Week of 10-29-12: 78 miles, 8500' gain

Monday: 6 miles, :5x, 1000' gain.  Nice easy recovery run with Holly.  Southeastern tip of Bountiful along Bonneville Shoreline up to radio towers, then left on the ridgeline for another 10 minutes, then back, finishing right at sunset.

Tuesday: 7 miles, :56, 2000' gain.  From Natural History Museum up and down Mt Wire. 29:59 up Wire, barely squeaked it in under 30 and felt like absolute hell over the last 5 minutes on those last few steep grunts.  Hit the turn-off up the mountain in a little under 3 minutes (didn't catch the seconds), the turn-off out of the gully when the views open up at 9:56, the pass over to the Living Room at 14:0x (I think, not entirely sure, could've been :1x, but I'm pretty sure), mid-22s at the biggest saddle, and 28:40-ish at the last saddle.  Hopefully my memory is correct for all of those as they'll be a nice reference in the future.  My previous best was from a slightly different starting point (within 1 minute, this way being slightly faster in my estimate) in 33-high, so this makes me happy.  Definitely pushed harder than before, but a PR is a PR and a sub-30 on Wire seems really good to me.  I'd be curious to see what I can do on the direct front face route that a couple guys have run 27-ish on, but that route just isn't as fun, so I almost never run it.  Descent was really relaxed, as while I may have backed off a little bit in the middle section, I really destroyed myself for that sub-30 at the end of the climb.

Wednesday: 11 miles, 1:17, 1500' gain.  Roads, loop from my area NSL up and over to upper South Eastern Bountiful, back up to 1900 south (there are some obnoxious rolling hills in this section and I always seem to forget about them...), and back to NSL.  Took it out moderately, but picked it up a bit near the end.  Split the last .53 miles (granted, downhill) in 2:46 (5:13 pace) just for fun, which felt fluid, but is pretty irrelevant and not actually fast due to the downhill nature.

Thursday: 18 miles, 1:56:xx, flat, treadmill.  Alternating between 6:58 and 6:00 pace, no breaks, except a less than 2 minute bathroom break after mile 10.  Last mile in 5:40 instead of 6:00.  Got pretty hard by the end, last mile was basically torture.  Daniels tables give this a 6:10 average pace at sea level instead of 6:30, but I estimate that the treadmill is slightly easy.  If I'm correct that a treadmill might be more accurate at a 0.5% incline, this would make it equivalent to a .5% decline and therefore 75 seconds sfast by Daniels tables, making my average pace at sea level equivalent to 6:14 instead.  This seems pretty accurate I'd think.  Overall, a good workout.

Friday: 3 miles, 23 minutes, flat.  8 laps of the 3/8 mile loop at the park near my house.  Very easy at first, sped up a little bit by the end.  Would have done more if I had more time, but I had to get up to Snowbird for a conference.

Saturday: 12 miles, 1:24, 500' gain.  My apartment up to Orchard Drive, north on there, eventually becoming 400 E, up to Centerville and back.  First half in 44, second half in 40, mostly due to picking up the last quarter of the run, especially over the last couple miles (roughly 5:45 pace for the last 2 miles, which felt fast but surprisingly fluid).

Sunday: 21 miles, 3500' gain, 3:01.  Nice run with a pretty easy effort.  From my place up a winding route through NSL up to Southern Bountiful, up North Canyon to Rudy's Flat, a few minutes going south from there to scout a route to/from the City Creek ridgeline trail that I've had difficulty linking from in the past, back to Rudy's Flat, down Mueller Park Canyon Trail, down the roads from there to Orchard, back to NSL and back home.  Legs weren't outrageously happy in the last half an hour, but this was the longest run I've done in like 2 months (time or distance) and it was also at the end of the biggest week of mileage I've done in about 4 months, so that was pretty expected. I also finished with a minor headache that I developed over the last 20 minutes, which I generally find to mean that I could use more long runs (like I said, this isn't surprising right now).  With that in mind, I do know for sure now that I need to keep hitting some good quality long runs, preferably over 3 hours like today, although I'm planning to keep everything under 4 hours (I'd be very surprised if I felt like doing more than 4 hours in a single outing in the next couple months).

Totals: 78 miles, 8500' gain.  Not quite up to where I want a typical marathon training week to be (I was thinking just a hair more than this), but I could handle a little more than this right now, even with the two quality days, so I think I'm about where I need to be to get in some really effective weeks of training.  I still have no idea what my racing plans are, but I'll figure something out.  I would think February would be ideal, but there's nothing going on during that timeframe that looks like a well-organized race on a good course (ie flat, close to sea level) that is easy to get to, so I'm starting to lean towards waiting for the Phoenix Marathon the first weekend of March.  4 months from now is kind of a long time considering that training is basically almost in full swing already, but if I take a few easy weeks here and there, it should be doable to get my peak lined up for Phoenix.  I guess I'll just play it by ear for a few more weeks before I make any decisions.

Music for the week is Rachmaninoff's massively under-appreciated 4th piano concerto, as played by the maestro himself, along with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy.  If you like this first movement, listen to the whole thing.  It's incredible.  Half of the music I post is Rachmaninoff, which is OK with me.