Last Year

Week 9 last year of training was pretty low due to traveling (coming home from Easter weekend and flying to Alabama for a wedding), not to mention that I had some  severe pain on a mid-week run.  Last year I was doing monthly highlights of blog posts – you can see March’s here.  Let me know which format you like better.  What do you think about Zen Running? Last year’s Foto Friday was a nasty picture of me finishing the Human Race.

Weekly Mileage

Running –  22 miles

Monday was my standard 3.24 miles around the Metrodome loop.  It was 34 with a 29 wind chill and a nice sunrise hitting the skyline for an easy run.  I felt pretty good and I was wearing my new Brooks Adrenaline GTS 8. I finished in 26:08.

Tuesday was a 3x mile repeat at race pace.  My goal race pace is 6:50 so that was the goal for these along the Greenway. It was 34 with a 24 wind chill and a little bit of rain.  I did a 10 minute warm-up and then one repeat before turning around.  It was a nice tail wind on the way out which made for a not so nice head wind for the last 2 repeats.  My times were 6:19, 6:47, 6:34 so I did well – except the workouts purpose was to train your body to run the right pace not an all out effort.  Still, I’m not going to complain.

Wednesday I did my modified loop around Powderhorn which turned out to be 3.5 miles on a snowy morning.  A dusting on the ground and flurries falling.  It was 34 with a 24 wind chill.  Nothing too exciting on this almost 29 minute run.

Thursday was a nice day off, too bad it was a nice day outside too.  I had discovered that my Garmin was no longer beeping during workouts and talked with customer service.  It sounds like my speaker stopped working so I’m sending it in for repairs.

Friday was my first workout with out my Garmin and it was a little weird.  Not a lot of data to crunch – but I didn’t feel the freedom that I sometimes feel when not wearing it.  I ran between 7 and 7.5 miles around Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles – tacking on a little bit at the end to get to the 50 minute mark.  It was 40 with no wind chill but the breeze coming off the lakes was still pretty cool due to ice still hanging on.  I’m not sure of my “tempo” but I’m pretty sure I got down pretty close for awhile.  I’m glad they maintain porta-potties around the lakes all year long!

Saturday we met at the Jensen Lake Trailhead again and did an hour warm-up on the East side of the park’s trails. We maintained a pretty steady pace throughout and enjoyed the cool morning – it was about 30.  It warmed up during this part of the run and most of us shed layers as we headed out for the second part.  The second part was a tough hill workout on the “zoo trails” section of the Lebanon Hills park.  It includes one killer hill (that we run twice) and lot of other hills.  I was dragging pretty bad by the end of the 2 hour workout.  It is somewhere around 15 miles.

Sunday my wife and were going to go swimming at the Midtown YWCA, but when we got there the pool was closed for their indoor triathalon.  We decided to drive over to the Uptown YWCA, hoping that their pool would be open.  There is a different feel at their pool.  It feels more like a lap pool – the Midtown  YW has a huge slide and kid section in the same area as the lap pool.  Also most of the time that we swim it is during a Master’s class and they take up all but 2 lanes, while this morning at the Midtown pool there was no closed lanes.  Finally, the Midtown YWCA is 25 meters not 25 yards like the Uptown one.  All that to say I swam 500 meters.  My right shoulder hurt this week again about 3/4 of the way through.

Weekly Mileage

Running – 35.3 miles

Swimming – 500 meters