So, I took screenshots of many workouts, but never blogged about them. There was an eight mile run in Saint George on April 9th, with a killer uphill, and a couple of downhills so steep I couldn’t really take advantage of them or I’d kill my knees. I did half of one backwards, and part of the other using an S-weave.

There was a hill workout on April 19th that was up and down five times, with my fastest pace uphill. It really helped the pace of my next run.

On May 1st, there was a six mile run, split between city roads, trail running, country ranch roads, and open highway (with a fair bit of uphill there as well).

Today, I finally did it. I achieved a sub-10:00 average pace!

I even beat my fastest pace recorded on my phone, at 4:41 min/mile during my post-run “speed test”.

And with this achievement, I will stop blogging every run (or trying to).

Nothing remarkable about today’s run, except that it wasn’t as awful running into the wind as I was expecting it to be. But also, my quads were still stiff from Saturday’s run. Apparently I needed to stretch them more. It affected my hydrant hurdling. I started off as a rabbit again:

My playlist was actually pretty good. I think I should repeat it on my next run, and go the reverse direction.

And I was really hoping the park would have drinking fountains and restrooms available. I get that people are still panicked about coronavirus, but at least let me evacuate at the restroom.

I didn’t go as fast downhill as I had hoped I would get, but I think the song wasn’t helping as much as I would have liked (well, it was a lot of the end of a song, and a slow start to the next, so that didn’t help either).

My head got too hot around 1.5 miles, so I tied my shirt over it.

My under layer shirt however was black, and the temperature was in the mid 70’s, and I got too hot, and was getting dehydrated, and needed to go pee by the time I reached 2.75 miles. No worries, there’s a park at the intersection where I’m going to turn around. But no, the restrooms were “Closed for the season” (um, winter’s over, dudes). And the drinking fountain was capped off with PVC. So I rested in the shade of the restroom until my temperature cooled down, and slowly made my way back home.

My playlist was kind of crappy, and there’s not much point in saying anything about it. I had to skip a lot, re-arrange a lot. Not much good info for creating future playlists.

Before I started my run, I took some time to enjoy the daffodils.

My average pace was about five seconds per mile faster than last time. My pace uphill was faster than my average (silly rabbit).

Playlist, with some modifications, was pretty decent. I did re-arrange Bells and Horns to be where it is because I wanted something I knew was fast as I hit the downhill. The timing was almost perfect. I hit the drums right about when I hit the downhill crest.

I had my best yet average pace, going the reverse of my usual direction. I didn’t feel as week and exhausted going up the hill that direction as I have the past few times. I was still pretty slow going up, but not so exhausted that I couldn’t take good advantage of the hill going back down after rounding the corner.

My playlist was decent; Anyone Else by The Real McKenzies, Vertigo by U2, and No Pockets in a Shroud by The Rumjacks were great to end on. I had to skip Lo/Hi because it felt too much like the previous song, and I needed a faster pace.

My phone told me, when I finished my run, that I had a new speed record! Truthfully, I finished my 4 mile run, and had a bit of a walking cool down, before doing a speed test in the park, as I’ve been tending to do when I finish my run in the park. The place I do my speed test goes from slightly uphill, around the corner, to even more uphill, but still only slightly so. On my speed test today I managed to achieve, for a very brief time, a 4’46” pace. The fastest mile I’ve ever run was about 4’45” back in my senior year of high school. Now I just need to keep this pace up for a mile. 🙂

Anyone Else, Vertigo, No Pockets in a Shroud were all good songs for end of run. I didn’t know if Weightless would be, so most of my speed test was with Blue Sky Mine, though I started it on No Pockets in a Shroud.

Today I hit a milestone. Not a big one, but an important one. My first 3 mile run since I started again where my average was below 11 minutes per mile: 10’49”. I also had my fastest pace going uphill.

I struggled with the playlist though, and starting with “With or Without You” had to skip a bunch of stuff to find the right tempos.

The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything proved to be decent for my last push (but not long enough, so I skipped to Holding Down A D at the end).

I decided I it was time to increase my weekday mileage. I ran to Redwood and 5400 S today. It’s kind of nice with a long gentle downhill to Redwood. But that same gentle downhill becomes a very long gradual uphill on the way back.

I found some new songs, Pedestrian and Dopamine. Generally was a good playlist, but I did have to remove some songs that were too slow.

I’m behind again. I went on a weekend getaway, and then didn’t run my normal days due to weather or work.

The 19th of March I went on a 20.69 mile bike ride. Coach Mostert allowed us to count half miles for bike rides, as long as we weren’t doing a lot of coasting. Going out was a lot of uphill; going back I had to coast to keep from losing my jewels with the rough roads and the saddle soreness and my gut being too big. But even if I only count half of the miles as peddling instead of coasting, and then half of that for the mileage, because of the route that I took that’s more than a 5 mile run. My fastest speed was 36.2 mph.