Category Archives: My Running

07132019 – Run

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As a family we backpacked into Afton State Park for an overnight trip. We are hoping to do some more backpacking and Afton is a great place to practice! We had loaded up everything we needed into our packs and hiked the mile-ish into our campsite. We actually stayed at a canoe site which was a little more secluded than the 27 site backpack campground! We were hiking back out to check out a mobile art gallery and the nature center’s astronomy talk and some people with suitcases, wagons, huge coolers, etc. Some people have different ideas of backpacking I guess!

But since I’ve never run at Afton, I was excited for the chance to do so! I left right from our sight and knew that pretty much whatever I did was going to be hilly. The topo map at the visitor’s center seemed to show the trail next to our site was in a gully for awhile before climbing out, but pretty much it was a slight uphill before a big uphill! It felt like everything was uphill! There were some downhills and those felt great! Even if some of them were with steps. The park had maps at every major intersection so there was no chance of me getting lost. I had started running around 6:30am and didn’t see any people for quite awhile but towards the end of the run there were a lot of trail runners out and about. While running around the Deer Trout loop I saw 2 runners coming and 1 was wearing a Team World Vision jersey. As I was deciding whether to say anything more than hello, they both greeted me by name and it was Brent and Brad. Fancy running into them out there. We stopped for a minute to chat and then both went on our ways. We ended up running the same route, just in opposite directions! I saw a bunch of deer too, including a few fawns. And one turkey and baby turkey too. At some point I decided I wanted at least a 10k so I kept extending the loop and ended up with about 7 miles and 1,000 ft of elevation gain! When I got back to the campsite, I grabbed a water bottle (should have brought one to run with) and sat in the St. Croix River for a few minutes cooling off! It felt great!! It was cool, but humid.

After rinsing off and relaxing, I headed back to the site and had my recovery food which was a Stroopwafel with Maple Almond RX Butter on it! A tasty little treat!

07092019 – Run & Swim

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After dropping the kids off I started out on my run. After stopping to stretch, two friends popped up the stair near me, it was fun to see them! We used to work together and have had some fun runs together. They didn’t want to do my interval workout so we chatted for a few minutes and then parted ways. Of course we grabbed a selfie to add to the collection! We’ve run on some super cold and hot days together!

The workout was a 400, 200, 100 with 1:1 rest for 6 rounds! This was my first workout with my new Garmin Vivoactive 3 and it was so nice to be able to just enter the workout into Garmin Connect and have it on my watch. No trying to keep track of multiple distances and making mistakes! My watch was able to handle the workout like a champ!

I was running south and went down the dam hill and back up to Wabun. The 400m intervals seemed like forever and the 100 were so short! Sometimes the intervals would hit in the middle of a hill and sometimes the rest would! Try to “rest” up a big hill isn’t ideal though! I crossed Ford Parkway and ran River Road all the way to Lake Street, crossed and came back south. With a little overlap to sneak in the last 100. I ran along the river down in the gorge and it was a little muddy and the path was missing at a few spots. It had been awhile since I’d been in the gorge too, so that might have been why I couldn’t find it. At least one interval included me stopping, looking for the trail, and then walking across some tricky rocks! The river is still so high too.

Here are my splits

400 – 1:43; 1:49; 1:47; 2:08; 1:51; 1:48; 2:41

200 – 1:02; :50; :53; 1:01; :56; :58;

100 – :25; :26; :23; :25; :29; :27

The total run was 6.46 in 1:15:35.

Today was the first day of swim lessons for the kids so I was planning to lap swim while they were taking lessons. When we got to Webber Pool there were a lot of Sherrif’s, suits, and TV cameras. That made me a little nervous! The staff weren’t really sure what was going on except some type of press conference. I went ahead and swam and the kids had lessons. Afterwards a reporter from the StarTribune asked my daughter’s name and said she had some pictures of her. They didn’t end up running her pictures, but she was in pictures and video on several TV stations and the news blast from the park board. The park board and sheriff’s office were launching $5 swim lessons to help reduce the number of drownings. So that was cool. You can see WCCO’s story here. If you look closely you can see me swimming in the background in a few shots and of course the opener!

But back to swimming… I ended up just accumulating distance and working on bilateral breathing and did a few 50’s and a couple of 100’s getting up to 875 yards. The bilateral breathing is getting better! I was the only on in the pool, but I’m sure the news conference scared some people off!

07072019 – Run

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Sunday morning run with the pollen looking like snow! Seriously the trails were covered in it! The workout today was 2x4k and I decided to take it on the Loppet trails. But first I dropped off some books at a Little Free Library down the street. Ours was full and I wanted to get rid of some kid books.

I ran up to Golden Valley road and then to the trails hitting 45 North, Conundrum and Area 36. It has been awhile since I ran on those trails so it was nice to be on them again. Only a handful of mountain bikers were out and no runners! There were a few people attending some type of class towards the end who were using a staircase to warmup.

4K is 2.25 miles and the two intervals were 23:57 and 28:13. The second one had a lot more elevation gain in it! The first 5 minute recovery period included a bathroom break.

Overall the run was 6.7 miles in 1:18:07.

06302019 – Run

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This was supposed to be an easy run with nasal only breathing. But it is hard to nasal breathing when you are stuffy! I think it is primarily allergy related as there is still so much pollen in the air and I’ve not really been feeling sick otherwise. It was also 77 and humid at the start of the run with a storm brewing in the background!

I did 4.32 miles in 44:46.

06272019 – Run

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After dropping the kids off I went for a run. The schedule called for a 4×8:00 nasal breathing only run.  I headed out North on West River Road and across the Lake Street bridge.  It has been forever since I’ve run on the River Roads.  I wouldn’t say I miss it, but it was nice to be back there. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this longer duration nasal breathing workout. Nasal breathing definitely limits the pace and these longer intervals weren’t hard but it does take a decent amount of focus. I got into a good rhythm and actually found it was harder to slow down for the 3 minute “recovery” intervals!  During each interval I covered about .87 miles and except for the first one which was .83 the rest were right at .87 or .88 miles.  So that’s good consistency and is just over 9:00 minute per mile pace. I ran most of the hill up from Lake Street towards Summit during a recovery interval and otherwise didn’t have any major hills to try and compensate for.  I ran down East River Road to the Ford Bridge and just before the bridge it started raining.  It was quite a front line coming across as you can see in the pictures! Running across the exposed bridge I got pretty wet, but overall the severe weather missed us and I didn’t seen any lightening during the run.  I finished out running back to the car along West River Road. I took a few minutes to stretch and recover under a covered area before getting into the van soaking wet!

All in all I covered 5.8 miles in 56:14.