Week of 10-1-12: 54 miles, 5000' gain.

Monday: Off

Tuesday: 15 miles, flat. 14 mile workout in 1:30:xx, alternating 7:00 pace and 6:00 pace, no rest, except the last mile, instead of 6:00, was 5:36 + 1 mile cooldown.  Felt pretty good, although the last mile of 5:36 hurt.

Wednesday: 9 miles, 2000' gain, 1:18 easy run on roads.  Started down in NSL at 4300', ran a really undulating route up to the south-eastern area of Bountiful, ran a lap of sorts of the Eaglewood golf course, partly cross country style on the golf course itself), and then ran all around the neighborhoods there, capping out at 5600' before popping back down to the "poor side of town", ie where I live while in grad school. Hah.  Right leg was a little touchy at the end of the run, so I iced up super well and did even more stretching than normal when I finished.

Thursday: Off.  Leg had been touchy when I finished on Wednesday and I obviously need to be mindful of staying healthy, so I decided to take another day off.

Friday: 8 miles, 2000' gain, 1:01.  JCC up dry creek, up Unkel F...er, total time of 25 min to the top (wasn't wearing a watch with seconds, only minutes, but my previous fastest was 28:5x, so this kind of came out of nowhere), along the ridgeline to the 5-way, and back on BoSho.  About 61 min total.  Was pushing moderately hard, but didn't feel like I was racing at all, so I was happy with it.  Leg stuff was 95% unnoticeable.

Saturday: 15 miles, 500' gain, 1:42.  NSL to Redwood, down to North Temple, to downtown, small around gateway, back up 400 to beck, up beck/89, and back to my apt.  Was taking it pretty moderate (about 7:00 pace for the first 10), but picked up the last 5 miles to what felt like marathon effort.  I know exactly where 5 miles from my apartment is on this route, but don't know any of the mile split points in between, so doing the last 5 based on effort without knowing my pace until I'm done is a good gauge.  These last 5 miles are the hilliest of the run (250' climb, 100' drop), and are at an average of 4300', ie, significantly slower than sea level, but running what felt like marathon effort got the last 5 done in 32:04, which corresponds to 30:21 on flat at sea level.  This isn't to say that I could go out and run 6:04 pace for a marathon right now as my legs wouldn't hold up to the pounding at this point, and it's certainly possible that I mis-judged marathon pace, but this gives me confidence regarding my ability to run well in a totally flat road marathon in a couple months.  Leg was 100% fine, but I had taken 2 Aspirin beforehand as I didn't really feel like getting stranded in West Valley on the off chance that it completely blew up on me (seemed extremely unlikely to happen, as it hasn't previously happened, but you never know).

Sunday: 7 miles, 500' gain, :44.  Nice and easy run out west on Center Street, south when the road ends, and a little over a mile down that way before turning around.  I debated doing more, but I just felt kind of tired today (for whatever reason I woke up quite early despite going to bed pretty late and couldn't get back to sleep, so this is probably why).  Hip was slightly iffy, but not all that bad.  In general, it's better than it was and generally trending in the right direction, but I wish it would improve more quickly.

Total: 54 miles, 5000' gain.  I ideally would've liked another 6 miles or so, in the spirit of building mileage and hitting 60 miles, but I still had a really good workout on Tuesday, and that's the most important thing for now.  I don't really care very much about my weekly elevation gain for the time being, but I'll continue to pay attention to it out of curiosity.  I also have to be careful not to overstress my hip until it is legitimately 100%, which is why I took 2 days off.  I would say that the hip is slightly better overall than it was last week, but it's still not 100%.  Consistent weekly long workouts and staying healthy are what I see as the keys to me being successful when I finally run another marathon, so this week is as good as it could have been.  One other interesting fact that I've come to realize recently is that faster running seems to cause significantly less hip issues than slower running.  It seems that stretching helps, so I figure that running faster, given a relatively similar stride rate in either case, involves a longer stride which must stretch my hip more.  Who knows.

Music for the week is one of the most insanely fantastic symphonies of all time, Scriabin #3, ie "The Divine Poem".  Take that, runners who post hipster garbage!