04272019 – Bike and CrossFit

Leave a reply

Some of the Mountain Bike trails are slowly opening up. At one point we had snow in the forecast, it had been changed to rain in the late morning. I decided to get the Mountain Bike out and do some of the trails – the one open trail is an Expert. I did it once, but walked a lot of it. No point in trying it.  I rode the Karate Monkey section. It was nice to be out riding the trails.  There was one muddy section and the section by the creek was a little wetter than tacky.  Then I rode hard on the paved trails to the SW section of trails.  This is the Quaking Bog area. Its got a lot of hill and flow sections.  I struggle with confidence on some of the flow stuff but it was still fun to be seeing dirt and mixing up the training.  I definitely felt the heavy squatting yesterday!  After finishing this section I took off on the pavement again and did the Karate Monkey section one more time!  

Finished 8 miles in 57:53. 

Then just over 2 hours until CrossFit!!

We did another nice long warm-up and then started working on Power Snatching to a heavy set of 2. I actually did an overall PR for these! I had about 2 minutes left in the 12 minute time cap and was at 95 pounds. I added the 2.5# plates and a pair of 0.5# plates to bump it over my 100# PR. I could probably have done a little more, but felt better doing the 6# leap instead of a 10# one.

Then another short burner. 2 Rounds for Time (12 minute cap) of

10 Dumbbell (25#) Right arm cleans

10 Dumbbell Overhead Squats Right arm

5 Pull-ups

10 Dumbbell (25#) Left arm cleans

10 Dumbbell Overhead Squats Left arm

5 Pull-ups

This was a good one, we drilled the cleans as full depth so that’s what we tried to do with them. I think the 25# might have been a little light, but the 35# would have been too much. I finished in 7:06.

This afternoon we biked as a neighborhood group down to the Trailhead for their Spring Block Party. We had a lot of fun goofing around and enjoying what turned out to be a beautiful day!



04262019 – CrossFit and Run

Leave a reply

The 3:30 class was pretty full which was a nice change from the past few weeks! The work day was pretty stressful and we had a full evening, but it was good workout! 

After a pretty long warm-up we had 12 minutes to find a Heavy set of 2 back squats. I probably had a little bit more in me when the time cap hit.  I totally screwed up the warm-up sets when I put 45# plates on the bar…. oops. We were supposed to start at 50% and 135 is more like 70%.  Yikes! It took me until the second warm-up set to realize the mistake.  I ended at 180 for the Heavy 2. 

Then the MetCon was a 10 minute AMRAP with three movements. 

20 single arm kettlebell swings 35#, 15 sit-ups, and 1 length sled push with 45# plate on it. I actually started with the sled push. It was a quick little burner. I was able to complete 5 rounds plus 27 reps of the Gold standard. 

After cooling down a little bit I changed and headed to our friends house for our annual Get in Gear Fun Run tradition. We meet-up and then all walk (kids biked this year) down to the Minnehaha Falls to check-in.  This year they had the 3 options again 2K, 3K, or 4K. They have the turn around spots marked and you can choose as you go. After last year’s breakout run by Caleb I went with him! 

Ready to Go!

Caleb went out like a rocket cutting in and out of people!  I had to go pretty quick to keep up with him and I ended up running on the side of the road so I wouldn’t be dodging hundreds of kids. Once I caught back up I told him to try and pace himself a little bit! He walked for about 1 a minute and then took off again!  He had been saying he wanted to do the 2K so I wasn’t surprised when as we approached the turn around he said he wanted to turn around.  We waved at our friends as we ran back past them. On the way back he walked for about a minute and I kept reminding him to take it easy! I told him as we rounded the final bend that he could run all out after we passed a specific light pole. It was maybe a little too far out for him.

Kicking to the finish!

We finished in just over 13 minutes. After sitting for a bit he said he wished he had gone longer! Nadia decided to do the 3K so we had to wait for a little while but it was fun to see all the kids of different ages coming through!  

Finishing happy and strong!

After everyone finished we hit up the refreshment tables, dance tent, and race cars before heading back to our friends and enjoying pizza and friends!

04232019 – Run & Bike

Leave a reply

My foot was feeling better so I decided to give it a try! It is also a deload week in the training cycle so it seemed reasonable to go for today’s workout. Today’s short interval work was a nasal only breathing for 6 x 2:00 with 1:00 rest in between. They stressed that the entire thing should be nasal only so not to push too hard on the intervals so that the recovery would be nasal only.

This was definitely a challenge! Different for sure, but to focus on keeping my mouth shut and breathing only in the nose is a whole new idea. It seemed more of a mental challenge. I was able to do it pretty well, even with a little bit of hills. It was weird to be hearing my breath and heart beat while so focused. It looks like they were all around .20 miles for the 2 minutes.

I ended up with 2.99 miles in 33:56.

It was a great day to ride. The am ride was just cool enough to not sweat too much and the after school temps were upper 60’s. We rode just over 4 miles taking the long way to the river. We checked out the waterfall and the flooded river!

Great ride home!

About 15 miles biking.

04162019 – Run & Bike

Leave a reply

Back on the 4:30am train… I woke up early and struggled to get up and out of bed, but I made it. The plan for today was 20 minutes of 200m repeats with 30 seconds rest in between. Getting as many repeats as possible done in the 20 minutes. I messed up the timer initially, but ended up getting 15 repeats done in right around 20 minutes. The goal was to have them be consistent time – this of course is hard to do on a hilly course.

I had one brief scare on the run. I was using an hand held running light and it swings back and forth quite a bit. I saw what I thought was a pole as it didn’t move, but when I turned and came towards it my light shone on a person standing still in the trail. He wasn’t doing anything weird, I think just standing to see what I did. But man he gave me a jump! He was just walking a lap as I saw him towards the end of the run again but he didn’t scare me that time!

For what it is worth my 200’s were:

47

52

56

1:03

1:11

59

1:23

1:00

57

55

52

53

54

I’d say that’s pretty consistent given the hills. I know at least one or two ended part way up a hill! And a few of them were steeper. My 30 seconds recovery was all walking. I started jogging when it beeped 5 seconds left.

Overall 4.26 miles in 41:39.

Then… I rode to work! I didn’t push the pace at all, but still was pretty tired. During after-school it was gorgeous – right around 70 degrees and we rode just about 4 miles. The kids are so funny as we rode along Bassett Creek they were excited about the ducks, going under a bridge, and saying that so and so lived this way. We ended up stopping at a park in the next city over and the gets were all amazed at where we were!! So fun! My brand new rider did better than some of the more experienced riders but I think a lot of them were complaining about sore butts and legs! I had a nice leisurely ride home too. Lots of people were out and about considering the nice afternoon!!

I’m calling it 15 miles for the day.

04142019 – Run

Leave a reply

I had to almost drag myself out of bed, even after sleeping in! I knew I needed to run today and part of me really didn’t want to. But I made myself get up. It was sunny and around 30f. I did a little bit of the dynamic warmup and headed out the door. I had meant to map out the route I was planning to make sure it would be far enough for my 8k run at 90% of TT pace. I wasn’t 100% sure how it would work out distance-wise but it wasn’t too bad.

I ran down 12th and most of the sidewalks had been shoveled with a few that were a mess of re-frozen snow that was super lumpy from footprints. At about Morgan I stopped and did some more of the dynamic warm-up and started the 8k. My planned pace was 8:38 miles. But I forgot that my watch was now in kilometers and I hadn’t made the conversion to per K pace. Ugh. Oh well, I also realized that for whatever reason my screen wasn’t actually showing my pace anyways, just distance and elapsed time. I could use the free run for the warm-up and then switch to the virtual pacer, but I like having it all in one run on Strava. Oh well, so I just by feel. I turned on Van White Blvd and then onto the Cedar Lake Trail. Any parts that hadn’t been plowed were still snowy so I stayed on the bike trail. I took the stairs from Cedar Lake Trail up to the Wirth trail and then took the main Wirth trail all the way home. My 8K finished right at Wirth and 55 so the distance worked out pretty well. Overall distance was 6.73 miles in 1:00:15.

My 8K was 42:01 or 8:27 pace so a little bit faster than I was supposed to be going. That is 5:15 per kilometer pace. My goal pace for this run was 8:38/Mi or 5:21/K.

So overall that feels pretty good!