For the past week I have been in the greater Salt Lake City area in gorgeous Utah. I have been on a speaking tour to promote physical fitness, what I did last year and what I hope to conquer in the future. It has been a wonderful trip and I very much hope to be visiting again soon.
As I made mention earlier in my blog, I found a few hills to run in bountiful where I have been staying. One friend who originally hails form this area told me I needed to make a run up Bountiful Boulevard. I kept trying to fit the run in but the speeches and late nights made it difficult to do so. I was not sure if I would ever get a chance to fit in the run with the big hill.
So finally, tonight I was able to get a chance to conquer this run. As you can from below, there was quite a hill to kick the whole thing off.
And since I always like to see how much elevation change affects a run I decided to do a complete out and back run. The verdict? Well it took me 1:13:23 to run 8.8 miles.
The first 4.4 with the monster hill: 41:14 or 9:20 minute mile
The second 4.4 without said hill: 32:09 or 7:18 minute mile
Quite a change for sure. Plus I got to run past one of those beautiful Mormon Temples. With the snow falling lightly and the run being in the dark it was quite a site to see indeed.
So my week in SLC is over but I can definitely see myself visiting again soon. The nearly mile high runs would do wonders for my times when I came back to run with my flatlander friends.
p.s. There was more downhill in one mile then the net downhill of the ENTIRE Steamtown Marathon.
Dave
ReplyDeleteI have to say that your blog is great. I recently started running after quitting smoking (11 years) and have been running local races in Chicago and will now be trying to get out and do more. Take a look at my blog if you want www.joeruns.blogspot.com.
Thanks again for the inspiration.
Joe