane out of Bozeman isn't big enough for vault poles, then flew into Ontario after a long lay over in Denver. (4/23)

Wednesday
Watched the MSU multi event athletes compete well at the Mt. SAC/Azuza multi event meets most of the day. Easy run in the evening of 6 miles. (6/29)

Thursday
Steeple at Mt. SAC, 6th in 8:40. I was really nervous about this race. The steeple I ran last Saturday at Weber did not go well. I really started struggling at Weber the last couple laps. So, I was actually a little scared I was going to come totally apart in this race. Also, before the race I was really tired. I took a nap in the motel room which was the first time I have ever taken a nap on race day and might be the only nap I take this year. In the stands before the race I was almost falling asleep, which made me wonder how the race was going to go. My first 600 was solid and then I started backing off a little thinking I was out too fast. Throughout the race I felt pretty good, running 69 or 70 second splits after the first lap. With about 800 to go, I was still feeling good and started moving up. My last roughly 200 meters was 31 so I still had a bit in the tank. I am excited for Payton Jordan next Sunday. I had to get my cool down done quickly because we had to get Carl Nystuen to Cal State LA to run a 10K there. (6/35)

Friday
Easy run 6 miles around Mt. SAC area. Drove the Suburban around most of the day traveling between Azusa, Mt. SAC, and motel. Up late watching our athletes compete at Mt. SAC. About as sleep deprived as I have ever been. Felt tired all day and horribly tired at night. (6/41)

Saturday
Ran a 1500 at the Beach Invitational. This week I have been as sleep deprived as I have ever been. Starting on Monday night this is what I have had for sleep 6, 5, 4, 5, 5. However, those 5 hours of sleep on Friday night must have been solid because I didn't feel horrible when I woke up. The 1500 actually went ok. My splits were 61, 2:02.5, and 2:49 (1100 meters). My finishing time was 3:47 low. I started picking it up with 450 to go. With 200 to go I knew the wasn't much left in the tank. My plan had been to do about an 8 mile easy run in the afternoon, but our assistant coach Bobby B. broke a pole vaulting. The shock tore his hand up. So I spent a lot of the afternoon and evening in the shadiest ER I have ever seen. Our flight takes off tomorrow morning at 6, so with a 3:45 wake up call, I won't be getting much sleep tonight. (6/47)

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

April 8th to 14th

Sunday
Long Run 16 miles (16/16)

Monday
Easy Run 12 miles (12/28)

Tuesday
Easy morning run 4 miles. In the afternoon, I did a workout with the MSU team. I felt even worse than I did on Saturday. It has been a while since I have felt this low on energy going into and during a workout. Making the workout even more difficult, were very strong winds varying from maybe 15 to 25 mph. Anyway. I started out planning to do 1200s, but switched to 1000s after Dan Jackson had to stop because of a quad strain. So, after two 1200s, I jumped in with the other MSU guys doing 1000s. My times were something like 3:27, 3:26, 2:48, 2:49, 2:55, 2:42. I am going to take it easy for a couple of days and try and get my legs back under me. (13/41)

Wednesday
Took the day off today because of low energy levels and the top of my right foot is a little sore. (0/41)

Thursday
Easy run 12 miles. (12/53)

Friday
Morning run in Pocatello of 4 miles. In the evening, 800 at Utah Spring Classic. Only ran 1:55, but wasn't too bad. Anything faster than mile pace feels foreign to me at this point. Also, still feeling tired. (10.5/63.5)

Saturday
Steeple at Weber State University. Ended up running a pretty slow time of 9:06, which adjusts to 8:54 with the ncaa altitude adjustment. Felt pretty rough over barriers. Hope getting a steeple under my belt will help me to run well at Mt. Sac. Pretty nervous with training not going great and these two sub par races. Have to get it rolling for this coming Thursday at Mt. SAC. (5.5/69)

Weekly Summary
69 miles in 8 runs.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

April 1st to 7th

Sunday
Long run 17 miles. (17/17)

Monday
Easy run 9 miles. In evening, I baby strolled it with Rowan for about 4 miles. (13/30)

Tuesday
Had another Tuesday morning workout struggle. The planned workout was 1600-1600-1200-1000-1000. Was just struggling and just not getting it done. I think I ran 4:36, 4:36, 3:27, 2:55, 2:55. Just think things are getting stagnant doing them by myself. Anyway, I decided to do the workout with the MSU distance team in the afternoon. The workout was 1600-1200-1200-1000-1000. I did feel a little tired, but the workout felt so much easier doing it with others instead of solo. I ran with the top MSU guys at 4:32, 3:24, 3:24, 2:53, and 2:47. (18/48)

Wednesday
Easy runs of 8 and 5 miles. (13/61)

Thursday
Did a little workout of 3 mile tempo, 2 mile tempo, and 6 * 300 with a minute in between. Ran 15:20, 10:10, 46, 47, 46, 46, 46, 45. Felt tired during and after workout. After the workout, I helped out with the first day of the heptathlon and decathlon for the rest of the day. (10/71)

Friday
Easy run 8 miles. Worked the second day of heptathlon. It was cold, wet/snowy, and at times windy. (8/79)

Saturday
Our first home fack meet was today. It snowed the day and night before, so we had some work to do in order to get the meet off. I was also one of the directors of the meet, I guess you could say, so I was pretty busy. I choose to run the 5k at the end of the meet because there wasn't as much which needed to be done at that point. I am not sure if I was tired from workouts, from working 3 days of track meets, or from not getting as much sleep all week as usual, but my energy level was low. I won the 5k in 14:34 (splits first two miles 4:46, 4:40 and last mile 4:32) just off Shannon Butler's track record of 14:31 (should have gone after it a little harder!). I wanted to run the last mile really fast, but I just couldn't do it today. (8/87)

Weekly Summary
87 miles in 10 runs. A pretty good week of training, except for the Tuesday morning workout blues. I am gonna do some strides at the end of my long run on Sunday to hopefully liven up my legs a little and really focus in order to have a good workout Tuesday morning this week. The last 2-3 weeks have been an adjustment because I have had a lot more coaching duties. However, we now have a baby sitter, so I am going to have some time during the day to get more work done and not have to work on things so much late at night. Excited for the coming weeks of racing. Training hasn't been great, but some things have gotten done even though the workouts are not that impressive on paper.