AM: 22 miles in St. George (solo). My brother is in town from Boston, so our family went to St. George for the weekend. Originally, my plan was to get my long run in on Thursday or Friday, so I wouldn't have to deal with it in St. George, but Mike planted the idea (note to self: "it's actually a no-brainer, Poulsen") to do my long run on a portion of the St. George Marathon course. I liked the idea, Jake reinforced it, and I made my plans. My plan was to get it done early to avoid the heat down here. The place we are staying is right on the course at about the 24 mile mark. So, I decided to drive 22 miles up and then run down. I woke up at 4am, and my Dad was kind enough to drive me up. I planted gatorade at what would be my mile 5 and mile 10. I started at 5am. It was surreal feeling like I was the only living thing, in complete darkness, for awhile. I wore a t-shirt, reflective vest, and headlamp for my warm-up (10 miles). Then, I dropped all that stuff, including my shirt. Then I did a 10 mile tempo. My goal was 10 miles at 5:20 average. I wasn't sure how that would go. It went better then expected. I did 10 miles in 52:34 (5:15 average). I felt extremely good. Felt like I could have kept going for miles, and I almost made the attempt, but I decided to stick to my plan and not over-do it. My only mile above 5:20 was the hill at ~ mile 18 of the marathon. Here are my splits: 5:18, 5:17, 5:15, 5:14, 5:13, 5:23 (uphill), 5:15, 5:14, 5:09, 5:10. For those of you familiar with the course, my tempo was certainly net downhill, but in addition to the big hill (at mile 18 of the marathon), there are several other brief hills, which I intentially attacked hard -- to attempt to gain good momentum for the downhills that followed. Really felt good. Was a confidence booster. I saw hardly any runners the first half of today's run, but I probably passed ~ 150 runners during my tempo. That is always fun. Today's run was aided, but I'm good with that -- it's good practice on the actual course! Plus, I did some uphill tempo a couple days ago, so I was fine with a downhill tempo today. | 