AZ Run Dad

10.7 miles in Tucson. My wife was running a 5k down there so I went with her and ran before the race and some of her cooldwon with her. Nice setting at the base of some pretty large mountains. Fun morning as I got to watch her win the race on a loop course which was spectator friendly.

AM: 10 miles around the neighborhood. 

PM: 4.75 including 8 x 9 sec hill sprints

Warmed up with usual warmup loop and drills and strides the did 6 x 2k on the road with 90 sec jogs (about 8 min pace). Splits were 6:43, 6:45, 6:43, 6:46, 6:46, 6:38 (kicked last 1/2 mile or so). I felt really good and while this was a tough workout I felt like I still had something left in the tank.  I ended up averaging 5:41 pace for 8.43 miles including the jogs during the workout portion of my run. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the Utah guys at the Phoenix races this weekend. I'll be doing the half but as of right now my plan is to run it as part of a longer run and only run some of it hard. We'll see if I can execute that plan. 

AM: 8 miles

PM: 5 miles including 4 strides in the grass. 

15 miles in Fountain Hills with Ricardo, John, Brett, and Ron. My legs are very tired but we kept it easy and I have an off day tomorrow so that will help. 7:17 pace

Plan today was to do this as a hard workout with an 18 mile run with the last 10 in 57:30 (5:45 pace). I am racing a 15k next weekend and was given an entry into Phx so that is why I did this. Anyway, I parked a few miles from the start and ran along the course before flipping and running back to the start with about 5 minutes to spare. I ran about 4.5 miles there. I took the first three miles easy and ended up running with some friends averaging around 6:35 or so before picking it up at mile 3. It was somewhat fun passing so many people but as I got to the faster people I crept up on them more and more slowly. I ended up within seconds of 57:30 for 10 miles and ended with a time of 1:18:32. Running the 10 miles faster was not easy by any means but it wasn't half marathon effort either. I'd say my effort felt between half marathon and marathon effort. The weather turned out to be much better than expected with not much rain and only a slight headwind most of the way. Just my opinion but the conditions probably were costing about 5 seconds a mile which is not bad. I cooled down another 3 miles after and I was pretty beat.