Adam's Running

Easy miles, then soccer afterwards.

My family was staying in Park City for the weekend and I saw this race and decided that it would be a lot funner than a long run by myself, so I signed up for it. I had never run this far at one time in my life, so I went into it without high expectations and more of just doing it for fun than competing. The course was absolutely brutal, and I have never done a race with nearly as intense of a course before. We started at 7,000 feet elevation, then climb 8 miles up to 10,000 feet, then deescend the 8 miles down. I made sure to go out slow since I didn't really know what I was doing and had a long ways ahead. I spent the first couple miles passing people (whcich is really hard on single track trails), before settling in with a little group for the next few. I kind of broke away from the group once the hills started getting more intense and I caught up to the top girl. Blake from Alta passed me at this point, and I probably should have gone with him but I didn't know how far it was to the peak, and I didn't want to end up dead at the top. The last mile or so before the summit was killer, and easily the hardest hill I've ever seen in a race. It was so steep that you almost had to climb it, and I used my hands quite a bit. This part was virtually impossible to run up and I fell to like 15 minute mile pace. After I summited Jupiter Peak it was all downhill so I took off to try to catch Blake, but I am pretty bad at runninghills and ended up getting passed by a couple people. about three miles out I biffed it pretty bad and a lot of the skin on my hand came off. I didn't hurt my legs at all, but my hand was hurting really bad for the rest of the race and I lost about a minute probably from the fall. I ended up finishing in 2:04:00 which was actually pretty fast for the course, and a lot faster than I had thought I would run. Afterwards I went and got cleaned up a little in the first aid tent, then talked to Blake for a while. Overall it was a super fun race, and I think I am going to do it again next year and try to break 2 hours.

My legs were a little bit sore from Saturday, but after about a mile I felt fine. We ran up to sliding rock, then decided to go farther up to go see the movie set that they built. We went up for a while but when we got to where you turn down to get to the set there was a police officer who got mad at us for trespassing and told us to leave. We kept going up for a while before we realized that the trail didn't go down, so we found a couple of overgrown deer trails that we took down to Alpine Cove.  

Neither Lil' Warner or Jamison was there this morning, so it ended up being Marc and I running together for most of the run. We did mountain run then headed down and added Timberline loop for extra. Marc leaves to the MTC tomorrow, so it was good to get one more run in with him before he's gone.

AM- Drove up the canyon with Ryan and reserved our campsite for later in the day, so it was just Jamison, Lil' Warner and I running in the morning because we didn't make it back in time. We went to Marc's house to say goodbye because he leaves on his mission today, then did Timberline loop.

PM-First run of camp. We ran a loop by where we were camping. the first five or so miles were pretty intense, and Lil' Warner gapped me by a good twenty seconds on the ridge. For some reason he is just crazy good at hills, so I had to work hard to keep up with him on all of our runs at camp. Once we got to the top of the loop it was a nice three miles of downhill. It was the kind of downhill that wasn't too steep or too gradual, but a perfect mix of both that allowed us to just fly. I wouldn't be surprised if we did those three miles in15 minutes or less.

AM- Easy run in the morning, only about three miles probably. It was pretty hilly though, so it didn't feel like a waste of time.

PM- For our evening run today we went up to stewart falls and back two times. The first one was just at a steady pace, and was more of a warm up than anything else. The second time up Ryan ran with us so Lil' Warner and I picked up the pace considerably. We got up a couple minutes quicker than the first time, and ran back down to the parking lot and did abs and stretching.

Today was the last day of camp so we had our hard run in the morning before we left. We just went up Timpooneke road for 33 minutes, then back down in 27. The way up was pretty brutal because I had Lil' Warner pushing the pace the whole time and it was ninety five percent uphill. We hit 33 minutes and decided to turn around so we could catch some of the other guys on the way down. I didn't realize it until we got home but we  were actually super close to the front face of Timp. Probably only about 3-5 minutes away which is a bummer.

Alpine Days today. Was tired from camp and I knew I wouldn't have a problem making varsity, so I just treated it like a really hard tempo. First mile was gradual uphill and Lil' Warner and i hit in 5:25. The second mile was pretty steep for most of it and we dropped off pretty good, running 5:54. Last mile was mostly downhill so I was able to run a 5:08 pretty easily. I finished and was pretty tired, but still had a lot left in the tank. Steve ended up winning, and is starting to run with BYU this week and Lil' Warner got second a few seconds ahead of me. Spencer King actually ended up getting fifth, and the last grass relays spot. Afterwards we cooled down barefoot on the grass.

Ran up to the cave, then found a trail that connects Lambert to the mountain run which was pretty cool. 

Just ran on a bunch of the trails over by suncrest for an hour.

Workout down at spinney park today, 5x1000 at 5k race pace. I haven't felt this awful in a workout in a long time. I was struggling running 5:15-5:20 pace on all of them, while my goal was to be running under 5:10 pace. Oh well, This is really the first speed workout we have done this season and I know I can be running all of mine a lot faster in a month or two.

Later did canyon road loop by myself.

Today was supposed to be a recovery run, but it turned out being pretty fast. We were doing black trail and about halfway through Steve and I pulled away without realizing it. Steve just kept ratcheting up the pace until the last bit we were running 5:50 pace. Our last three miles were around 18:00, which is much too fast for a recovery day. It felt good though, and it was interesting listening to Steve tell me about training with the BYU team.

Later went for a twenty mile bike ride, and did 3 miles at the gym with my sister.

I missed practice today so I ran 5 miles in the heat of day which sucked. I went up onto Bonneville shoreline over to three story park and back. It reminded me of how bad after school workouts are gonna suck.

Later did a temple run with 4x3:00 hard in the middle. Felt good and I felt like I was flying on the last one which was awesome condidering I had eaten a Costa Vida salad not too long before.

Had work from 6 to 5 so I wasn't able to run with the team. I was planning on doing a long run by myself, but then my cousin asked if I wanted to trail run up Box Elder peak later and I fgured that would be a lot funner. It was a pretty intense trail and there were a lot of places where it was too steep to run, so we just aggressively hiked those parts. The summit was awesome, and we gained about 4100 feet in those five miles. We summited at about 10:30, and ran down in the dark which was pretty fun.

For the last day of summer we decided to do something fun, so we decided to run down to Lone Peak and play tag at the pond. It was pretty fun and I didn't get caught in either game, although there were a couple of close calls. Afterwards we ran back to the park

Today was the first day of school and what better way to welcome everyone back than 6x800 over on the grass field by the seminary building. I hate this field because they very rarely mow it, so the grass is always super long and sucks the energy out your legs. Today though I was feeling really good. I had been feeling a little discouraged after how poorly I performed at last workout, but this one restored all of my confidence. Times were 2:36, 2:34, 2:32, 2:30, 2:30, 2:26. I was looking at my times on this course from last year at this time of year and I was averaging almost 10 seconds slower on every interval. This workout got me really excited for grass relays.

Tag with 25 minutes after. We got new jerseys today and they are sick.

6x600m hills today over by the elementary school. Was able to hit decent times on all of them, but I felt like garbage for the whole workout. Times were 2:05, 2:04, 2:03, 2:04, 2:00, 2:06. On the last one I started cramping up pretty bad in the last 100. Cool down and ice bath after.

Later did three more on the canyon road loop.

solid run out and back on Bonneville Shoreline. It was Lil' Warner, Zack, Jamison, and I for most of it, and we kind of fluctuated between running really fast and really slow throughout the run. Overall though we averaged 6:50 pace.

Missed practice this morning so I ran on my own later. I decided to run up the canyon to Timpanogas cave and back. It was lightly raining when I left but on my way back down it started raining really hard, then started hailing. The hailstones were really big and painful so I ran off the road and found a boulder that I crawled under and stayed there for a bout five minutes before it lightened up a little. Overall a fun run.

Solid run down to the AF trail and back on the mountain ridge road. Lil' Warner was talking A LOT today.

400, 800, 1200, 800, 400, 400 today over on the field by the seminary building. The band was using the field so we had to change it from the 800 meter course to a 400 meter loop. This workout felt a lot harder than it should of, and the times were slower than I would have preferred even with the loop being about 10 meters long. Times were 72, 2:32, 4:00ish (I came in right behind a group of girls, so Ryan missed my time.), 2:35, 75, 70. Lil' Warner wasn't feeling good today so I ended up doing the second half or so by myself, which is always a lot harder. I take a little comfort knowing that I can take off about 2 seconds off each lap because it was long, but still not very satisfied with how this one turned out.

Ran up the canyon for a few miles then turned around. Craik ran really well today and didin't drop off the entire way up. I forgot socks (I wear sandals to school everyday, so this has happened a couple times) and I started feeling a kind of blister coming on, so I stopped about 10 minutes short. Afterwards we ice bathed under the bridge on the golf course.

Distance run with 3x3:00 minutes hard in the middle. Lil' Warner wasn't there so I was by myself on them, but I was feeling good and ran about 4:45-5:00 pace on them. We passed a couple PG guys on bikes, who I think were Spencer Palmer and Tanner but I am not sure. Seth was looking really good today, and is going to be our fifth guy at grass relays.

Easy miles with some strides before grass relays tomorrow.  

Today was Grass Relays!!! This is one of my favorite races, and is always a ton of fun. I got to the race and just chilled for a few hours before the varsity relay. I was running first, which was perfect because I knew I would run faster if I had a bunch of people around me. The gun went off and I got out fast enough to be in the very front when we got off the track. Christian Allen got out into first shortly after, and I ran with him and Coleman from Jordan for the first 800 or so. Once we got to the bottom of the U-turn Zac Jacklin came flying by which I figured would happen at some point. Him and Christian took off and I ended up running by myself with a bunch of guys behind me for the entire middle mile. My mile split was 5:03, which felt fast but not problematically fast. With 800 to go some guy from Salem Hills passed me and I didn't go with him when I really should have. I finished out the last 800 at a decent pace and ended up in fourth place at the handoff. I feel like I had quite a bit left in the tank and didn't really kick that hard, so I am very pleased with my place in this race. I ended up sixth overall which was kind of cool cuz I got a little plaque thing. Our team did awesome and got fourth place overall, and Seth absolutely killed it in his leg. We beat Westlake who were supposedly going to be better than us this season which is awesome. I had my doubts about how good we would be this year, but this race gave me a big confidence boost with Zack and Seth running so well.