Day 19: West Provo

Date: February 26th 2011, 9:00 am
Distance: 12.9 miles
Weather: So Cloudy

The clouds were so thick this morning that you could only see the peaks of the mountains rising above the low cloud layer. The sun looked like a yellow disc in the sky, all of it's brightness being muted by the cloud cover. It snowed 6 inches yesterday and most of that was still out there when I left for today's run. The ground was fine around BYU, but by the time I was getting close to Orem the sidewalks weren't being maintained and I found myself running on snow and slush.

I was surprised at how easy it was to cross the highway. They had set up some good crosswalks up there. Things got tough once I got on Geneva... the long road South. Picture a long, two lane road with no sidewalks. The shoulder of the road was pure mud and slush with deep puddles of icy water sometimes stretching far into the road itself. I found myself running in the middle of the road around puddles and trekking through the muck when cars were coming. I had to adjust my running speed to time it right. I felt like I was playing Frogger out there. On the plus side, all the farmland was a nice change of scenery.

Naturally, by this time my feet were soaked. When I got down to the river trail, a sign told me that this portion of the trail was closed. Gotta love it. I back tracked a while and hopped on 820. I hoped it would meet up with the trail a little ways up. I was right.

Running the trail is always interesting. This time, the river level was super high and the snow in the trees was a grand enough site for me to take my mind off of the issues I was having with my digestive system. When I ran under one of the underpasses, I saw a homeless person's bed neatly made of foam pads, a blanket and a pillow. Which reminds me... 2 years ago, Jeff and I would see a homeless guy pushing a cart up University Ave. as we trained every Saturday. Thinking back on my training this year, I haven't seen him once. Maybe he won the lottery.

The detour made my run nearly 13 miles instead of 12 and the wet socks gave me my first blister of the year. I would rate today's run: 4 out of 10 stars.

Day 18: Running in my backyard

Date: February 24th 2011, 8:30 pm
Distance: 3.2 miles
Weather: Uninteresting

I wanted to stay close to home tonight so I calculated the distance around the loop that circles South Wymount. 0.8 miles times 4 laps equals one decent run. See the 6 white rectangles? Each one is a group of on campus apartments, and each one is a ward (it sure makes home teaching easy). I live in the lower left one (by the letter "C"). I ran counter clockwise and it wasn't too bad. Most of the run didn't have sidewalks so I remembered from scouts to run on the side of the road that was facing oncoming traffic. It didn't matter... there were hardly any cars anyways. One length of road didn't have any streetlights so I kept finding myself tripping over pine cones. Otherwise I just kept my head up, put on the speed, and it was all over before I could even say "rise and shout, the cougars are out."

Day 17: Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Date: February 23rd 2011, 8:30 am
Distance: 4.4 miles
Weather: Night

Blood

1 Pint. O positive. That what I was missing when I ran today. You see, yesterday I got a text message saying that there was a low turn out at our stake blood drive. I decided to go and donate. Bada-bing-bada-boom and I've got a bandage on my arm and a sticker on my shirt saying "I make a difference". Since I wasn't supposed to do any strenuous activity for 12 hours I put off this run 24 hours. It still wasn't the prettiest run. I wouldn't recommend running when you're down a pint of blood.

Sweat

My mid week courses are starting to get longer. It is no longer just "a quick run" on my weeknights. Today I put in 4.4 miles, but most of the sweat didn't come until the last half of the run. The first half was mostly downhill and I was trying to pace myself and avoid the whole fainting after blood loss thing. Once I got more comfortable I started to pick up the pace and get pretty warm. At mile 2 the gloves came off. I wanted to take the beanie off but it was helping hold my earbuds in. At mile 3 I really put on the afterburners, thinking that I wanted to be completely spent when I got home. I got pretty close.

Tears

We might have seen some tears if traffic was a little heavier on bulldog. As I run by the parking lots near the athletic facilities I see a sign that says: "Caution Pedestrians: No Sidewalk". I took caution and kept running... I mean they didn't provide any other alternative. No crosswalk, no nothing. So I'm cruising just north of the Hinckley Alumni building and the heavy bushes on the side of the road are forcing me to run in the road. I'm in the middle of the right-most lane as I go around the corner. That's when I realize that with the corner and the bushes a car coming up behind me wouldn't see me until it was right on my tail. By then I would be road pizza. Not knowing if there was any traffic behind me, I engaged in a dead sprint. The danger zone seemed to stretch on indefinitely but I eventually made it out and lived to tell the tale.

Overall, it was a longish run with a variety of unusual challenges. But that's how I like it. Gotta keep things interesting.

Day 16: The Wet One: Part 1

Date: February 19th 2011, 10:30 am
Distance: 7.5 miles
Weather: Rain

I had some family in town today so I was pretty excited to do a run with my bros. I was with Jeff and Michael (Steven, bless his heart, was stuck selling dilly bars to Greenacres middle school students).We kept to the schedule and found a route that was just over 7 miles. It started out with a downhill trip down 9th east. The weather was misty and warm. All was well.

First off... it was nice for once having company. There's nothing like a discussion on how the stake executive secretary gets thrown out of a church basketball game for taking your mind off the uphill. And there was uphill. A few miles into the run we found 1.2 miles of continuous uphill as we made our way towards University mall.

By this point in the run, we were all hurting. But hills don't last forever and we worked out the kinks by the time we got to the top. Maybe it was just because I missed breakfast, but everything smelled good up there. You could just smell the barbecue as we passed Dickey's, Texas Roadhouse Barbecue, and Goodwood. Oh boy... it smelled especially good at Goodwood.

By the time we started down the long hill on University, the mist turned into a drizzle, and then into rain. It wasn't long until we were all soaked. What was once a rather warm run turned into a cold wet race to get home. The rain got harder. We ran faster.

Michael called a race to the door of the apartment but stopped one stairwell too short so the Gold medal went to Jeff. Michael, in other words, "got Jimmered".

Day 15: BYU

Date: February 18th 2011, 6:30 am
Distance: 2.7 miles
Weather: Gray

I was up early this morning to put in a quick run before work. The course was basically a lap around the smaller BYU campus region (I didn't make it around the stadium, baseball fields, or indoor playing field). It was an easy run with few distractions. No bad weather. No bad traffic.

However, it was a little depressing to see the students who were walking to campus at 6:30 to get an early start on their coursework. Been there.

Day 14: The view from the Y

Date: February 15th 2011
Distance: 6+ miles
Weather: Mild

My schedule dictated that I only run 4 miles today but I've been wanting to run up to the Y for a while now. This morning I mapped it out and discovered that it was just over 5 miles to go up and back. I decided to do it anyways because I figured that running more will only make me better prepared.

The red dot is the starting point (at my apartment). I started by going south (towards the right side of the image)

I underestimated the hill up to the trail head. It started out nice... quiet suburban streets with kids walking home from school. However, the uphill quickly got to me. The running turned into a light jog, and then finally to a shuffle. Even then, I was breathing quite heavily and I worried that I shouldn't be breathing this hard for anything more than a 5k.

When I got to the trail head I was already exhausted, despite trying to pace myself. Had I run any slower, I would have been walking. I was relieved to see a water fountain until I attempted to drink. It was as dry as the Sahara. Funny... I had the thought that this is how Jesus must have felt when he searched for fruit on the fig tree, only to find it bare. He cursed that tree. Boy, I felt like cursing.

Trudging up the trail was a slow and painful process. The ground was mud and the mud was thick. Then the mud turned into snow. Running on the snow made my feet slip with every step so I was burning all this energy to make very little progress. Regardless, I kept it up, breathing heavily, jogging slowly through the muck. I fought this battle long and hard until my pain finally overcame my pride and I started to walk. I felt like an out-of-shape bozo. There was around half the trail left by this point, so I made the rest of the distance through a combination of powerwalking and brief jogging. Even at the slower pace, my calves were burning and I felt a headache coming on (hello, dehydration). When I reached the Y, I just sat on a rock until I could breathe again. In the last 2.6 miles I had risen 1500 ft in elevation. Ugh. At least the view was nice.

But what goes up, must come down. Down I went. Now I was running again but it was more like a constant stumble in the downwards direction than a controlled descent. When I hit snow it was like skiing on the surface of my shoes. When I hit mud, I splashed it everywhere. In no time I was back on asphalt.

Unfortunately, I ran on the streets for about 10 minutes before I realized that I taken a wrong turn somewhere. I was supposed to be traveling back on the same path I came on, but suddenly I had all this additional uphill to run. I started to weave randomly through the streets, trying unsuccessfully to find some way down to Wymount. My five mile run was over five miles now and I had didn't know where I was. At the point when I was most discouraged, there was a break in the fence and I saw the Provo Temple right by me. Salvation! (both in this context as well as the eternal). Using the temple as a landmark, I was able to quickly get back home (doesn't this remind you of a conference talk?).

It was a painful run... but good for conditioning. As usual, I am not in as good of shape as I thought I was.

Day 13: Midnight Run

Date: February 14th 2011
Distance: 10 miles
Weather: Clear and Starry

I knew it was going to be a late one because I didn't start until 10:30pm and it was a 10 miler. I had previously planned to run to the Provo Canyon which is a straight shot north, just outside the Provo city limits. I briefly considered copping out because that's where the boogieman lives, but I figured I'd have the energy to outrun him. I knew I would need to pace myself so I started out slow.

I learned my lesson. If you run too fast, then you burn out and die. If you run too slow, it becomes an agonizing death march where the utter boredom causes you to imagine pains and magnify the slightest of discomforts. Either way, you die.

The best pace for me is to jog so my breathing is regular and I can continue running indefinitely without becoming out of breath. It took me a while to settle into that rhythm.

It was really neat to run by the mountains that late, once I got past most of the city lights. The stars just pop and the mountains are these behemoths that preside over the landscape. It's really striking.

Once I got near the mouth of the canyon, I began to feel a strong wind. It was whipping through the canyon and howling around the huge boulders that guard the entrance. My body warmth was drained in about a minute, so I started to run faster, just to keep warm. It felt like running into battle. I stopped on the steel pedestrian bridge that crosses the Provo River right as the Jimmy Eat World closer "Dizzy" cranked up. It was pretty cool: midnight, five miles away from home, dark as night, not another soul around, and I've got the river underneath me, and these steel beams above with mountains on both sides and these electric substations all around while the wind is just tearing by.

I didn't stick for long because I got cold and I had to pee (the latter, making the run back mildly uncomfortable). There was basically no traffic and the wind was at my back so I made it home without incident.

And without any run-ins with the boogieman.