Elite Jogging For Dummies

Though my knee does not do well with big climbs these days, I could not resist the urge to run up to the meadow for a little early fall post-storm circuit.  It was a glorious morning, 34 degrees.

Workout with the Black Sheep at East High.  After the warm up we did some drills: skips, knees, & butt kicks, then an 800 m of speed changes. The workout consisted of 4 x 400, 4 x 800, 4 x 400.  Times were unspectacular in the first set of 400s: 89, 87, 86, 86. The 800s were 2:51, 2:49; 2:46; 2:43.  The last set of 800s: 81,81,81, 72.  I could have (and should have) run the last set of 400s sub 80--I clearly had the energy to do it. Then we ran a bit of cooldown. 

Three days of running in a row.  I think that's a record for the past few months.  It's cold enough now that the outdoor pool at Steiner doesn't sound quite as appealing.  More importantly, my knee hasn't been giving me any real trouble this week. I know it can come back at any moment but I'm enjoying the break in the action.  I'll try to keep it loose with the foam roller and The Stick and see if I can handle 10 miles in Holladay tomorrow.

This was my fourth day of running this week and it felt pretty good. I had planned to drive out to Holladay but the 5:30 start time and 5:00 am wake up time just loomed too large.  I ran 8 miles, out and back to This is the Place Monument. I ran several fartlek surges along the way. Running time was was 59 minutes which isn't bad for this hilly route.

This was an interesting run. I met up at 5:30 with Josh, Megan and Aimee. We ran from Foothill toward my old 'hood.  Along the way we saw a charter bus being loaded onto a big flat bed tow vehicle.  Above the tire on the passenger side was the residue of what looked to be a very hot fire that had either melted or blown out the window. We asked the tow guys and they said there was some kind of brake problem and the tire locked and caught fire from the heat and friction.  Yikes. No one was hurt.

 We circled back to Foothill to pick up some more people at 6am.  We ran out and back to the fire house. On the return, one of our buddies was running on the sidewalk next to Bonneville Golf Course on Foothill. He was moving at a good clip as we were in the last mile. It was still dark and he didn't notice a large tree branch extending over the sidewalk.  He smacked into it with incredible force.  No blood other than the gash on his knee from the resulting fall.  He was pretty out of it for a couple of minutes but ultimately resisted our efforts to take him to get checked out since you don't really want to mess around with that kind of trauma.  But he had a plane to catch in a couple of hours and didn't want to go. That's sort of the last place you want to be after a shot to the head, but I digress. I hope he's ok--haven't yet heard anything to the contrary.