I am running the Great River Relay on August 20-21 to help raise money for Drinking Water in Africa. Water shouldn't be a source of pain. Please hop over to my fundraising page and provide a cup of cold, refreshing water to a child in Kenya.
Today marks the first day back to work with kids at school. As school begins, that means that summer is pretty much over. It has gone by fairly fast. August was a great month though of relaxing and transitioning back to work. We took an extended vacation, celebrating our anniversary in Rhode Island, seeing family and having baby showers!! It was a great month! It also meant that the big race of 2010 – the Ragnar Relay is over!! That was quite an accomplishment, especially given the amount of training I’d done. Ragnar was great motivation to keep trying to run and August was my highest month of mileage since last September!! A total of 42 running miles!
It feels sad that 42 miles is my highest month, but I’m glad to be running virtually pain free. August was about 50% lower biking mileage than July, but we were travelling for almost half the month and since I wasn’t bike commuting that really cut down on my mileage. The same with swimming. Though the group is getting going again until the water get too cold.
Here is a look at the goals I set at the beginning of the year:
Run Around All Named Bodies of Water in Minneapolis
Being gone didn’t add any new lakes. My Ragnar group run was at Lake Calhoun so I did it again, though most of my running has been from home still.
Read the Entire Bible in a Year
I got really far behind, my bag for Rhode Island didn’t have room for my Bible, the whole paying to check luggage thing made us pack very carefully. But I was able to finish up, using the “extra” days that are built into the schedule.
Read a Book a Month
I finally finished In A Sunburned Country and wouldn’t recommend it. I didn’t look forward to picking it up, but vacation was a great time to finish it off. It is more or less a travel diary with random factoids that may or may not be interesting. At the Cleveland Airport I picked up John Grisham’s The Associate and had it finished by the end of the week. I find Grisham very captivating and easy to read. I also started The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips and Advice for Dads-to-Beso I can find out how to be the best father ever, or something… Blog Regularly
I continue to do well here and on my Project 365 blog. My personal blog has fallen way behind and I’m not please with my hyperlocal blog. Such is life though.
There is still time visit my fundraising page for Team World Vision providing clean water to a village in Kenya.
This will be the first in at least two posts about Ragnar.
The basics of a relay race is that you split up the 193 mile race into more doable segments. Ragnar’s Great River Relay is broken into 36 legs which get split up between 12 runners (or 6 in the Ultra division). The average runner ran 16 miles over 3 runs. I personally ran 13 miles. At least one person ran in the 20′s. Several people in my van were in marathon training and this is good timing for “long runs.” The 12 runners are split into 2 vans of who leap frog each other throughout the overnight relay.
I was in Van 1 which was “on” first. I was runner number 3 which meant I ran leg 3, 15, and 27.
Leg 3 was fairly flat and on wide-open road. I ran on the shoulder as much as possible. The route took a turn off WI-35 (which the runners saw, but many vans missed) onto a country road in corn fields! I had seen a bank sign that said 85 degrees and there was no doubt that the humidity was quite high, but it was very cloudy. This leg had non-supported sections, which meant that in places my van could give me water. I misunderstood the wording of the Race Bible -- legs that were “non-supported” would have water stops if they were over 4 miles. I assumed I’d have a water stop, so I was disappointed after the half-way mark when there weren’t any. With about 1.5 miles to go my van caught up to me (they missed the turn) and gave me some water! I finished the 5.3 miles in 46:56 or 8:52 pace.
The great thing about Ragnar is that you run through the night! Any runner on the road after 7:30pm had to have a reflective vest, a head light, and a tail light on. Any member of the team outside the van after 7:30pm had to wear a reflective vest. After relaxing at Major Exchange 12 in Stockholm, WI our van took back over for our night leg. I didn’t end up running until after 11pm. I woke up at 5am on Friday to finish getting ready and to pick up the van, etc. I was surprised that I didn’t feel too bad -- though there was lots of adrenaline. It was in the mid 70′s and still quite humid, though there was no sun since it was dark!
All geared up I ran Leg 15′s 5.22 miles in 45 minutes for an 8:38 pace. This route ended up being hillier than I had expected it to be. I knew there was one hill towards the beginning, but it seemed like there were more noticeable hills. I could have also just been getting tired! Running in the dark was quite interesting. You couldn’t see very far ahead, behind, or around you and all you could see in the distance was little red flashing lights of runners and Ragnar signs. I did have a water stop this time! The dark also made it quite hard for vans to figure out if you were their runner or not, but mine did find me and cheer me on. As I got closer to the exchange area, I started to see lots of headlights and a glow so I knew I was getting close. On each leg Ragnar posts a sign that says “One Mile to Go” but on this particular leg it seemed to take forever for that last mile. I got 8 “road kills” on this section. In Ragnar language a road kill is a person that you pass from another team. I only got passed by one guy. For whatever reason, the headlamp I was wearing gave the weird sensation of wearing sunglasses. It was something to do with how the light was shaped. It was fun running in the dark!
We were able to shower and eat spaghetti sauce (they ran out of noodles) at Prescott High School (Major Exchange 18) before driving through some very dense fog to get to Stillwater, MN. It was 2 or 3am and I was driving. It was a little nerve racking because there were runners and lots of vans on the road, though fortunately, not many other cars. We decided to stop in Hudson for breakfast at Denny’s. I’m pretty sure I was the only person awake in the van (don’t tell Ragnar that my Safety Officer fell asleep!) After Denny’s we drove to Major Exchange 24 in Stillwater, just North of the Liftbridge. I had to sleep in the driver’s seat of the van and maybe got 30 minutes of real sleep. We had miscalculated our timing and I started waking up the van around 5:45 to get ready. After 6:30am runners and support people were no longer required to be illuminated.
My last leg was 27. Now in Minnesota we switched to more suburban areas for most of the run. Just an FYI that this exchange didn’t have port-a-potties, good thing I didn’t need one. This leg started out on the road and went under I-94 before running on a paved trail next to the roads. This felt like a long steady uphill, but I’m sure my legs were completely exhausted at this point. I’m not sure of the temperature, but it was very overcast and very humid. The fog actually almost felt like a mist at points. I got at least 8 more road kills on this leg. Some guy passed me, which made me mad, then I realized he wasn’t wearing the Ragnar Wrist Band (the baton) so I didn’t feel quite as bad! I got a couple of road kills at the very end and set Mike up to get a few himself! I did the 3.38 miles in 27:15 or 8:04 pace. (Note: each leg was faster than the last!) It felt really good to be done. We didn’t have a lot of time to sit around though, because most of these legs were fairly short. So I stretched a little and off we went.
You can kind of see an exchange in this video. This is me running into my final exchange handing off to Mike:
After my final leg I was triumphant, as seen in this short video:
After arriving at Major Exchange 30 at Lifetime in Woodbury our team started to break apart. Our van was done with running and a few people needed to head out so we sorted out the van, drove some people to their cars, and ended up with only 2 of us waiting around at the Boom Island finish area. We got massages, ate some pizza, and tried to relax. My body was so worn out that it didn’t like the idea of laying down on the grass. Several hours later I got the call -- we are dropping off the last runner. A 3rd teammate rejoined us and 7 of us waited anxiously for the final runner to come down the trail. We joined her about 100 yards from the finish and ran triumphantly across the finish line!! We had done it!
Team Hodge Podge finished 169th out of 286 teams for a total time of 29:46:15 which is an average 9:19 pace! Well done ! (full results)
What a fun experience!! I’m going to be posting more about Ragnar as time permits, but it was an experience of a lifetime! I’m definitely sore and tired but it was a great adventure. We finished in just under 30 hours for the 193 mile journey!
I ran 3 legs. At 12:03pm on Friday I ran 5.3 miles in about 47 minutes. Mostly flat, but lots of humidity and near 85. At 11:19pm I ran 5.25 miles in 45 minutes on a dark and hillier road, still humid but cooler. And at 8:08am I ran almost 3.4 miles in 28 minutes on a trail next to the road on an overcast and humid morning.
Those three runs plus an easy 3 miler in Ohio earlier in the week equaled my highest mileage week of the fall for 17 miles of running!!
Like I said, it was a lot of fun and I’ll do a longer post later! I’m still tired and catching up on sleep and eating!! Plus I go back to work this week part-time and then full-time next week.
Steadily running! I got 3 runs in this week for almost 10 miles! This was my first week of not working in between my summer job and the school year starting back up. I return to work on the 23rd. It is amazing how undisciplined I can become when there isn’t a time line or schedule to follow!
I got a half-mile swim in on Tuesday at the YWCA. All of my open-water friends were out of town. Without having to commute I didn’t really rack up that many bike miles either. For my 2 evening meetings I was able to use Christy’s car. We bought an older Burley off Craigslist which takes us one step closer to being able to function with only one car!! Actually my VW has become a place to store all of my bike gear and accessories on. I was able to put all the canning supplies I bought at the Seward Coop into the Burley and bring them home to can 25 lbs of peaches!! It was a lot of hot but fun work to can them!
On Friday I finally got to meet the Ragnar team that I’m leading and running with in a few short weeks. We went for an easy run around Lake Calhoun before enjoying an excellent dinner at Punch Pizza!
Saturday morning I picked up my friend Tim who is slowly becoming a runner! We ran together last weekend while camping too. We ran Pike Island on a muggy morning with sprinkles at the end! We saw 3 deer and at least 4 turkeys on the island. Last week I introduced him to trail running and this week expanded that horizon. With 3 kids he isn’t able to travel to run much, but we have so many great places around.
Sunday morning a friend invited me to ride 20 miles with him at 6am. I balked and we rode at 6:30, I invited another friend and the 3 of us had a great ride that totaled 25 miles for me. It was in the mid 70′s with 90% humidity but it didn’t feel too bad on the bike. It was nice to have them push and pull me along for a relatively fast pace. It was a great way to start an otherwise HOT & HUMID day. This was art fair weekend and we are looking for some to finish decorating our house. We decided to hit up the Powderhorn Art Fair because the 111 heat index didn’t make going to Uptown sound exciting. We sweated a ton in the short time we where out. We didn’t buy any art but check out this guy, he prints some of his pictures on metal!
Run to Win posted a video which tried to figure out if cyclists or runners were tougher.
Running Times posted 10 Tips for Distance Relay events, which I hope will make the upcoming Ragnar a success!
I was sent a link to the Top 50 Twitter Feeds for Runners. Another place to go to find tweeting runners is Tim Wilson’s post from the fall of 2008. It now has 154 people listed. One last place to find tweeting runners is my Twitter List which has 243 people on it. That’s a lot of people!! There are some duplicates and maybe even some triplicates. WHY TWITTER?
Where has July gone? The month was crazy busy, fun, and now over. All month I was involved in a summer program which had me planning for a variety of classes and age levels. Those two facts made me stretch mentally and tested my patience! The last week alone I taught “Wacky Chemistry” to 4th-7th graders and “Photography for Kids” to 1st-4th graders. What a stretch.
I’ve finally been able to run with some consistency. This last week I ran a whopping 10 miles over 3 runs. Slowly but surely. It is feeling good, especially the 4 miler I did at Wild River State Park over the weekend. At the same park I swam across the St Croix River to Wisconsin and back which was a pretty tough swim, which I’m estimating at 400 meters. My knee pain continues to lessen and was virtually non-existent during the trail run.
This week’s ONE POST is about Fartleking Fun!! Fartlek’s are the funnest way to incorporate speedwork into your training!
Only 3 weeks until Ragnar!!
Here is a look at the goals I set at the beginning of the year.
Run Around All Named Bodies of Water in Minneapolis
Most of my running has been on the Greenway.
Read the Entire Bible in a Year
Continue to do well on this, though I use the extra few days at the end of the month to catch up. It is odd but it seems easier to remember to read it on the weekdays than the weekends when my schedule isn’t as ordered. I have finished reading Psalms which took 7 months to read!
Read a Book a Month
Even with a somewhat consistent reading time I didn’t get a book finished. During our summer program we spent 20 minutes each day reading, this often was a great time for my co-leader and I to finish prepping for the day or do some administrative stuff so I didn’t always get to read, plus I often forgot In A Sunburned Country at home or at school and so didn’t always have it to read. Plus it is a little long and not that exciting. I’m over 1/2 way so hopefully I’ll finish it and another in August!
Blog Regularly
I’ve done fairly well on here, missing a few times. Sadly I had the first day I missed taking a picture for my Project 365 blog. I just didn’t take a picture at all. While I sometimes miss getting the picture posted on the right day, one day I just completely forgot to take a picture!
Please take a minute and visit my fundraising page for Team World Vision and my Ragnar Relay.
That is the my preferred order of the sports. In a triathlon the order is swim – bike – run. Hardest to easiest in my opinion. But, I am a runner so running should be the easiest. Now that I’ve been bike commuting almost every day and doing some longer rides on the weekend running is getting easier. While swimming on a somewhat regular basis has made it more enjoyable, it isn’t really getting easier and actually requires the most prep work and is the least social.
I’ve been swimming with a group of triathletes, and my friend who organizes the swims made it fairly clear she wants me to give triathlons a tri, so I’ve been thinking about it more. A recent Runners World cover story on switching from running to triathlon also got me thinking. Swimming is the hardest ( have I mentioned that?) and this week I only got out once for 600 yards.
The biggest problem is that I can’t run – at least not any distance or with any speed. I mean seriously, I only ran 4 miles last week! And that was my highest mileage since March!! I was thinking about doing the Minneapolis Duathlon when I remembered that the second discipline in a duathlon is running, oops.
As I’ve been increasing my bike mileage both commuting and “training” I’ve also been contemplating a nicer bike for the training parts of life. It seems crazy to drop a couple of thousand on a super nice bike that would only get ridden a few times a week, but it is very tempting. I’ve started looking at craigslist and need to start trying to figure out how much I’m willing/able to spend on a new toy. This week I did 50 miles of just commuting and errands – way more than I drove!
So I maybe looking at a late summer/early fall triathlon. On Thursday I actually ran in the morning, did my normal bike commuting, and swam in the evening. I was quite tired, but it was the first time I’d done all 3 at once. We’ll see how the running goes, especially after Ragnar.
The most notable thing though is that when I was recently getting some bike shorts, I made sure to buy a pair of tri shorts.
in 2 runs. Isn’t that exciting? It is scary how exciting running a mile can feel, but it is great! My knee still hurts a little but it seems to go away after a bit and hurts less when running on soft ground. Both of the runs were piddly little ones from my house and were pretty much unexciting. Except, the one morning I saw what could have been a kettle bell class on the grass along the Midtown Greenway.
It has been easy to get these short runs in during the morning, but has been harder to keep up the other workouts. Though I did do almost 83 miles on the bike. 25 of that was a fairly hard ride on the Greenway to the West ending up at Bryant Lake Regional Park and hitting some quality miles. I averaged over 16 mph for the ride which did include some stop and go in the Hopkins area, plus getting a little lost and riding on some chipped limestone that was only a little above mountain bike trails (Lone Lake Park).
I wasn’t able to make the group swim this week so I did 650 yards on my own at the YWCA on Friday. I did them nice and slow. I noticed that my form wasn’t as good during the slow parts, but I did a fast 50 towards the end and felt like my form improved considerably. I guess that is similar to running, sometimes your best form is when you are running faster.
We also went camping which was a relaxing way to end the week, though we only hiked a few flat miles on Sunday and survived some crazy Saturday night storms.
Things are coming together nicely for the Ragnar Relay in a few weeks. I guess I need to figure out how I want to promote my fundraising, if I’m still going to do it. I know that the kids in Africa would appreciate clean water to drink, so I guess I better work on that!
This week I’m teaching Bike Maintenance and Exploration!
