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!

08242018 – Run

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I didn’t run yesterday because Christy was working a 6:30am shift and I didn’t want to get up at 4:30 to go for a run!  I also wasn’t sure how long the run would take since it wasn’t a straight forward 6×600 or something.  The workout was 3×200, 3×400, and 2×1000.

My Garmin also isn’t nice enough to be able to put in multiple distances for interval work like this. So I set it up for 45×200 with a custom rest. The recovery for the first 6 was 90 seconds so I figured walking/jogging a 200 would be about that. I think I messed up the math to get to 45, but that’s not surprising. I also messed up a few times hitting the buttons and keeping track of the intervals. I did end up with 51 intervals (including warmup and cooldown).

So I’m not really sure how to write down or track the intervals. Looking at the intervals it appears that my fastest intervals were the 400’s because they were on the pavement at Schaper Park. Trying to keep track of 5×200 for a 1000m interval seems easy, but it wasn’t really… I either did an 800, 1000, or 1200.  Not really the end of the world, but not ideal either.

i have to do it again next week too.  Maybe I should find a track or a loop with a set distance. We’ll see.

08222018 – CrossFit

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I had the realization this morning that due to my new work schedule I probably won’t be able to workout in the mornings at Solcana anymore.  My work day will start at 7am and class ends at 6:30.  With a 15 minute commute, that doesn’t leave much time to cool-off and shower.  Showering while sweating isn’t super helpful!

Today we worked on Overhead Squats. I liked the overhead squat warm-up that we did with the PVC.  It was a little challenging, but really worked on the skills needed.  We were to work up to a heavy set of 5 in 4-5 sets.  I started with 65, went to 75, and then did 85.  85 was a little challenging and I had trouble keeping the bar from falling forward.  I’ve done higher weights, but that was what I had for today for a set of 5.  Morgen complemented my progress and form improvements.

The MetCon included 400m runs!! So I liked that.  The plan was

4 Rounds for time of

400m run

Snatch 8 – 6 – 4 – 2 (each round descended number of reps but increased weight)

I chose Silver which had the following weights: 65 – 75 – 85 – 95.  It appears my score wasn’t recorded.  I remember coming in after the 2nd run and seeing 5 minutes on the clock.  The first run was good.  About halfway through the snatches we found out that we could do Power Snatches.  That is obviously a time and body saver!  The runs got harder and while the actual snatches got heavier the work went quicker.  It was a good workout. I hope we do it again!

08212018 – Run

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Today felt great. It felt good to run in the morning and to be running at Wirth. And 6×400 seemed manageable.  But, it was dark! Yikes.  Having not run at 5:30 recently I didn’t realize that it had gotten to be time for the darkness to be on my running. Another sign of summer ending would be early morning dark runs again.  At least it was daylight midway through the run. I am definitely not ready for running the whole run in the dark.  I might need a new headband and it was a little loose and flopped around a little while running.

6×400 with 3 minutes rest in between wasn’t easy, but after the longer runs it felt good to get back to something shorter.

The splits were:

2:10

2:29

2:04

2:03

1:53

1:58

My total was 4.54 miles in 48:42.   I’m satisfied with that.  It seems to be in line with how I’ve been running.  I didn’t get lost, but in the dark I ended up on a trail I hadn’t meant to get on.

08192018 – Mountain Bike

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I would have been okay with not doing anything today.  But when Todd mentioned maybe going riding at Wirth, I decided that could be a fun option! So we went out and hit almost all of the trails at Wirth including two new to me sections!  It was mid-80’s, humid, and still smoky from Canadian fires.  The trails were super dry with lots of dust to coat both us and the bikes!

We started with the Karate Monkey trails, the harder section of new event trails made by the Loppet.  They have some tight flow sections and hairpin turns without banks so it isn’t an easy trail.  Plus a tough uphill climb to start.  The last section is relatively easy and is right next to the creek for a nice ride.

We decided to go to the Bog trails and work our way back up towards the Back 40 and Area 36.  We rode the Southbound sections and then turned around and headed back hitting all the areas but the Expert Brownie Loop.  It was fun to have somebody to help push me along more than my usual casual pace. Some of the harder elements of the Bog trails require me to get off my bike and I could probably do some of them if I practiced more and got out of my head and fear.

In the Back 40 we took a new trail that had some interesting asphalt and debris sections. It also had some tight squeezes and was a little technical.  Things were going well until I crossed the bridge section a little too fast and my back tire slipped on the edge.  Somehow my bike actually stayed on, but my balance shifted too fast and I fell off.  So I had one leg still on the bike and one standing on the ground.  Fortunately the bridge is only a few inches off the ground!! Shortly after that I saw a doe and fawn on the trail so in my mind that made up for falling.  The ground had finally dried up enough for the short duck pond section to be re-opened.  It seemed shorter than I remembered, but it had been closed for about a year, so who knows.

After finishing the Back 40 we refilled water at the Trailhead and hit the Area 36 trails.  There is some tough climbing and some fun pump sections and we had a good time here.  Todd did The Tube and I opted to skip it this time around. We finished up and headed home.  After hosing down our bikes we relaxed and realized we both got a ton of Strava segment PR’s.

It was a great ride and I’m glad it worked out to do it.

12.3 miles!