Blake Bennions running

At the doctors office, resting heartbeat is below 40!!!!!! It was at 39 and then dipped to 38 for a second. Now lets shoot for 35. I think we've solved the problem, I've been trying a new asthma medication and my lung today were a ton worse than before, so I'm getting back on dulera and will use albuterol on race days. I have been trying to force good races to come and haven't been feeling it at all, hopefully this will help change it. I also need to have more fun, just wanting it a lot isn't enough.

8.3, I ran 1.5 on the treadmill and ran 6:15-6:40 pace for the run, it wasn't hard. My back hurt again today, so I will hot tub tomorrow, I really thought that was over a while ago but its ok, I just need to overkill it with hot tub and stretches all week to make sure it gone for good. I have another appointment, this one to renew my military ID that I get for being my dads son, it gets me free food at air ports and is a form health insurance identification or something for when I go on my mission, but luckily the appointment is in the morning so I won't miss practice, also I have two more appointments on Friday, one for a pass port, and another at 7:30 in the morning to follow up on for the dentist appointment today because I don't have a cavity but a tooth that is notorious for getting cavities hasn't gotten one and they want to make sure it doesn't get one while I'm on my mission so I guess its probably a good idea. So yeah, 5 appointments this week... If I have any more for rest of February I'm going to go insane. I'm just glad I won't miss practice the rest of the week.

6x400m with 200m walk jog recovery between them. It was 3200m pace so pretty easy, I ran 78 for the first and then 70-73 for the others. Felt a little better today.

We did a mile, including the track team warm up. Then everyone wanted to do a weight room thing so we did that until almost 4:00, I got in a good workout. And then we did 5.5 more while playing Smurf, the person who was it had to do a strider while the rest of us decided what Smurf was so it helped us do those too. I wanted to do more like 8-10 today, especially 10 but I stuck with the team instead. I think on Saturday I am going to do a long run somewhere cool that I haven't been for a while, or maybe somewhere new, I haven't decided. And Friday if we don't have practice I will do something like 10 miles on porter Rockwell and get kneaders afterwards with anyone from the team that wants to. Also my creative writing teacher says I'm good at writing, especially at sports stories, and I'm learning a ton in that class. I'm writing a short story about when I broke 5:00 in the mile for the first time. I think I might start a hobby of writing stories about running or something, I like writing, especially about running!

Track team warm up, everyone was gone today except for me and pulpy. We did 70 minutes, pulpy really wanted to run to Waterford and Jordan, I told him he'd regret it but he didn't believe me. We ran to Waterford and looked around there for a little and then we started running to Jordan, we got down to 400th but we were at 37 minutes so we decided to start heading back instead. We went through the neighborhoods and smaller roads because the huge roads were getting really old. It was a good run, except for as I predicted, the route we did really sucked. Its way to much running on bigger roads, not a very nice place to run.

Ouch, getting a filling thing or whatever I got was a lot different than I remember. Its swollen and still hurts, my jaw cramped up when I was was eating something, it only hurt a little at the time because I was still really numb. And my tooth is hurting quite a bit too, i cant even open my mouth all the way because of my jaw. But oh well, it will be better in a few hours, Zach, Read and I came to practice today, we did a track workout. 1x1200 at 3200m pace, 1x800m at 3200m pace, and 1x400m at 1600m pace. It was very windy today so it was pretty tough, I ran 3:50 or so for the 1200, pretty slow. Then I ran 2:29 for the 800m, better, and then 65 for the 400m which was good. My mouth is hurting though, I feel kind of weird/tired too, maybe they did something wrong at the dentist, maybe next time I won't have them play a movie during the procedure haha.

12 miles in the gully, the run took me a less than an hour and a half so the pace was under 7:30, that's good. I ran the lower loop backwards to start off, then I did the longer run with 4 extra loops at the park, then I did the Gully's secret bonus level of pain. Then when I did some more around the parking lots when I finished to get to 12, I also stopped at Smiths and grabbed a powerade when I was done, it was a great way to finish off the run. I was considering doing a time trial, but then I remembered the words of Murphy not to force races, so I did a great long run. It felt perfect for today! I had a really good time and I'm feeling great! I'm going to relax the rest of the weekend, next week is going to be fun! Also congratulations to Conner Mantz on winning the USA Junior Cross Country Championships today, and by 25 seconds!

Really nice run today, perfect weather, I felt great. I ran with Davis, Zach, and Ashton for 80 minutes on the Wasatch dimpledell loop, I did some extra. Practice tomorrow will be fun, I think I'm starting to feel it again.

I woke up at 4:30 because my tooth is hurting a lot, I know they screwed up, I decided to look it up and I'm fairly certain they caused an overhang by doing a crappy job with the filling, some of the filling is actually outside the tooth. That's one reason I'm pretty sure its an overhang, another reason is that my gum is what's hurting, overhang is supposed to cause gum inflammation and make the gum ache, and last, its only gotten worse since Saturday.my jaw that cramped up is ok now, this sucks. So I'm going to try and make them see me first thing this morning so I dont miss school and I don't have to deal with it anymore, because apparently this thing can get pretty serious.

My dentist is away for the week so looks like I will just have to get through it until then. The pain comes and goes, it doesn't hurt as much as it did this morning now but its getting there again, and when I called they said to get some Motrin, so I guess I will do that. We did an easy 4 miles and then did weight room. I did my 3 sets of the 3 workouts I do there, I'm getting better at them, I went up a weight setting in two and increased my reps in the other.

I'm pretty frustrated with lots of stuff. Oh and at practice, Hefner and that new coach decided we only needed lane 8 for our flying forties, which we usually use 3-4 lanes for. Then I did 1.5 to cooldown by myself. I'm kind of tired but I think I'm going to go do some more in the gully to give myself time to think about stuff and relax a little, and get ready for another day. Just 2.5 more in the gully, would've done more but there was construction and the path I wanted to run was blocked off for construction...in the gully... I need to decide whether or not to race by practice tomorrow

9 miles in the gully. It was a pretty good run. I guess I'm not racing tomorrow, maybe I will do a time trial on my own sometime over the weekend.

Ran to the gully and did hill sprints, then ran back to Alta. I did an extra lap on my own to get past 4 for the day. Only 3 months of high school left. Kind of glad I didn't go to the meet today. I want to pull off a big success but not much opportunity for that at the moment. I guess patience is the key thing right now. I will have to figure out what to do tomorrow, probably a big, easy mileage day. Maybe a max effort 400 or 800m just for fun.

Did a 10k, eventually I just started jogging. Wasn't feeling like racing a 10k today and I was pretty sore before the race. It was kind of fun though. Change of plans for this week, I'm going to Simplot! I need to get ready for it, and if I have a good race then hopefully I will make finals!

9.5 in the gully on my own. Then I went to Wasatch and picked up the best thing I could get for racing on Thursday. I also played racquetball later, its good for acceleration haha, my jaw is hurting but I got my teeth fixed today so I should be feeling good soon. No more dentist appointments for 2 years! And the construction in the gully has worked its way to the trail we run on, but they left a gap for us so its ok.

Josh Collins is in my qualifying heat! Scary, and there are 3 other guys with times of 4:21-4:23. After that I should be able to beat everyone. The next fastest is Chris rushing, then me, and Chris and I are pretty even in the mile so its nice to have him in my heat! There are to guys who've run just under 4:30 from Oregon and California but they're from Oregon and California so... Yeah. Then there a few other guys who've run sub 4:35 but and the bottom half of the heat is mostly upper 4:30s or low 4:40s. So good competition, but also a few incredibly fast guys. My plan is to get into about 7th place and wait until the sea level kids die off, and then try to catch Mark Summers. He's run 4:22 and has signed with USU, I beat him at USU but I bet he's in better shape now. I will need to race very well in order to finish in the top 5 of my heat. I'm excited but I need to catch fire.

7 slow miles with the team. I was going to do some more but it gets really old when everyone else does the bare minimum for the workout given...or less. I just need to be strong and do what I know is right for me. Tomorrow is pre-meet, I'm gonna kill it at Simplot!!!

I ran down to Nam and looked around there for a while, I came back to Alta after I had run a bit over 30 minutes and then did 4 striders. I felt pretty good. Tomorrow will be fun, East is an awesome team and Simplot is the biggest meet I've competed at! I really want to qualify for finals!

I had a very rough race. It was the first time I've ever taken last. All you can really do is keep going. I dont know where its all gone, but I need to forge something new in order to make it onto USU. I can't really do any worse than I did today, I can't suck worse or sink lower so I guess the only way is up!

I guess its going to be a low mileage week.

I meant to do 10-12. I ran with Zach and I had a really hard time just doing an easy long run. Zach's stomach was hurting so we had to turn back at 4. We also turned on the road coming back so it was a little shorter than 4 coming back. I was going to go do more on my own but its just not in me. I could do it, but I don't think I should. Maybe I will do another run later tonight to get to 40. The rest of the day I guess I will just try to relax and get my mind off of Thursday. I dont know how long its going to take to get back.

Still shooting for 4:18. But I need to take steps. We don't have a meet until march 21st so I have some time to get ready. A nice break from racing, and now we are beginning to start doing track workouts, I'm going get a huge amount faster in the next 4 weeks. And I'm going to work hard to make sure I get where I want to be. I'd like to do a time trial before the first invitational, I haven't been racing like I used to and I want to run a 1600m where I dont have to worry about positioning to get back on my feet, not for a while though. Right now I'm just excited to start working on my speed again! We did 8x200m at 1600m goal pace. So I ran 32s and 33s to average out at 4:18. I accidentally ran a 30 because people in the way and I was a little annoyed. And I ran a 31 for the last one, so a little fast. But the others were good. I walked until we regrouped after the 200s and then we jogged the rest of the recovery. I think I'm good to go again after Thursday, its not the end of the world, you've got to fail hard to succeed, I'm going to be ok and will achieve my goals as long as I work hard and trust in the workouts Murphy gives me.

7 miles with 6 striders and core. Feeling sick, but hopefully I will have a good time with the track workout tomorrow.

Well when I heard we were going to do a hard mile today I started feeling even more sick, I really didn't want to do a time trial thing for a while, I felt like throwing up by the time we got done with the 20 minute warm up. I started the 1600m and took it out at a fairly easy 74 second pace, I was just going to do a little under five minutes but my body just wasnt working like its supposed to, it felt like I wasn't getting enough blood places even though the pace felt easy. My calves started cramping up after the first lap and by the 600m mark I knew I would have to quit or else they'd explode. I've been cramping up really easy lately too, I dont know what's wrong with my body but I hope it will pass.

I ran to the library and back a little while after I got home. I didn't run at all to cool down at school because I didn't want my calves to cramp up so I just walked about a mile. But I wanted to make sure my muscles didn't get tight so I did a little more at home. My feet feel really screwed up too, not sure whats going on, I guess it doesn't really matter.

10 miles and 4 striders. I ran faster the last 5 miles, probably mid to low 6 minute pace. So an ok run, didn't really plan on running faster, I just started, it felt good though.

Ran in the gully today, I felt worse than yesterday. I almost threw up a couple of times. Lots of horses and people with dogs. I also came across a battle/gathering of pioneers vs revolutionary war militia (I think?), ninjas, a ninja turtle (with a sword and sheild), hobbits, and what appeared to be a Jedi creeping through down a hill to join them. Lots of construction today as well. I wanted to do 12 and get 50 for the week but I wasn't feeling it, didn't want to make mt health worse than it is. I'm going to do core and some exercises to help my kick.