Turn your rut into a groove.

am--8.5 Went w/ the morning group around Santa Clara and along the parkway then down through Entrada. The run was a little longer than expected, but that's o.k. It was a beautiful morning, running w/ the breaking dawn. Oh, sparkly vampires.

pm--5.5 I waited until after dinner to run the Hammer/Church loop through Green Valley. The temperature was nearly perfect. I'm able to keep the pace in the low 8s, no problem.  

am--7 My neighbor and I drove up to Snow Canyon, ran up--3/4 of the way, back down, and drove home. We saw a few groups of runners. I've heard this is a pretty popular run. The uphill is difficult but makes a runner better I'm sure. 

pm--5.75 Just a nice little run to get myself used to the warmer temps, even though is was only 84 degrees. I ran my old morning route. 

pm--5.25 I just had to get out and run. After I ran last night, I went with the scouts on a mountain bike ride. It kicked my rear. So, the legs were a little fatigued today. I hit roughly 2 miles at what might be called marathon pace, or so say all the charts. My pace is 7:31/ mile. We'll see if I can hit it this weekend at Hurricane.

pm--4 easy, easy miles on the Coral Canyon trails w/ a buddy. I've been feeling beat this week, so I'm a little scared about tomorrow and the Hurricane Half. Seeing all the other runners usually helps me to get up for a race. I'm shooting to better my last half time--1:49:40. Ideally, somewhere in the 1:3X:XXs would be great. We'll see. Maybe rain in the morning. 

am--14.5 My wife, sisters-in-law, father-in-law, and I did the Hurricane Half today. I had a bad week--I felt totally beat. On top of that, I had some major stomach issues this morning. My sister-in-law and I did a little warm-up. Then I did a cool down with my wife and my father-in-law. My wife has done this course before and swore that there wasn't a lot of incline. When we've made the drive back from Zion, however, I always seem to notice the incline and question her assessment of the course. Anyway, wanted to give it my best shot and try to finish in under 1:40:00. Here are the mile times from the Garmin--I finally figured out the Auto Lap. 

1--8:06

2--7:42

3--7:47

4--7:52

5--7:56

6--7:58

7--8:09

8--7:52

9--7:18

10--7:23 This and the previous mile were on the decline off of the plateau.

11--7:52

12--8:35 This was the incline into Hurricane. My stomach and mind were really shaky here.

13--7:26 The Garmin said this was .93. The course was around 13 if that long, and from mile 2 on the mile markers were about .50 off.

Overall, I was happy. I PRed by 8 minutes--would have still been around 6 minutes on a full 13. 1, but I know that I could've run stronger on a different day and am a little disappointed that I couldn't gut out something in the 1:30:00s. Also, congratulations to my sister-in-law, Ally--she placed first in her age division--and to my wife--she PRed  by a few minutes.