AM. I ran the water tank hills with Larry and Wayne this morning. Kevin had said he would be there to charge the hills with me but he didn't show. We old guys normally start all of our runs with a few groans as we work our way through the aches and pains of getting started, but this morning I actually felt pretty good right from the get go. After the 1.25 mile warm up to get to the hills I shifted gears and started the charge up the hills. I've gradually improved my time up the hills this year from around 17:00 minutes down to 15:15 two weeks ago and 15:05 last week. My goal was sub-15:00 this morning. I worried that I had started out too aggressively. I was working pretty hard right from the start. I just tried to keep my legs turning over as I pushed up the hill. The last hill I was breathing every step, taking small steps to keep my turnover rate up, and just hanging on. I finished in 14:21! Setting PRs is great...but it raises the bar and makes it that much harder the next time. I also decided to push the last "fast mile" today. I thought I'd just open up and run a quick pace that felt good; I didn't want to push too hard and risk injury. It turns out I felt pretty good and ran it in 6:02 without feeling like I was pushing the limit. I'm feeling strong and confident. That always scares me. PM. I ran the 5.2 Lake View route at noon. The day was beautiful. I started out solo. About 1/2 mile in I was feeling pretty good, but didn't want to push it, so I decided on a medium effort run. A little over a mile into the run I heard a helicopter and looked over my shoulder to take a look. When I did I noticed a runner that I didn't recognize not too far behind me, and he seemed to be gaining on me. I don't get passed all that often on training runs, and especially not on this out of the way route that is mostly just used by runners from Novell on their lunch break. I thought I knew all the Novell runners who were capable of catching me, and he wasn't one of them. I decided to not worry about him. If he caught me, he caught me. It was about half a mile before I finally heard footsteps, but then he didn't seem to want to pass me. I finally turned around and told him he could pass me. He said he would like to but he was giving it about all he had. We ended up running the last 3 miles or so together to the turnaround point and back to Novell. His name is Ray Miller. He's a manager in Novell IS&T and was on one of their Wasatch Back Relay teams. He's been running for about 1.5 years, and started because someone in IS&T wanted him on their relay team a couple of years ago. As usual the good conversation helped the time pass. I averaged 7:39/mi for the run.
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