I'm back in the saddle again!

Ran a little later this morning. It was nice to sleep in. Did a loop through windy Bluffdale. Holy cow, the way out was downhill and with the wind, the way home sucked. Windy and uphill and my allergies kicked in and I had major snot nose. Oh well, it felt so good to be out and I am looking forward to tomorrow. AP-8:33.

Met the BBK's at the Binham Track. Warmed up at an 8:26 pace for 1 mile and then started the speed. I didn't want to push to much because I haven't been running a whole lot and because of WBR this weekend but I still did (duh), oh well. We did some track intervals and then did a tempo off track. My overall pace was 7:55. I felt good. Thanks Walter for being slow with me. My fast is your slow.

I was in van #2 running leg 10. This first leg was an easy 3.6 miles but I didn't want to go all out because I was stressed about Ragnar. We met in Liberty for the first van exchange at 6:00. I saw lots of bloggers and other people. I even saw my 7th grade boyfriend:) Anyway, van 2 was a little slower this year. Nothing too exciting about this leg. 7:59 overall pace. I started faster (DUH) and slowed down the last 1.6.  When will I learn to start a little slower and then speed up?

2nd leg started around 5:00 AM. We didn't get any sleep. We tried at East Canyon Reservoir but I was kind of wired and we'd only been laying there for about 45 minutes when van 1 called to tell us they were getting close. Ughhh!!! So, we jumped up and cleaned up our stuff and headed back out. I really enjoyed this leg. I started while it was dark and it gradually got lighter. I decided to just relax and take this one easy so my overall pace was 8:50 for the 7.7 miles. Felt way good and only got passed by a couple of super speedy guys.

Well, no rest again because van 1 only took around 3 hours to complete their last legs. We had some driving around to do. One of the girls in our van was nursing her new baby so her hubby met up with us, another needed to be done earlier so we had to drop her off to get her car and then all regroup in Heber. Kind of a pain. Anyway, this was what I had been dreading for weeks. I got to the start of the 4 mile march of death and the rain had stopped. I started out at a slow jog and thought, holy crap, you have got to be kidding me!!! Around 1/4 mile, a friend of mine saw me and jumped out of his van and ran for about 1/4-1/2 with me. That helped take my mind off things. I hit the mile point in 14 1/2 minutes. Wow, I didn't realize I could be so slow. My calves were on fire but my breathing was pretty decent. The next mile was still way hard but I sped up a little. The rain started back up with a vengence! 3-4 I felt pretty good and decided to run on the straight and walk up the killer switch backs. My last mile ended up being just over 12 minutes so I ended up averaging 13:05. Wow, is all I can say!!! That was the most mentally grueling thing I have ever done! I wanted to quit so bad the first mile. My lack of running over the past couple months did not help at all. I would be curious to see how I'd do on this though, if I had trained a little better.

All in all, a great time. I was completely exhausted though. We didn't get home until 6:00 PM and I fell asleep around 8:30 and didn't budge until 9:30 on Sunday. I still don't have a lot of energy. I like van 1 better, you tend to get more sleep and longer breaks. Oh well, at least it is summer and I can relax!