Last few weeks of running +

The last few weeks have been incredibly light as I have my 8 hour PhD written qualifying exam this coming week. I wanted to start building up, but I decided that running was probably not quite as important as passing this very important exam that covers the entire fields of basic engineering principles, systems neuroscience, cellular neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and modern research in neural interfaces. That being said, I've still had some notable runs thrown in here. Mileage has been light, but among the good runs I've gotten in have been 3 more 3+ hour long runs in an around Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood Canyons, an exceptionally good run up and down the 2800' climb to the top of Grandeur Peak (ran it hard on the way up and still tried my best to break Adrian Shipley on the way down, dropping the pace to nearly sub 5:0x/mile a couple times on a couple of the most runnable sections of the very technical descent, but unfortunately, I couldn't quite drop him and he stuck right behind me the whole way), and another couple tempos.

Beyond that, I'm developing some plans for 2012. I'm not committed to anything yet, but suffice it to say that I have big goals for the Spring after I use the rest of the fall to build a monster base. I once again have the focus I need to run at my most competitive level; all I need now is to shrug it off for 3 more days so I can finish preparing for this rather absurd exam. Until Wednesday, I'll hopefully get by just reading the highlights of the current IAAF championships...