14K

This morning I got up really early to go to the Jordan River Parkway. Kelly has moved back to Salt Lake (YAYAYAYAY!) and agreed to meet me for my last 5K, but she wanted to be home by 8 am to watch a soccer game with her fiancé Chris. So I started at 6:05 am and she met me at 7:05 am after I'd done my first 9km.

It was a bit chilly by the river this morning; it was 59F (15C) but by the river I'm sure it was at least 5F colder. I was still fine in shorts and a T-shirt, but was chilled until I got warmed up a bit. Otherwise, the weather was lovely - calm and clear.

The house selling stress has been worse at the end of this week. It's complicated and I'm not going to go into it here, but let's just say that last night was not a good night. A glass of wine at dinner with Loren helped immensely though :). With all that on my mind I pushed a bit harder this morning, as if the exercise would purge the evilness of it all, and it did help a bit. My resting HR spiked up to 56 this morning, which is NOT good. I can't have a relapse. I'm going to have to manage this somehow. I'm working on it - suffice it to say, w/o going into details, that I have a plan. Unfortunately extra rest isn't in the cards today as I have to work a good portion of the day today & tomorrow because we have a deadline on a paper. But I think I can get home by 3pm today and get a quick nap before Calvin's soccer game at 4pm.

My legs felt great this morning, and not at all compromised by yesterday's 3x1km. The only problem is that niggling pain the butt on the left side. Kelly had a look at it and thinks it's the upper hamstring :(. Boo. She told me to ice it (I did) and to massage it (I did) and not to stretch too much (I didn't). I'm going to have to baby it.

My pace was 6:18/km through 9km, and then the last 5km was a bit slower; I was tired, and I was talking to Kelly, well, sort of. I was breathing hard enough that I didn't converse with her so much as she conversed with me. She was running, because her left knee has been bugging her lately while RW, so she opted to run today.

Garmin data here. 

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In other interesting news, my boss did the Wasatch 100 yesterday. It's a 100-mile trail race in the mountains with 25000 feet of elevation gain and loss along the course. It's pretty much insane. Another friend of mine did it a few years ago and made it to 80 miles then DNF'd; the next year he finished. I think the first time doing a race of that distance it's going to be a learning experience, and it was for Josh yesterday. It was really really HOT and he had trouble staying hydrated, because his stomach pretty much quit accepting liquids. Of course, this also meant he couldn't eat anything either. I decided to go cheer for him at the 52.5 mile mark at Lambs Canyon, which is easily accessible from Salt Lake. Loren and I drove up there and saw him come in at 9:15pm, and he looked very tired but OK-ish (still smiling after 52 miles - photo at left). But his wife was worried and told us he hadn't been able to eat. He did manage to get some broth and soda and potato chips and noodles down, but in the end he decided not to continue the race and DNF'd there. All the same, I think it was an outstanding effort and it's the farthest he's run (previous long run was 38 miles; he's also done a bunch of trail marathons), so there's a lot to build on there. He said, though, that this distance is as different from a marathon as the marathon is from a 5 or 10K, and I believe it. It's just a totally different animal. It was good we'd gone up there to cheer for him, because his pacers just had one car between them and needed to fetch the other car; since we were there we could take him home, for which he was grateful. I hope he is feeling better today.