A beautiful week for running and a step-back week.

Previous Posts

While I was living in Indiana I ran the Pop Weaver 5k every year.  The best part was the free popcorn – which lasts forever! Did you know that Caffeine is illegal for Olympic competition? Well, at least large quantities.  During last year’s training I completed and reflected upon my farthest distance (at the time) ever – a 20 miler.  While in Ghana in 2004 I was only able to squeeze in a few runs, you’ll have to read the post to see why. Twitter is hugely popular, last year I tried to get the running community to coalesce around a single hashtag “runlog” to tweet about their daily run – some have adopted it. Foto Friday is from one of our trips to Gooseberry Falls.

Last Year’s Mileage

Run: 32.1 Miles
Bike: 53.4 Miles

This Week’s Training

On Monday I had scheduled a massage as part of my plan to get rid of plantar fasciitis.  So I went to the YWCA before hand and swam 500 meters, without too much of a break.  The Uptown YWCA pool is in meters and is shallower overall, but it seems easier to swim there than at the Midtown which is in yards and is much deeper. Anyone know how pool depth impacts swimming?  After the swim  I got one of the most painful massages ever.  She was pretty much using only her forearm to break up the knots in my legs.  Afterwards everything felt much looser and better.  She commented that she wasn’t able to break up all the knots in my quads and that my IT bands were still really tight.

Tuesday night’s group run was around Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet.  We were scheduled to do a marathon pace workout, but I was just planning to get the 8-10 miles in.  Our little tail-fin group formed again and we did the warm-up and then slowly picked up the pace during the first 2 mile segment.  The first 2.03 miles was in 15:07 – 7:27 pace.  After a short break we did the second 1.98 mile segment in 15:00 – 7:35 pace.  Another short break (I was starting to get tired) and we finished the last 1.94 mile segment in 14:23 – 7:26 pace.  We were pushing the pace at the end of the last one and then I struggled through the cooldown for a total workout of 8.5 miles in 1:05.  I was surprised at how good I felt for most of the run.

On Wednesday I went back to the pool – this time Midtown – and swam 300 yards at an easier pace. I had to share my lane and ended up having to deal with the waves the dude was shoving at me while we swam.

Thursday morning I went to the Sibley trail. I decided to check out the trails off to the north.  They were narrower and disappeared about 0.8 of a mile in.  On the way back I took a different trail which ended in the middle of the woods so I cut straight through towards the river.  With a nice warm-up I went out for another mile and a half or so doing a true fartlek along the way.  I picked points ahead of me and picked up the pace to them.  I probably did 7 or 8 pickups.  Again I felt pretty good out there.  It was 63 and humid and I did a total of 5 miles in 42:55 (including some of the bush whacking).

Friday I was a lazy bum.

Saturday‘s group run was to be an easy out and back along the marathon course from the Nokomis Community Center.  It was a nice run, using the torn up River Road trails but when we turned around at the Franklin bridge the pace started picking up.  Before the final water stop we were hitting 7 minute pace and my legs are quite used to that kind of pace for any distance and I just couldn’t hang on anymore.  I ran the last 3 miles by myself.  I worked on keeping my form as good as possible.  The total work out was 10 miles in 1:21 on a gorgeous – 53 degree morning.

On Sunday we helped a friend move out of her house, so that was a good weight lifting workout!

This Week’s Mileage

Run: 23.7 Miles
Swim: 846 Yards