Category Archives: My Running

09292018 – Run

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It was the first chilly morning of fall.  We didn’t actually freeze or frost over night, but the temp was 38f when I left the house.  That’s cold enough for gloves, a second layer shirt, and I wore ear band which might have been overkill.

At this point I’m just trying to get some miles in before the Loopet Loppet in a few weeks.  I don’t have a specific training plan and I feel like I’m recovered from the marathon.  I have no desire to get up at 4:30am right now to run so I’m content with a mid length run on the weekend.

I haven’t run at Wirth since the marathon so it was nice to be out on the familiar trails.  It did feel odd to just be running them and not having a specific workout that needed to be done.  I did the main loop I usually run adding in a little more here and there.  When I got back to The Trailhead I hit the Area 36 trails and popped out by the Chalet to come home.

I wasn’t trying to run hard at all and I’m feeling a little sore from some of the CrossFit workouts from earlier in the week. I did 6.4 miles in 1:05.  I almost didn’t see the nice buck that was eating along the southern edge of the park.  I also saw a skunk a little bit later.

09232018 – Run 

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My first run since the marathon and overall it felt pretty good. I felt the soreness from Jackie and the stiffness from helping build a playground and carrying a bunch of stuff yesterday! 

The oldest had a birthday party in the ‘burbs so I dropped her off and ran at Elm Creek Regional Park. I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually ran there and ended up running on a mixture of paved trail, horse trail, abandoned gravel roads, and some wide hiking trails. It is a pretty area, but I ended up going longer than I had anticipated. I had some trouble figuring out a nice loop. Out on the trails they had the winter maps posted which I don’t think showed all the trails. 

It was all good though. I had planned on around 3, but got in around 5. It was in the mid-70’s and sunny. It felt weird to run midday. Especially after doing some yard work and stuff in the morning. 

After the run I had a PB&B shake from LifeCafe as the party was at a Lifetime Fitness. 

Total run was 5 miles in 46 minutes. 

08302018 – Run

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Another early dark morning… my body and I are still adjusting to the early work schedule.  It isn’t the early work schedule, but also the kids getting on the bus so early that makes my morning start out so early. Being pretty much ready to go by 6:10 every morning.

Today was another workout with 3 distances.  I think I did a better job this time of tracking the distances accurately.  Only once did I forget to hit the button the right number of times.  The workout was 4×200, 3×400, 2×1000.

The 1,000m seems so much longer than the other too. Especially when I’m having to track it so weirdly.

200 – :56

.2 miles – 1:45 (oops)

200 – :57

200 – :55

400 – 1:43

400 – 2:03

400 – 2:29

1,000 – 5:30

1,000 – 6:21

I’m not sure if those 1,000’s are accurate or not.

5.46 miles in 57:33

08282018 – Run

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Man 4:30am came way too early.  With school back and a new work schedule be at work at 7am and the kids getting on the bus 15 minutes before that mornings are tight.  So… back to 4:30am runs.  Yuck!  It was hard to get up this morning.

But I had a good run of 8x400m with 2:00 minutes of rest. I might need new batteries in my head lamp, but there are so many shadows on the trail it seemed hard to want to push and not stumble, especially in the grassy areas.

Here are my splits:

2:11

2:20

2:19

2:06

2:14

2:18

1:58

2:22

4.71 miles in 51:11

 

08262018 – Run

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Today was so humid that at the end of my run my fingers were starting to prune up a little bit.  At least it was relatively cool through the whole run!  I picked a route that I’ve ridden before but never run and when I’ve ridden it is been 12 miles.  So I thought it would work for 13.1.  I was quite off and needed to add a good amount of trails at Wirth to get there.

I started out running from my house and ran to the Mississippi River.  I haven’t run along the river in a long time. Especially this section.  The run was a Time Trial, so I wanted to find the balance of going fast, but surviving the entire 13 miles.  I set my Virtual Pacer for 9 minute miles and thought that would be good.  I was a little shocked when I came through the first mile in 8:13. Ok, no problem slow down a little bit… Crap.  I came through the 2nd mile in 7:52.  That was not going to be a sustainable pace for the whole thing. I turned off the River onto Cedar Lake Trail and my pace finally slowed down to 8:37.  I haven’t run on such flat easy places for awhile and my body wanted to move!  The Cedar Lake Trail is pretty straight forward urban trail that turns into a prairie trail.. I did 8:15 and then 8:34 for mile 5.

I wanted to run the dirt trails on the East side of Cedar Lake and to add some distance I ran all the way to where they actually start on the southside and ran back around the lake.  I never ran these trails enough to know what the best routes are or an easy way to add a nice loop.  One time in there I had to backtrack quite a bit.  I ended up running less than a mile in the dirt trail section.  Mile 6 was 8:48.  Running on the paved trails around Cedar Lake are so nice with the sun coming over the trees and downtown sparkling. I ran past all the beaches and extended the run by going out onto the points when possible.  Mile 7 was 9:25, 8 was 10:23, and 9 was 9:38.  I was definitely feeling tired at this point.  I had been drinking some, but the food I brought wasn’t very good and was hard to eat.

It was right before mile 9 that I turned off the pavement and was on trails for most of the rest of the run.  I knew that from Cedar Point beach home it would be about 3 miles on the Parkways. So when I ran past it before hitting 8 miles I would need to make up a lot of miles somewhere.  I’ve not run around Brownie Lake, but I probably should have tried today!

Obviously being back on the trails at Wirth was going to slow down my pace unless I tried to pick it up. Feeling tried at that point wasn’t ideal, but I kept pushing on.  I ended up walking some of the uphills. Mile 10 was 12:55, 11 was 12:19, and 12 was 11:20.  Mile 11 was the end of the dirt trails and back on the parkway.  I went past the Trailhead at around 11.5 miles.  The Trailhead is only a half mile from home, so I had to keep going!  It is always sad to pass my road and know I need to keep running!  I hit Mile 13 at the top of the hill on Golden Valley Road in 13:31 and then knew it was all downhill from there on out!  I stopped about 1/4 mile down the road and hit 8:33 pace again.  I decided to stop my watch and walk the last few blocks home (uphill).

My plantar fasciitis foot was really hurting at the front of the arch.  Hopefully it recovers quickly.  I also need to get my nutrition figured out for the race.  I did order some gel packets and will bring a bar or two to have during the race.

Just a few more weeks to go!