Trying to improve my running

ran up beacon hill today. I had decided I was going to make my august goal to get 20000 vertical feet in august so i started with this hill. after today I decided that is going to be to ambitious. It is too hot here in August. I am just going to go running everyday and see what I can accomplish. Vertical feet will also be hard to get if i am not able to do very many trails and most of the trails are washed out from the monsoons and the snakes are also a bit of a problem. hopefully i can still get 100 miles this month.

ran the loop through the park today. Parts of the trail are pretty washed out. No snakes though. I will have to try and to this trail at least 1x per week to keep the trails as part of my training.

My foot was hurting after thursday's run so I took friday off. I decided I need to do roads for a little bit because the pain is in the ball of my right foot and I think it is from stepping on rockon the trails and I need to let it recover. I did 8 miles today it was a nice hot run even though I started before 7 am. It was 80 when I started and closer to 90 then 80 when I finished. I was hoping to do closer to 10 miles but between the heat and my bleeding nipples I decided I should cut it a bit short. my average pace was 8:40/mile the last 4 where down hill and had an average pace of 8:15/mile the first 4 miles had all the elevation gain and were closer to 9:00/mile.

This run felt super good this morning. I did a mostly flat and paved route and was able to have an AP: 7:56/mile. My calfs were pretty sore afterwards I think that was close to my limit at least in this heat, it was only in the 80's but  muggy. Splits: 7:46, 8:03, 7:51, 8:06, and 7:51.  I will take it a little slower tomorrow.

just ran the local trail this morning. The watch ran out of batteries so I had to guess on the miles a bit.

Didn't have too much time so i decided to go out for a quick 5k. I was trying to push this to see how fast I could do a 5k. this is the best time I have ran 1 in since I was 20 years old. time was 23:01. AP 7:24/mile. I am pretty impressed with that since a year ago I would have not been able to do a 1.5 mile run in 8 min/mile (for the AF PT test). hopefully I can do as well with another year of training and get down under 7 min/mile.

wanted to go for 10k today but I started to late and had to turn around a bit early to get my daughter to school. I was pretty happy with the time though. i think i am going to start working some interval training and see if that can get me faster at least until it cools off and I can get back out on trails more regularly.

Splits:

Split	Time	Moving Time	Distance	Elevation Gain	Elevation Loss	Avg Pace	Avg Moving Pace	Best Pace	Avg HR	Max HR	Calories
Summary	41:55.6	41:49.0	5.18	178	163	8:06	8:04	1:27	154	164	692
1	8:05.7	8:03	1.00	14	12	8:06	8:03	1:27	137	153	119
2	8:15.8	8:16	1.00	76	0	8:16	8:16	7:20	156	161	139
3	8:13.0	8:08	1.00	78	22	8:13	8:08	6:37	159	163	141
4	7:48.9	7:49	1.00	0	99	7:49	7:49	6:52	157	159	130
5	8:07.3	8:07	1.00	10	29	8:07	8:07	7:30	160	164	140
6	1:25.0	1:26	0.18	0	0	7:56	8:01	7:04	162	163	23

Ran around the block at work. this kind of feels like a second run on Friday since I haven't really been to bed. but it was Saturday morning so i will log it there. I ran up the parking garage and around the block until I got paged and had to come back.. AP: 8:30/mile. I am skeptical about the first mile though i don't get good reception in the parking garage.

ran the local trail again. it was nice I can't wait for it to cool down a little bit here so I feel comfortable back out on the trails. The ball of my foot hurt today. I am not sure why that is maybe I need to let it recover some more. It only really hurts wehn I run trails. It might be the shoes. I may try running the trail in a different pair. Anyone have any thoughts?

Ran this in my instincts same route as yesterday. It did feel a little better on the ball of my foot. I think I am going to lay off trails though for a while. The ball of my foot and my plantar fascia was pretty sore all day after this run.

I was debating last night about not running today because of the pain. I decided to go out and just do slow miles on the road. I decided after the 10k at Burley that I will change my time for a fast mile to 8 min/mile. I started out good at a slow pace and things loosened up really nicely. I felt really good. This made it so I pushed it a little too hard at the end, I wanted to keep my Hr at less than 150 bpm. It got up close to 160 by the end. I do feel good though. No heel pain all day and only some mild muscle soreness on the left (side of plantar fascia iritation). Here are my splits:

Split	Time	Moving Time	Distance	Elevation Gain	Elevation Loss	Avg Pace	Avg Moving Pace	Best Pace	Avg HR	Max HR	Calories
Summary	43:30.9	43:11.0	5.21	116	117	8:21	8:17	7:02	151	164	692
1	8:53.1	8:52	1.00	30	13	8:53	8:52	7:24	138	152	119
2	8:09.2	8:07	1.00	20	19	8:09	8:07	7:17	149	154	132
3	8:12.8	8:07	1.00	36	14	8:13	8:07	7:02	156	158	137
4	8:13.2	8:07	1.00	19	53	8:13	8:07	7:31	155	160	135
5	8:17.5	8:14	1.00	12	17	8:18	8:14	7:42	158	164	139
6	1:45.1	1:44	0.21	0	0	8:20	8:15	7:35	158	161	30

Slow run today for 4 miles did some of it on a gravel road. felt pretty good.

Ran up wade rd today had a decent hill for Tucson on asphalt. I did it nice and slow to try and continue to give my plantar fascia time to recover. AP: 8:34 one downhill mile got up to 8:08. The first 3 miles my HR stayed at 150 or less than it crept up because of the steep hill and stayed around 160 for the rest of the run.

First attempt at real sprint intervals. I have done 0.5 or 1 mile at a tempo pace in the past but I was trying to do these at sprint pace. I don't have a track anywhere near my house so I did these on a pretty flat road right by my house. My pace for the 3 0.25 mile sprints was 6:02, 6:13 and 6:19. I would like to get that down closer to a 5 min/mile pace. Here are my splits:

Split	Time	Moving Time	Distance	Elevation Gain	Elevation Loss	Avg Pace	Avg Moving Pace	Best Pace	Avg HR	Max HR	Calories
Summary	22:48.9	22:30.0	2.82	8	16	8:06	7:59	1:36	147	172	346
1	7:33.2	7:30	0.96	8	16	7:53	7:49	4:18	138	157	108
2	1:40.5	1:39	0.28	0	0	6:02	5:57	4:45	151	166	25
3	2:35.1	2:31	0.28	0	0	9:06	8:52	8:11	139	165	34
4	1:34.2	1:31	0.25	0	0	6:13	6:00	4:50	154	168	24
5	2:13.5	2:11	0.23	0	0	9:48	9:37	8:20	152	163	37
6	1:35.1	1:30	0.25	0	0	6:19	5:59	5:11	161	172	26
7	5:37.3	5:38	0.57	0	0	9:55	9:56	7:50	155	172	92

wanted to get in a longer run today. I started out slow but was able to keep a pretty steady pace the whole run. I was at first trying to focus on keeping my HR down but it crept up with the hills in the first part of the run and then didn't want to go back down to less than 150. AP:  8:27/mile

Ran the local loop. It was really nice mud on the trail from the rain and beautiful clouds (will try and post a pic) I was kind of sucking wind though. I think some of that might have to do with donating blood on Saturday. Anyone know how long it takes to get back to normal after that? I would think 2-3 weeks.  My AP was 11:02/mile that felt really slow.

Just wanted to get in 4 more miles today. My plantar fascia had been bugging me a lot this week I think it was a combo of being on my feet a lot more at work with the running. I really don't want to stop running alltogether I just thought if I did more roads this week and less trails it would hopefully get better. I am pleased to report it does feel a little better now. I am going to try to do Wasson peak tomorrow if I can get to it I have wanted to do it all month but haven't been able to. I guess I will see how it feels after that.

Wanted to run up wasson peak but the road was closed so I decided to run up the road and see what the problem was or was a little washed out in spots but I think it is passable. Nice run despite the heat.

Ran over the saddle by sombrero peak. That trail is terrible. I don't know if I would ever be able to run the whole thing just because of the loose rocks it is worse since the monsoons as well. It is a beautiful area though.

Nice run this morning. My new neighbor is a runner and we went together. We were pretty equal. It is nice to have someone to run with. I would have liked to push it a little bit more. Next time. AP: 8:29/mile. I think I was slower because of the plantar fasciitis. I. Not sure what to do about it. It only hurts for the first 0.5 miles.

Did 3 miles slow. the watch died halfway through the run. So not sure on the time. I decided to take it nice and slow to let my plantar fascia to recover some.

Ran the loop around the park. I only did the uphill one way this time because I took my neighbor for the first time. It felt good the trail was nice. Not very much plantar fascia pain.

This month didn't get quite as much accomplished as I wanted too. The road to Wasson peak was closed so I wasn't able to get there to run up that at all. also with plantar fascia and foot pain didn't  get quite as many miles as I hoped to. I think the heat isn't helping a ton either. It will be nice when it starts to cool down some. I am going to go hard this next month to get ready for the half in November. plus I am at the VA this month so I should be able to get some longer runs in during the week.