Last Year

Run: 37.4 miles
Bike: 7 miles

At this time last year I was in the thick of Week 5 of training. I was still posting monthly highlights so you can go back and see all of February 2008‘s posts. It was only last week that I started running with the MDRA but this week I joined their USATF team (and USATF-MN).  Their first race was right around the corner and was the Human Race 8k, traditionally thought of as the first race of the spring season. Foto Friday was highlighting a race number from my alma mater.

Monday was a nice comfortable 3.25 miles on the Metrodome loop.  My heel felt fine and I tried to run on the snow and shoulders as much as possible.  The sun was up which was nice but it was still cold 5 above with -8 wind chill.  I did some core work and feel pretty good despite a little soreness from the weekend.

Tuesday when I setup my Garmin last week with the 7×400 interval session I went ahead and setup the 8×400 session as well.  I obviously didn’t do it right.  As I stepped out for the run I told the Garmin to give me that training session and set out.  I felt pretty good after warming up and stretching and started the 3rd interval.  I picked it up and ran… and ran… I looked at the Garmin and ran some more at the interval pace.  Then I realized something was wrong.  I was in the final cool down period, so the clock was just ticking down.  Frustrated I turned around, recovered, and started running home.  I couldn’t easily do the 400m workout anymore so instead I did more of a fartlek.  The Greenway has lots of bridges that cross it so I ran hard from one to the next, then easy, then hard changing pace at every bridge.  These weren’t long intervals but it made sense.  I stopped doing them with about 1.5 miles to go for the cool down.  My second user error had something to do with the watch stopping after the official workout session.  I should have restarted it, but I didn’t realize that until I got home and stopped it.  Instead of stopping it I actually turned it back on.  At least this way I got the overall workout time even though I had to calculate the workout distance from the turn around point.  So my 5.25 mile interval workout had some frustrations.  I iced when I got home though my heel felt pretty good. It was about 15 with a 3 above wind chill.   My two recorded intervals were both 1:33.  A little slow but I was also unsure of how hard to push given my slight injury.  The workout took 43:11. On the interval thing – when I set it up I never went back and changed the number of intervals and the default is 2, which is what I did!

Wednesday was a 3 mile recovery run.  I did a modified loop around Powderhorn because not all of the sidewalks were actually plowed.  It was 23 with a 13 wind chill so it felt pretty decent out for the 25 minutes that it took to run.  My legs hurt a little bit but not too much.  The pink sunrise made for a nice setting to run with.

Thursday it was nice to sleep in and take a break!

Friday I waited and ran around 11am which was  nice because it was sunny and 40!!  I ran in shorts along the Greenway for the tempo run.  I hit and sustained tempo pace for about a mile and actually felt pretty good doing it.   The snow melt made for some nice sized puddles. I started out the run trying to avoid them, but pretty much ended up having to just run through them but it was a nice day so who cares! It was 5.5 miles in 40 minutes.  My heel and knee still hurt a little but so I’ve been icing and trying to stretch more.  Here is a pic of my tempo pace (the bump in the tempo section is when I turned around):

Saturday we met at the Nokomis Community Center, not the Nokomis Country Club and ran along the Minnehaha Parkway and around Lake Harriet then back.  We changed the course a little bit on the way back to avoid all of the ice on the parkway.  The path was pretty intermittent with ice and wasn’t exactly pleasant to run on.  The roads were much better.  The total was 11.3 miles in almost exactly 90 minutes.  It was 28 with a 13 wind chill.  I started out being a little under dressed but it ended up being ok.  It is hard to dress appropriately as the temps vary up and down like this.

Sunday I ran an easy 3 miles from my house to pick up my car in Uptown.  We had gone to a party and then from there bussed to a concert downtown.  Stupidly I forgot to check when the last bus back to where our car was and we missed it. We were able to take the LRT and hop a bus home though.  So I ran over and picked it up.  I was a little tired and sore from yesterday’s run but once I warmed up it felt good.  It was 29 and 21 wind chill.  The sun was trying to come out although that never materialized.

Total Mileage

Running – 31.6 miles