Jake Brown

I ran the same route Cam had run earlier that day. Went down to the asphalt trail by Arctic Circle and ran down that to that "car wash and dog wash" place. I didn't feel all that well. I started some bad eating and sleeping habits over the winter break and it was coming back to bite me... Hard. I literally averaged an 8 or 9 minute pace.

Back to skool, and so back to normal afternoon practice. We ran the 6 mile Foremaster loop, and Even though I caught up to them twice, I just couldn't stay up with the guys. I hadn't run over 4 miles straight since before we went down to Nike Southwest a month and a half ago. I did all right, but I could have been a bit faster if I'd taken better care of my body over the break.

I wanted to try this run by the hospital because I'd never done this loop before. Unfortunately, even though I felt great and was leading the group, I died off as we went up Foremaster by the hospital. I wasn't physically or mentally prepared to take that on.

Still not back in the groove, but I ran pretty well. Went down 2450, but turned into a neighborhood that led me over to the industrial park area south of Costco. Ran down that main road, that changes to Riverside Drive, for a little and turned back. Cam was off running with the Freshman Five guys.

I felt good on the mile repeats. I was able to hit below my 85% time by a good margin on the first one. On the second one I almost forgot we were supposed to go faster, and was settled in to hit right on the 85% pace. I realized my mistake within the first 200 and tried to speed up to where I needed to be. I beat my first mile by 1 second.

I want to thank Matt for believing in me and encouraging me on for a mile and a half past where I probably would have stopped or slowed down. I like running with Matt because he can really show me what my physical limits might actually be, even when I'm as out of shape as I felt on this run. I felt great on the first half of the run, when I was leading with Matt, Dave and Mitch, and when it was mostly downhill and I wasn't thinking about that pizza I had for lunch... but when we had to turn and go back up what we just ran down... That's why I'm thanking Matt for getting me to push forward.

I'd say I hit my time pretty well on the twelve minute tempo we ran, but my watch kept jumping around with the mile pace. Of course, judging on the different times I saw, I averaged about a 6:40 like I needed. After we finished the tempo, and had to even out our mileage at 6, I became an idiot and miscalculated how far I, and the guys with me, still had to run. So we decided to get in our 6th mile on the track when we got back to the high school.

I felt AMAZING on this workout. It was Breyer than I'd felt on a run in several days... Maybe even weeks. On our DI loop warm up I was feeling top notch, and during the Kosmin test I was able to PR on my distance. And when we cooled down on DI reverse I couldn't help running in the front of the pack.