Today was a tempo ride on the bike. I started off at a relaxed pace heading south. Today I used the 494 bridge to cross the Minnesota River to Mendota. From there I road the Big River Trail and crossed the Mississippi River on the 35E bridge and headed back towards Minneapolis on the trail next to Shepherd Rd. I crossed the Mississippi again at Lake Street and added a short cool down section to get back to my car. It was a nice ride.
I wasn’t 100% sure if the Big River Trail would be flooded or not, but the section I rode on was up off the water pretty far. So I didn’t have any troubles. I opted to ride on the bike trail instead of the potholed East River Road in St. Paul. It was humid but mid-70’s so not too bad. I ended with 18.5 miles in 1:11:14.
The threat of rain or a storm hung around all day and I wasn’t sure if we’d have swim lessons or lap swimming today. The storm broke apart and went around the metro so we got them in! I decided to do a ladder today. I did 50, 100, 150, 150, 100, 50, 25, 25. Then I did some drills I did 25 with closed fists, then 25 with only my right arm, 25 with only my left arm, and finished with 25 with closed fists. I’m doing better with bilateral breathing, but I think I’m not getting enough air when I turn to the right. After 100 yards I pretty much can’t do it. I swam a total of 750 yards.
I did a CrossFit style workout this morning from earlier in the week on PSE Pro. First it was lunges with the barbell on my back. 5 on each side. Then a monster walk 14 steps on each leg. Followed by 10 hamstring bridges on each leg. For 3 rounds. I was feeling it in my glutes!
Then the MetCon was 2 6 minute AMRAPs with a 3 minute rest between. It was supposed to be with two kettlebells but I only have one of each weight. I ended up using the barbell as I didnt have any dumbbells to meet the thrusters at a challenging weight. So I did 75#. The first round was 6 deadlifts, 4 cleans, 2 thrusters. The second round was 2 thrusters, 4 cleans, and 6 deadlifts. This was a gasser. I did 6 rounds plus 10 on the first set and 6 rounds on the second. The thrusters felt easier on the second round, but I was obviously slower.
Not sure what happened to my watch during the swim. I was in the middle of my 3rd 100 and it vibrated. When I got to the end it wasn’t recording anything. When you look at Strava it says I took 8 hours to swim 200 yards! I’m using the Garmin Connect screenshot because it shows the CrossFit workout too.
I did 4×100 yards and 2×50 yards. Continuing to work on bilateral breathing and not breathing every stroke.
Today’s bike called for some interval work again. It is hard to know how far I can go in the time allotted. The kids have a 90 minute class, so I have just under that. I had forgotten that the bike computer wasn’t working until I started out again. It is not connecting the wireless sensors – probably just a battery. I took a risk and headed out toward the Midtown Greenway and was going to hit the lakes and back on Minnehaha Parkway. I was hoping that I’d finish the loop in time and actually did it with a little time to spare! The workout was 6 rounds of 2:00, 1:00, :30. Again the Vivoactive was great for this workout.
The only error was on that I created as I stopped the intervals a few times if I was sitting at a stop light waiting to cross the street. There are not a ton of street crossings, but they and some congested trail spaces came during intervals which was hard. I probably should have been riding on the roads instead of bike trails, due to my speed but that’s ok! I also missed that the path split and went under a bridge that I had to wait to cross the street on! Oops. It was a fun ride as I haven’t ridden that part in a good while. The Minnehaha Creek was still pretty high and the trail was flooded over at one point. But not too high, just enough to get you wet! I did switch over to the road between Nokomis and Hiawatha and then hit several lights, but I was pretty much done at that point.
I got 21 segment PR’s out 35 segments on Strava so that’s some good work! The actual interval distances were all over the place depending on where I was on the loop.
Total miles were 17 miles in 1:07.
Back to some lap swimming! Today was a lot less drama! No TV cameras. I accumulated 850 yards again doing some 50’s and 100’s and got in a couple of 150’s too. My bilateral breathing is getting better, but I start to get winded I go back to left sided breathing only and with every other stroke.
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!
I went to the 5:30am CrossFit class at Solcana. It was hard to get up so early, but nice to get the workout in! The warmup/gymnastics was accumulating 15 strict toes to shoulder. I did sets of 3 and it took a little while, especially with the strict designation!
The MetCon was a 30 minute AMRAP! It included an Iron Madien Crawl (bear crawl and pulling the 80# sandbag the length of gym), 10 pullups, Goblet Carry to corner and back, 10 pushups, grass loop run, and then 1 minute rest! I tried the 70# kettlebell for the Goblet Carry and I was able to get it up, but obviously not able to walk with it! The 53# was pretty heavy and I decided to go with that, but wow was it harder than I thought it would be! I used a box for the pushups, after Murph I think that was a good call for the longer work session. The 1 minute rest was a nice addition! I did 4 rounds and 16 reps (so just into the pushups). That was a good burner!
Later in the afternoon we went with friends to Hidden Beach. There were 3 adults and 6 kids so we took turns playing/supervising the kids and doing some swimming. It was a little windy so there was some chop on the lake which got to be quite a bit. And outside of the swim area was a good amount of seaweed so that wasn’t ideal. I guesstimated 400 yards of swimming, no real clue though! We had fun watching the clouds roll in and out wondering if it was going to do anything or not!
