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!

07082019 – CrossFit & Bike

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Got up early for 5:30am CrossFit and it felt great. We did handstand practice, something that I still need work on getting up into the handstand. We then did 5×8 Deadlifts at 60% so I did 185. 8 reps is a lot. I’ve not deadlifted in awhile so I’m sure I’ll feel it later! We then had a 7 minute metcon. When I first looked at it, I thought it was an AMRAP. But no, the last movement was max effort! The movements were – 40 burpees (which took almost half the time), 20 calorie row (which was about 90 seconds) and then maximum effort wall balls (basically as many wall balls as possible with the time left). I got to the wall balls with about 90 seconds left and I got 21 done in that time frame. I used a 20# ball for a platinum level performance!

After dropping the kids off at their programs (only 90 minutes this week) I headed out for a bike workout. The workout was 3-4 rounds but I was only able to get in 2 rounds based on the time that I had. The workout was 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00 minute intervals with an equal amount of rest. I guess I never set the watch up to do intervals in bike mode so I couldn’t actually track the intervals or time. And my bike computer isn’t connecting to the sensors so I didn’t really have any live data while riding. I used the clock on the computer to guesstimate the timing of my intervals and recovery.

I rode North on West River Road and cut over to the Dinkytown Greenway. My first interval ended about 1/2 up the hill from Bohemian Flats and Downtown so I went ahead and spun up the rest of it! After crossing the Mississippi River I connected with East River Road and took that all the way to the MN 5 Bridge crossing at Fort Snelling. Most of the workout was on East River Road and one of the other intervals ended in the middle of a hill, but I can’t remember which one for sure now. I knew I was running tight on time and got to the bridge right about the time I needed to start the last interval. Unfortunately, this bridge has about 20 steps to carry down the bike, then cross the river and then about 20 steps back up. I did those as quick as possible and started my last interval when I got to the top of the stairs! I rode through Historic Fort Snelling coming out near Coldwater Springs and then followed the road to Minnehaha Falls. The last interval ended along that road and I relaxed a little but didn’t go super easy as I needed to get back to pickup the kids! I made it right on time, though I was still sweating when I walked into the building! Overall, I felt like I was hitting it pretty hard, though I know my legs were sore from CrossFit in the morning.

The total ride was 17.47 miles in 1:10:15.

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.

07062019 – Bike

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This morning’s workout called for a bike ride with 2 x 15k intervals. This meant a pretty decent long ride as 15k is about 9.3 miles. I had a fair amount of time and the actual workout was 3x15k but I didn’t have quite that much time! After finishing the 2nd interval and recovery time of 5 minutes I did a third interval for what ended up being 4.4 miles just to get me home.

I headed West towards Eden Prairie on the trails and then cut North on Baker Road after first crossing it and 62nd Street. There were some good hills on Baker Road and also some stop lights so it wasn’t a full on 15k interval, but still pretty dang close. I came back towards St. Louis Park on the Minnetonka LRT and varied between the gravel and the paved road. I probably could have kept going north to the Luce Line, but this ended up being a perfect distance for today.

I hit 27.6 miles in 1:50:50. My two intervals were 34:03 and 34:28. The third interval of 4.4 miles was 17:51.

07032019 – CrossFit & Swim

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I went to the 5:30am CrossFit class at Solcana. It was hard to get up so early, but nice to get the workout in! The warmup/gymnastics was accumulating 15 strict toes to shoulder. I did sets of 3 and it took a little while, especially with the strict designation!

The MetCon was a 30 minute AMRAP! It included an Iron Madien Crawl (bear crawl and pulling the 80# sandbag the length of gym), 10 pullups, Goblet Carry to corner and back, 10 pushups, grass loop run, and then 1 minute rest! I tried the 70# kettlebell for the Goblet Carry and I was able to get it up, but obviously not able to walk with it! The 53# was pretty heavy and I decided to go with that, but wow was it harder than I thought it would be! I used a box for the pushups, after Murph I think that was a good call for the longer work session. The 1 minute rest was a nice addition! I did 4 rounds and 16 reps (so just into the pushups). That was a good burner!

Later in the afternoon we went with friends to Hidden Beach. There were 3 adults and 6 kids so we took turns playing/supervising the kids and doing some swimming. It was a little windy so there was some chop on the lake which got to be quite a bit. And outside of the swim area was a good amount of seaweed so that wasn’t ideal. I guesstimated 400 yards of swimming, no real clue though! We had fun watching the clouds roll in and out wondering if it was going to do anything or not!