ben

Ran 10 at Milcreek. Went out at 35:59 and came back 4:30 min faster. 72:42 for the whole 10 mil..teeps?

5 miles at Liberty. I'm not sure my hamstrings have ever been sore before. i feel like an old man. did the 1.5 mile loop fireman at 10:23.

4 miles nice and easy..i haven't blogged here in 3 years.

Well, first day of tryouts. first of all: man it's really nice to run with people faster/as fast as you. it makes such a big big difference. Before we ran we had an hour and a half long meeting that was mainly for track and field information with everyone that's walking on or already on the team. It was pretty cool. they talked about all the nike swag they get and free laundry and stuff like that. After since all the people who are trying out can't run with the team till tomorrow we just went on an 8 mile run in the heat of the day. It was supposed to be nice and easy. guess what? it wasnt. first 6.5 miles we were averaging a 6:20 pace. ridiculous. we slowed down the rest of the way, but still averaged a 6:40/mile pace for the whole 8. there are 28 people already on the team whether scholarshipped or a preferred walkon. there are 9 people like me trying out. out of the 9 the coach said they MAYBE will take 1. not only does the 1 have to beat the other walkon guys but he has to be better than several guys already on the team, so yeah not likely. and get this. tomorrow's workout is 4x1 miles between 4:40-4:50. The coach said it's just "nice medium workout" and "hopefully that pace sounds pretty easy and comfortable"..Huh..can you say domination? cause that's what's happening tomorrow! oh well, i'm okay. it'll still be a good experience i guess. running isn't everything in life.

day 2 of tryouts. ran as a whole team from the fieldhouse to the track and probably did like 3 miles there total for warmup. split into 2 groups for the workout. after the third mile eyestone told the second group we were done for the day. unfortunately i bailed midway through the third mile. alot of the advanced guys were only doing 800;s so that's not bad, but it's still disppointing. my gut was having serious problems and i was feeling it major. eyestone said it's fine since it was 100degrees outside, but still. first mile was 4:47 and secondn was 4:57. pretty frustrating because i know i was much much faster back in early march and i haven't been able to do really any speed of consequence since then, but oh well. it's still a cool experience nonetheless. all the fast guys were doing 4:45, 4:40, 4:40 and some went 4:30 on the last. i went with on a four mile cool down with all the guys after which was cool. it's a really cool experience, but just so frustrating that i was so unlucky with my injury in march so i've just been out of it. a couple of the tryout guys are transfers from suu and were doing low 4:40's so yeah it's pretty much impossible, but cool nonetheless.

Today was supposed to be a nice easy day before we do 1000's on the grass fields across from the football stadium. all the team started off slow in the high 7:00's/mile but after we started picking it up obviously and for the 8.5 miles we averaged a 6:40/mile. what an easy day huh? it did feel okay though. running w/ a big group is so nice. all the guys are pretty chill guys. pretty suprising, but not one of the guys runs with a shirt or with shorts longer than uniform shorts. after the 8.5 i just did a couple of indoor track laps pretty slow for a recovery. Tomorrow, 1000's. I hear we do 10. we will see.

i'm not sure if this is the right miles, but it probaly is. we did warm up from fieldhouse to fields across from the football stadium. we did 1000's on the grass. because of the race at utah st. this saturday we only did 4 1000's then did 2 500's. most of the 1000's i hit a 3:20 and then the 500's i hit about 1:30's. not bad. i felt pretty good. not great but better than tuesday.

I played ultimate frisbee with some friends for an hour before running so i count that as mile.since it was labor day, there was not official practice. us tryout kids just met at the track office and ran 8.5 miles. For the run, we averaged exactly a 6:30/mile pace. again of course this was supposed to be a nice easy recovery..yeah right. for the miles 5,6,7 we were probably going in the 5:40's so we were definitely running pretty quickly. I wish i would've done more of these fast pace shorter runs in high school. they are pretty tough but it feels good at the same time.

today for practice we did mile repeats. we ran from the track office over to kiwanis fields and ran a loop there for a 2 mile warmp. did a couple of strides. we split into 2 groups for the workout. the top group coach wanted going 5min/mile, but they were a bit under that. the second group (me) were supposed to hit 5:10-5:15. Between each mile we probably had about 5 minutes recovery. i'm not exactly sure how much, but it wasn't that much at all. these were my splits: 5:09, 5:05, 5:03, 5:06. we did the mile repeats on grass at a park. we started and stopped at the same point, but the first half has some major uphill in it which added to the difficulty. overall, pretty good workout. i feel a lot better about this one than the milerepeats we did last week on the track. i bet with this effort on the hilly grass, i would've been in the 4:40's for each mile for sure. still slightly behind some of the tryout guys, but i was right with if not ahead some of the guys already on the team. coach said this is the deepest team he's ever had.

not a very good run today. yesterday evening i got stung by something and my hand is now all swollen. i can't even bend my pinkey at all. it kills to run to. i think i may have gotten an allergic reaction or something. before the run i wasn't feeling too hot, and after i felt like fainting and plopped myself in bed for like 3 hours. anytime i got up i felt awful..anyways for the run i averaged about a 7min/mile pace. considering i  jogged over to the fieldhouse and was going really slow across a bridge, i was probably low 6:50's for most the run.

2.5 mile warm up. workout today was the famous byu lakeside tempo run. 4 mile tempo run. I ran the 4 miles in 22:03 which computes to a 5:31/pace. not bad. these are probably the types of runs that i need the most for the longer cross country races. i should've done more of these in years past. I felt okay, but was hurtin by the end. my hand killed again like the dickens. i think i really need to go to the doctor. 2.5 mile cooldown.