April 29th to May 5th

Decided to switch order of my days so the most recent day is at the top.

Saturday
Long run in Missoula of about 15 miles. Sierra, Rowan, and I stayed the weekend in Missoula after the meet. Not exactly what I wanted to do because I really have a lot to do with conference coming up this weekend in Bozeman. Oh well, it was fun seeing some family. (15/75)

Friday
Ran the 1500 and 800 at a small meet in Missoula. About half of our team didn't make the trip because they had finals or graduation activities. Anyway, my legs felt a little sore. Maybe I shouldn't have done the 300s in spikes on Wednesday? I was surprised to be feeling so poor. Anyway, I ran 3:54 (3:51 or 3:52 with NCAA altitude adjustment) in the 1500, but it felt really hard. In the 800, I started out pretty slow because I didn't feel well after 1500 and ran 1:55. I almost scratched the 800, but I guess I am glad I did it just for the training aspect of it. Was a little disappointed in how things went and how I felt, but I guess it doesn't really matter how I felt today in the grand scheme of things. (8/60)

Thursday
Easy runs of 4 miles in the morning and 5 miles at night. (9/52)

Wednesday
Did a little workout today of 3 mile tempo, 3*300 cut down, 2 mile tempo, 3*300 cut down. Started on the track and then went on a loop and back to the track for tempos. My watch had me at 15:04 for 3 miles, but I think my watch was off and it was a bit short of 3 miles. My first set of 300 cut downs was 44, 43, 42 with 1 minute rest between. All the sudden before the second 2 mile tempo a huge wind kicked up. My watch had me at 10:30 for 2 miles. The second set of 300s had 100 meters of each into a huge headwind. My times were 45, 44, 43. The time between tempo and 300s was as long as it took me to change my shoes. I didn't think this workout was going to be that hard, but I was pretty beat the rest of the day. (11/43)

Tuesday
Really busy catching up on stuff after the trip. Went for just a short run at about 8:45 at night. (5/32) 

Monday
Long run around Palo Alto of about 17 miles. Probably ran a little fast because of the excitement of the race and because it was sunny and warm out. Drove to Oakland to fly out after the run. Our plane ended up being delayed over three hours so we ended up getting home real late.(17/27)

Sunday

Ran the steeple at Payton Jordan and ended up finishing in 2nd place in my heat at 8:35. I ran an 8:35 in 2008, but my fastest steeple was 8:33 in 2005. So, it has been a while since I have run that fast. Going into the race I was feeling pretty good all things considered. Yesterday was a long day with the home meet in Bozeman and the late flight to Oakland. Since I didn't get a chance to run yesterday, I ran an easy 2 miles or so in the morning.

My race plan going into the meet was to get out toward the front of the pack and then start picking it up as best I could the last 1200 meters. However, when the gun went off, I didn't get off the line real well and basically had no where to go but the back of the pack. I didn't want to waste any energy with a surge too early in the race, so I just stayed in the back for the first 1200 meters and then started moving up. I wish I had started moving up a little sooner in the race. Sierra took my splits and moved down from the starting line toward the 200 meter start each lap, so these are roughly my 400 meter splits: (68, 70, 71, 70, 69, 68, 67, 31). After being last the first half of the race, I took the lead with 400 to go, but couldn't quite hold it. My last barrier was bad, which basically took me out of the running for the win.

Did a long cool down after the race. (10/10)

Here is a video of the race:


 
Watch more video of 2012 Stanford Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational on flotrack.org