C Mantz Run

None of the coaches were at practice, although moratorium was last week. We waited almost 10 minutes, then decided to do cedaridge backwards. The whole time Arianna, Clara, and I stuck together which makes me way pumped for this season. We probably were running an 8 minute average pace. We caught a pack of boys the last 1.5 and passed them. The three of us sped up towards the end, which felt really good. At the stop-sign, we turned around, but only got out about 200m before turning back around to sv. Way fun practice.

Really pumped about today. Didn't notice any pain in my foot which was wonderful! Warmed up a mile trying to get my watch to link, but it never did. Grabbed my stopwatch, and then did the good ol' 3 mile tempo on hillside. It was really good. My mile splits werer 6:15, 6:25, 6:19 which added up to 19:00.55. My first mile was faster than anticipated, but it felt comfortable. The second mile, I really focused on keeping my stride, but was 10 seconds slow at the half mile. Coming down the hill, I pushed it more. The last mile was decent. A quarter mile into it, I did slow down a bit, which is where I need to work on pushing it. Coming up the slight hill, my thighs were burning a bit. Really pushed it the last half and quarter mile. Sadly, I didn't break 19, but this was the fastest I'd done all summer. If it hadn't hurt, I would have ran another mile or two. Next time. Cooled down a mile.

In the evening, I ran 3 miles with Ruby at about 8 minute average pace. It had cooled down, but was still a warm summer night. When I got home, I got a text to run the USU course. Drove to it, and the guys were already almost done. Ran the last half mile with them. Then, we ran on campus to the graveyard and walked around for a while, which is totally normal, lol. Ran back getting me to 2.77, but I was too tired to run another quarter mile. It was way fun running that late at night.

At practice we went up dry canoyon. Our goal was to make it to the water tank. That uphill gets to you. It seemed to never end, but my mindset was once we got up, we had all downhill. Arianna and Clara were pushing it, which was awesome. Clara dropped, but kept going. Arianna was struggling, so we slowed down. We went up another .15 from the water tank to get to 2.5 which got us to 5 miles. Because it was all downhill, our pace dropped down to an 8:15. Super fun going up that canyon. Core after was hard and short which was nice.

Around 3, I did a nice 4 mile heat run. While my watch loaded, I did a quarter of a mile to round out from yesterday. Then, I went up birch. Sadly, that canyon doesn't have a ton of shade. I pushed it up trying to keep my pace under 8, but the last mile, it went up to an 8:30. Took a break at the second gate, then came back down. Dropped my pace to an 8:02 average. It's really fun running up birch.

I was way tired from work, so I slept in and didn't start running til 10:30. I just took the course that Amber and I ran last Saturday, but backwards. My pace was pretty great on the dirt road up birch, then I hit the trail. It's pretty uphill but so much fun. Went to the same river crossing. Coming down was really nice. I hit a lot of steep downhills fast which is daring for me, lol. Normally, I don't go downhill so fast, but I was able to keep my momentum pretty well. I took a wrong turn at a fork, but cut through to the main trail when I started going up the mountain, haha. When I passed the second gate on my way down, I turned onto the trail. There wasn't much shade as it got later in the day. Crossed the fields on a little road and made it back. It had gotten pretty hot. Ice-cold cache valley water tasted amazing after today's run. 9:44 average pace due to the hills and trails. I love running up birch, and it has helped me discover how much fun trail running really is.

We did sunnyside at practice. Me, Arianna, and Clara started together, again. We weren't too far behind the lead pack of boys. When we went down the hill, Clara shot ahead catching the lead boys. We started going up the canyon, and I tried to catch them, too. Dropping Arianna and Ryan who was also with us. They turned around at 3 miles up, so I did too.  The pack sped up, and I knew I wouldn't catch them. Knowing that Arianna wasn't too far behind me, I stopped and went with both her and Ryan. We chatted the rest of the way down, which was fun. We slowed way down the last mile, but still averaged a 7:40 pace. Because we turned around earlier, we weren't at 6 miles, so we ran around the parking lot until the mileage rounded to 6.

Early in the morning, I met up with Amber at sv. Unbeknown to her, the track was being resurfaced. We still weren't allowed on, so we warmed up to Mack Park. We did 6 400s at racepace (or whatever pace we could hit them) with a 200 recovery.  It was more of a fun workout. The sprinklers were on on the north end of the park, so we avoided them, messing around with the course. They averaged from 1:30 to 1:42. The faster ones were on the correct part of the course, while the slower ones consisted of more obstacles (including sprinklers, haha). After, we took advantage of the downhill 200 and did 3 200s with a 200 recovery. They were 34, 35, 38. The last one we had to avoid a truck and an old couple crossing the bridge. It was a really fun workout and nice to try something fast. On our way back, we extended our cool down on the lower canal behind sunrise, on the course, and to the tree of life. We got in 6 miles which was way nice.

A little later in the morning, Brayden and I went up Birch. He was in town, and nobody else was, so it was just the two of us. It was way fun. We got past the 3rd gate, and there were a ton of people up there. Sometimes, I never see a person. Today, the canyon was filled. It was way fun crossing the rivers. On our way back, we took a left on the trail that leads to crossing the fields which was fun. We averaged a 9:00 pace for 7 miles, which was good for a trail run.