As expected it had rained over night. It was 45 with a chance of rain during my run. I opted for the hiking trails on the other side of Fort Harrison State Park since they aren’t biking trails. They had some flooding along the Fall Creek trail (by the river) and by the Duck Pond. I ran the Fall Creek Trail and then connected to the paved trail Harrison Trace Trail to head back towards the parking lot. I took the cutoff before Delaware Lake and connected to Camp Creek trail. While the Fall Creek is wide with some good amenities (benches and wooden step structures), Camp Creek is narrow single track with only a few bridges over the widest creek crossings. Camp Creek was a fun trail, its on the inside of the Harrison Trace Loop. It didn’t actually rain while I was running so that was nice, though it might have felt cooler. I got to wear shorts and opted for a t-shirt under my rain jacket.
4.14 miles in 45:51. The mile on the paved trail was relatively faster than the tight single track.
I had hoped to go to the gym this morning, but wasn’t able to confirm that it would work until late last night and then the class was already full. I did wake up to check to see if it was full or not and I was still waitlisted. Then I laid in bed… and almost didn’t get up. But eventually I did with time to go for a run still. Nothing special, just the Wirth perimeter route that I do. It felt like it had been awhile since I was on the those trails. So it was nice to be “back home”. I didn’t see any wildlife and not really that many people either. It was relatively cool, but you could feel the humidity climbing. We’d had several cool days to spoil us too!
4.51 miles in 47:54.
When I got home I did some deadlifting. One set of 10 at 65#’s and then 2 sets of 10 at 135#. The first set of the heavier weights felt heavy, but the second set felt okay.
Then later in the afternoon we went to Webber pool. I was able to get some lap swimming in. Shortly after we arrived the lifeguards rescued someone and I guess at Webber they clear the pool for a few minutes when that happens. Well evidently, this person also vomited so the pool was closed for an hour which was unfortunate. The person was okay and even last year vomit in the pool would have closed it for the day.
So once the pool reopened there was about 15 minutes before the safety break started. Because they were using the smaller upper pool they were still going to have the break. I did 100 yards with bilateral breathing, 50 yards, and then I got into a rhythm of breathing every stroke and managed 550 yards in one go before the whistles blew for the safety break. I’m glad I was able to get into a longer swim without any problems, frustrated that I’m still struggling with breathing on the right side and alternating. Breathing every other stroke isn’t super fast! But I’ll take it.
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!
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!
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.
