07172019 – Bike & Swim

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Today was a tempo ride on the bike. I started off at a relaxed pace heading south. Today I used the 494 bridge to cross the Minnesota River to Mendota. From there I road the Big River Trail and crossed the Mississippi River on the 35E bridge and headed back towards Minneapolis on the trail next to Shepherd Rd. I crossed the Mississippi again at Lake Street and added a short cool down section to get back to my car. It was a nice ride.

I wasn’t 100% sure if the Big River Trail would be flooded or not, but the section I rode on was up off the water pretty far. So I didn’t have any troubles. I opted to ride on the bike trail instead of the potholed East River Road in St. Paul. It was humid but mid-70’s so not too bad. I ended with 18.5 miles in 1:11:14.

The threat of rain or a storm hung around all day and I wasn’t sure if we’d have swim lessons or lap swimming today. The storm broke apart and went around the metro so we got them in! I decided to do a ladder today. I did 50, 100, 150, 150, 100, 50, 25, 25. Then I did some drills I did 25 with closed fists, then 25 with only my right arm, 25 with only my left arm, and finished with 25 with closed fists. I’m doing better with bilateral breathing, but I think I’m not getting enough air when I turn to the right. After 100 yards I pretty much can’t do it. I swam a total of 750 yards.

07152019 – Bike

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Today was a max distance effort on the bike. After warming up it would be 3 minutes hard, 3 minutes easy for 60 minutes (so 10 rounds). The Vivoactive again handled this perfectly. I swapped out the battery in my sensor, hoping that would fix the computer, but no luck. Ugh. I need to look at it some more.

I headed towards Fort Snelling and crossed the Fort Snelling bridge. Fortunately, one of the 3 minutes rest ended just as I finished climbing the stairs from the bridge. Then back up the River Road all the way to Dinkytown bridge and back down the River Road. I only had to sit through one stop light and it was also a rest period, so no pausing the interval timers! The hill climbs were a mix of recovery and hard efforts. Just as I was starting an interval someone passed me ( I was on the road the whole time) and I tried to catch them but I never could. I was starting to gain and then we hit a smaller hill and I couldn’t sustain the effort any longer. Of course after my recovery he was gone.

St. Paul really needs to repave the road! So many potholes I kept worrying that I was going to hit one hard and wrong and either flip or bust my tire. I tried missing them, but wow some were hard to miss. They’ve repaved some of the trail, so hopefully that will be the next step. One of my intervals was down the big hill on campus from Franklin by the hospital! That was a nice easy hard interval! I also got some of the hard interval down to the Bohemian Flats!! But that also meant I had a hard interval while climbing back up to Franklin and that was a challenge for sure!

I was grateful for the rest interval, though it was still going uphill and I was on the road, so I couldn’t completely spin it out. I was taking the whole lane through some of the narrower sections and just as we were cresting the last little hill, some old guy in a PT Cruiser pulls up beside me and says that there is a bike lane right there. I told him that I was aware of that, but I was going too fast to ride on it. He said, well you aren’t right now. I thanked him for his support of my riding! And off he went. In case you were wondering, there is no law or rule that says you have to use the bike trails and the bike trails do have a 10mph speed limit on them. I can’t say for sure exactly how fast I was going and I should have asked him, but my slowest speed in that section was just around 9 mph. And there is no easy way to move back and forth between the two. The guy at least was polite about it!

My splits were all around .8 miles for 3 minutes. A total of about 15 miles during the 60 minute interval session.

The total ride was 18.4 in 1:15.

No swim lessons on Monday, so no lap swimming for me!

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!

07122019 – CrossFit & Swim

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I did a CrossFit style workout this morning from earlier in the week on PSE Pro. First it was lunges with the barbell on my back. 5 on each side. Then a monster walk 14 steps on each leg. Followed by 10 hamstring bridges on each leg. For 3 rounds. I was feeling it in my glutes!

Then the MetCon was 2 6 minute AMRAPs with a 3 minute rest between. It was supposed to be with two kettlebells but I only have one of each weight. I ended up using the barbell as I didnt have any dumbbells to meet the thrusters at a challenging weight. So I did 75#. The first round was 6 deadlifts, 4 cleans, 2 thrusters. The second round was 2 thrusters, 4 cleans, and 6 deadlifts. This was a gasser. I did 6 rounds plus 10 on the first set and 6 rounds on the second. The thrusters felt easier on the second round, but I was obviously slower.

Not sure what happened to my watch during the swim. I was in the middle of my 3rd 100 and it vibrated. When I got to the end it wasn’t recording anything. When you look at Strava it says I took 8 hours to swim 200 yards! I’m using the Garmin Connect screenshot because it shows the CrossFit workout too.

I did 4×100 yards and 2×50 yards. Continuing to work on bilateral breathing and not breathing every stroke.

So total swim was 500 yards.

07112019 – Bike & Swim

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Today’s bike called for some interval work again. It is hard to know how far I can go in the time allotted. The kids have a 90 minute class, so I have just under that. I had forgotten that the bike computer wasn’t working until I started out again. It is not connecting the wireless sensors – probably just a battery. I took a risk and headed out toward the Midtown Greenway and was going to hit the lakes and back on Minnehaha Parkway. I was hoping that I’d finish the loop in time and actually did it with a little time to spare! The workout was 6 rounds of 2:00, 1:00, :30. Again the Vivoactive was great for this workout.

The only error was on that I created as I stopped the intervals a few times if I was sitting at a stop light waiting to cross the street. There are not a ton of street crossings, but they and some congested trail spaces came during intervals which was hard. I probably should have been riding on the roads instead of bike trails, due to my speed but that’s ok! I also missed that the path split and went under a bridge that I had to wait to cross the street on! Oops. It was a fun ride as I haven’t ridden that part in a good while. The Minnehaha Creek was still pretty high and the trail was flooded over at one point. But not too high, just enough to get you wet! I did switch over to the road between Nokomis and Hiawatha and then hit several lights, but I was pretty much done at that point.

I got 21 segment PR’s out 35 segments on Strava so that’s some good work! The actual interval distances were all over the place depending on where I was on the loop.

Total miles were 17 miles in 1:07.

Back to some lap swimming! Today was a lot less drama! No TV cameras. I accumulated 850 yards again doing some 50’s and 100’s and got in a couple of 150’s too. My bilateral breathing is getting better, but I start to get winded I go back to left sided breathing only and with every other stroke.