Category Archives: My Running

04232019 – Run & Bike

My foot was feeling better so I decided to give it a try! It is also a deload week in the training cycle so it seemed reasonable to go for today’s workout. Today’s short interval work was a nasal only breathing for 6 x 2:00 with 1:00 rest in between. They stressed that the entire thing should be nasal only so not to push too hard on the intervals so that the recovery would be nasal only.

This was definitely a challenge! Different for sure, but to focus on keeping my mouth shut and breathing only in the nose is a whole new idea. It seemed more of a mental challenge. I was able to do it pretty well, even with a little bit of hills. It was weird to be hearing my breath and heart beat while so focused. It looks like they were all around .20 miles for the 2 minutes.

I ended up with 2.99 miles in 33:56.

It was a great day to ride. The am ride was just cool enough to not sweat too much and the after school temps were upper 60’s. We rode just over 4 miles taking the long way to the river. We checked out the waterfall and the flooded river!

Great ride home!

About 15 miles biking.

04162019 – Run & Bike

Back on the 4:30am train… I woke up early and struggled to get up and out of bed, but I made it. The plan for today was 20 minutes of 200m repeats with 30 seconds rest in between. Getting as many repeats as possible done in the 20 minutes. I messed up the timer initially, but ended up getting 15 repeats done in right around 20 minutes. The goal was to have them be consistent time – this of course is hard to do on a hilly course.

I had one brief scare on the run. I was using an hand held running light and it swings back and forth quite a bit. I saw what I thought was a pole as it didn’t move, but when I turned and came towards it my light shone on a person standing still in the trail. He wasn’t doing anything weird, I think just standing to see what I did. But man he gave me a jump! He was just walking a lap as I saw him towards the end of the run again but he didn’t scare me that time!

For what it is worth my 200’s were:

47

52

56

1:03

1:11

59

1:23

1:00

57

55

52

53

54

I’d say that’s pretty consistent given the hills. I know at least one or two ended part way up a hill! And a few of them were steeper. My 30 seconds recovery was all walking. I started jogging when it beeped 5 seconds left.

Overall 4.26 miles in 41:39.

Then… I rode to work! I didn’t push the pace at all, but still was pretty tired. During after-school it was gorgeous – right around 70 degrees and we rode just about 4 miles. The kids are so funny as we rode along Bassett Creek they were excited about the ducks, going under a bridge, and saying that so and so lived this way. We ended up stopping at a park in the next city over and the gets were all amazed at where we were!! So fun! My brand new rider did better than some of the more experienced riders but I think a lot of them were complaining about sore butts and legs! I had a nice leisurely ride home too. Lots of people were out and about considering the nice afternoon!!

I’m calling it 15 miles for the day.

04142019 – Run

I had to almost drag myself out of bed, even after sleeping in! I knew I needed to run today and part of me really didn’t want to. But I made myself get up. It was sunny and around 30f. I did a little bit of the dynamic warmup and headed out the door. I had meant to map out the route I was planning to make sure it would be far enough for my 8k run at 90% of TT pace. I wasn’t 100% sure how it would work out distance-wise but it wasn’t too bad.

I ran down 12th and most of the sidewalks had been shoveled with a few that were a mess of re-frozen snow that was super lumpy from footprints. At about Morgan I stopped and did some more of the dynamic warm-up and started the 8k. My planned pace was 8:38 miles. But I forgot that my watch was now in kilometers and I hadn’t made the conversion to per K pace. Ugh. Oh well, I also realized that for whatever reason my screen wasn’t actually showing my pace anyways, just distance and elapsed time. I could use the free run for the warm-up and then switch to the virtual pacer, but I like having it all in one run on Strava. Oh well, so I just by feel. I turned on Van White Blvd and then onto the Cedar Lake Trail. Any parts that hadn’t been plowed were still snowy so I stayed on the bike trail. I took the stairs from Cedar Lake Trail up to the Wirth trail and then took the main Wirth trail all the way home. My 8K finished right at Wirth and 55 so the distance worked out pretty well. Overall distance was 6.73 miles in 1:00:15.

My 8K was 42:01 or 8:27 pace so a little bit faster than I was supposed to be going. That is 5:15 per kilometer pace. My goal pace for this run was 8:38/Mi or 5:21/K.

So overall that feels pretty good!

04062019 – Run

Today was the first time trial of the season. A 6K Time Trial that was supposed to be treated as a race. It was a little hard to build it up that way, but I did put out good overall effort. I actually slept in which was really nice! And was able to get the run in between periods of rain. It misted a little bit, but not too bad. It was around 46f. I finally switched my watch to kilometers and set up a 6k interval. I didn’t have a specific course laid out, but thought that I could add bits and pieces here and there to the loop around Wirth lake from home which is approximately a 5k.

After the warm-up I increased my pace and tried to hold it steady. I wandered around a little bit but ended up basically running the same route as yesterday which was my own fault but a little annoying! My overall 6K time was 31:30 which was slower than I thought it would be but I’ll take it and build from here. This was 8:27 per mile average.

Overall distance was 5.09 miles in 47:41.

04052019 – Run

On tap today was yesterday’s missed long interval workout. I struggled with what workout to do, but opted for this as I know the progression will be more intervals. It was 4×800 at 6K pace with 3 minutes of rest between. I ran into Wirth again, but stayed on the paved trails as much as possible so that I wouldn’t get stuck in the mud! It was dark and a little foggy/misty and about 36f.

The splits were:

5:11

4:21

4:11

3:55

I like seeing them get faster and also know that terrain played a difference in them a little bit too, the first one was pretty much all uphill in mud. The last one was pretty much flat pavement! I felt good and didn’t feel like I was running all out.

Overall 4.95 miles in 49:36.