Eric Nelson's Running Blog

10 miles with James and Neil today in Hyrum. We went and did the upper turkey loop twice and then ran down mainstreet for a couple of blocks then ran back to Mountain Crest. That got us to 9 and we finished with a barefoot mile on the turf.

Started off with a 1 and half mile warmup to Ryan's Place Park where we stretched. The workout we had today was suppose to help us get use to cresting hills in a race. We did it on a series of roads that formed a triangle. We were to run up the hill hard and continue going hard on the straight, turn right (still going hard), then turn right again and just go easy back to the start. We did this 3 times and then we ran back to Zollinger's. Everybody just stopped there but we were only at 5.5 so I went another 1.5 to get 7.

Two miles easy in the afternoon.

So I just spent about 30 minutes trying to talk about the time trial we had today and when I tried to publish it it got deleted, so I'm just going to talk about it briefly. In the end I ended up getting 18:24. I was pretty disappointed with that time, seeing as how I ran a 17:24 the very first week of summer, but our new course is way hard. I think that it's a lot harder than the course at Mountain Crest. They have 2 little hills while we have 2 giant hills and lot of gradual uphill. I did stop to tie my shoelaces twice during the race too, though, and I wasn't really looking at my watch and I had never run the course before so I was pretty suprised when we turned to come down the last road and the finish was just half a block down. I could've sped up a ton more before that. If I could've ran it again and not had my shoelaces come untied I think I could have gotten under 17:10, at the least. I feel like I'm a lot faster than I was at the beginning of the summer and I can't wait to go and run a flat course to see how much I've actually improved. 

Today we all met at Heritage Park in Nibley to do our tempo run. We started off with a mile warmup and got right into it. The target pace for me was 5:30 for 20 minutes. I could normally do that but not after yesterday, my hamstrings were super sore and I was just tired. For the first 10 minutes I was running at 5:45-5:55 pace and started to struggle to stay under 6 minutes. The second half I had to slow down to a 6:10-6:15. Once I got back we went and did a mile and a half cooldown to get us to 6 miles.

PM - Three miles easy in Nibley. My coach wants me to start running at around 3pm when it's really hot outside so that's what I did today and what I'm going to be doing from now on. I wasn't as tired and I felt a lot better than I did this morning.

Today we had a hill workout at the 4-way stop. So apparently on this hill we weren't going for pace at all, we just wanted to get them done. I wish I would have known that last week when we were hauling up and down it. Anyways, Jonathan and I ran together and sort of paced eachother. This morning there was a warm, dry wind that made my mouth super dry, it felt like I was running in the middle of the day in the heat. We finished and did a mile and a half cooldown back to Zollinger's for 8.

Six miles easy today for the Cabin Run. I had really bad memories of this run from last year so I wasn't too excited to go run it again today. It ended up not being so bad though, I think that the reason that it sucked last year was because we were going so fast. This year I just ran it easy and it was really enjoyable, well, as enjoyable as it could be with all the hills and the heat.

This morning I just ran an easy 7.5 miles for Peavine. I was feeling a little from our run yesterday afternoon and I have a race tomorrow so I just went easy today.

PM -  Easy 3 miles in the heat.

So today was the Mendon Pioneer Day 5k/10k and Don wanted me to run it so I did. I got there pretty early and I had to wait a while for other people to show up. A lot of kids that still run for Mountain Crest ended up coming and it was pretty fun to see all of them again. Hayden was there but he was running the 10k, so my only real competition in the 5k was Branson Fonnesbeck, who is currently the fastest runner from Mountain Crest. We started off and Hayden, Branson, and I immediately took the lead. We started off a little bit faster than I would have liked but it ended up being ok. We stayed together for probably the first half mile before Hayden pulled ahead of me and I pulled ahead of Branson. The first mile was the only part of the course that had any significant hills in it, but they were a breeze compared to the hills on the course we ran on Monday. I finished my first mile in 5:28 and a little bit after that the 10k course took a turn off of our course so Hayden was gone and I was left with Branson. At this point Branson was 30-40 meters behind me and by the time I finished my 2nd mile he was probably 300-400m behind me so I wasn't really worried about him. I was running pretty fast, I think I was at a 5:30 average pace but with half a mile to go I realized that I still had a ton of energy left. I sped up a ton and finished with 16:28, it ended up only being 3 miles though, which I was pretty disappointed about because I was really looking forward to seeing if I could get under 17 minutes or even PR. After today though, I have no doubt that if this had been a true 5k and if I actually used all of that extra energy, that I would be well below 17. Anyway, I was still happy with my time, seeing as how it is a 32 second PR from my 3 mile PR last season and we still have 4 more weeks of summer training till the season starts this year. I'll be looking for some pretty sick times this year. :)
 

Since today was a holiday there was no practice in the morning. I wanted to get up and go run at 7am but I couldn't get myself up and ended up getting up at 9 o'clock and running at 10. It was around 85 degrees when I started running but the heat didn't bother me to bad. My normal running shoes are starting to tear at the sides so I decided to run in my Zante's today to help break them in for when my other shoes get to the point of being unwearable. I ran a giant loop around Nibley to get 9 miles. At mile 8 I stopped to take a break for a second in the shade of a tree and got stung by a wasp just above my ankle. That scared the crap out of me and my leg hurt a ton for the last mile.