Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!

Starting, Pausing, and Re-Starting TC 10 Mile Training (with a Hilly Moderate Run)

>> Thursday, August 06, 2026

As I mentioned at the bottom of my post about a run with a CRAZY HIGH dew point, I have (loosely) started training for the 2026 TC 10 Mile. I tried to kick that off a week ago with a hilly moderate run... a training run I remember having from Coach Jen as I was leading up to the 2010 TC 10 Mile where I PRed with 59:05. I hadn't looked back on my training from that year (or from 2024 where I used a similar version of those training runs) partly because Beginner Triathlete stopped hosting training logs and it's much harder for me to look up old workouts again. But I knew I had a hilly mid-week run in my first week of training.

I looped around some hilly areas between my house and the river:

Same map, but showing arrows pointing UPhill.

Up and down all the time.

Turkeys on my run - mama had a bad limp!

Normally, my easy mid-week runs are around 5.5 to 6 miles with less than 200 feet of elevation change:

A mid-week run from a few weeks back.

But this run was of "normal" length but 2.5x hillier:

Just an easy/moderate run like this made my left calf feel very odd for a few days. I thought I did a basic training run that ended up canceling my 10 Mile training just as it was starting.

But it held up for some intervals 2 days later, and after taking it easy all weekend, it held up for a decent long run the following Monday! Whew! So I need to look back at those old training plans and see if I can re-start some training workouts from back then. But back with a bit about those intervals and that long run shortly.

Final Post-Race 1-Mile Thoughts

>> Wednesday, August 05, 2026

Five final post-race notes from the Raspberry Run 1 Mile:

• ONE: I forgot to mention how my boys did!! Charlie (my youngest) knew his time wasn't going to be anything special. He ran a 7:32 last year, and then 6:52 at a track meet a few months ago, but hasn't ran much since. He finished with a 7:44 as the 36th kid 19-and-under.

Henry has been running a bit more as he's ramping up some milage for cross country, but hates to run hard (I've been trying to get through to him that getting in some HARD workouts will make him faster!). He was quite thrilled with his 5:33, which was 0:28 faster than last year, and just a few seconds off his 1600 track PR from a few months ago! And he was 4th out of 123 in the 19-and-under age group!

• TWO: I think this was the fastest segement ever recorded on my Garmin. In last year's race report, my final few hundredths to the finish line were at 3:27/mile pace. In this year's race report, it showed I was at 3:26/mile pace. Movin'!!

• THREE: This was my first "top 3" age group finish at this race! I was 3rd in the 45-49 age group. First and second in my age group were both 49, so I was close to topping my age group! Usually I'm just within the top-10 in my age group at this race. Pre-race, I talked to a triathlon stud (Brooks G) who ended up finishing in 4:48... he was one of the two 49-year-old men to beat me. I had a 46 and a 48-year-old just behind me, so I was close to being back in 5th in my age group. (I would have been 8th if I was 0:22 slower.)

• FOUR: A former (and soon-to-be-again) Olympian beat me by 9 seconds. Dakotah Popehn was at the race, and she ran in Wave 2 (the non-USATF wave) and finished in 4:47. (I posted about her Olympic debut 2 years ago.) Three years ago, I beat Dakotah by ONE spot with my 4:52. But she beat me heartily this year. This year, she would have still been behind the 2 female leaders in Wave 1 who were shown in my post of race photos who finished 4:43 and 4:44.

Dakotah in a screenshot from a video of the race.

• FIVE: My "age graded results" were decent. I'm over 80% more often now that I'm getting older.

I am NOT running any of those equivalent times EVER again! This is insanity.

(Often, using SHORT race distances to predict LONGER races for me are wildly fast. And the opposite is also true: using a LONGER race to predict a SHORT race will come up quite slow. I'm always faster at the shorter races than these things expect.)

Anyway, I was super happy and surprised to be sub-5:00 again. Possibly the last time ever? Here's my race report if you missed it, and here are some race photos.

A Gross PR: Highest Dew Point While Running

>> Monday, August 03, 2026

My last long run was HORRIBLE.

I came down stairs just before sunrise, and there was condensation on our front porch windows. I'd NEVER seen that before in the nearly 20 years we've lived in this house:

The dining room windows were COVERED too.

I knew it would be a thick run. And slow.

I opened the door and was SLAPPED with the humidity. I'd never felt that before. It was 6 a.m. and 80 degrees, with a "feel like" temp of 90 already THAT early in the morning:

I felt OK on my warm-up. Actually quite good. But I followed a set of foot prints for a MILE that were wet. If you walk through damp grass, you might leave a few foot prints. If you jumped in a pool fully clothed, you would leave a few more foot prints. But to leave a track for a mile means you are producing a lot of your own fluid! I hope this guy survived!

These 2 photos are about a half-mile apart!

I cut my run a little short (10 miles instead of 11.5, and only 4 harder miles instead of shooting for 5 [and normally doing 6]), and made a point to test myself mentally every now and then to make sure my brain was still functioning and it wasn’t crossing into a dangerous zone. (If my brain started to act up, would I still have enough brain power to recognize that my brain was acting up? That was my concern!) At mile 9 (which was 1 mile from home), I first started to get a little confused, and was glad I was nearly done. (I expected a major landmark on my normal long run route to be 0.05 miles BEFORE mile 9, but it was 0.05 miles AFTER, and I couldn’t figure it out until I was done running. ALL of my landmarks were after each mile after my turnaround on this run, but at mile 9, I got that mixed up and didn’t know what was happening.) Lost a few good brain cells that morning, but I survived.

I got home and saw the weather on the morning news: we nearly broke a dew point record that morning, with our dew point being 81° before sunrise. The all-time recorded high in Minnesota is a dew point of 82°.

For reference.

From the National Weather Service. WILD.

Here's where I took off my shorts:

I don't wish to do another run like that in a while...

p.s. Here's a post from 2 years ago talking about dew point vs humidity.

p.p.s. I've loosely started (specific) TC 10 Mile training, and this run was the first official run. Not a good start...

Interval Ride (on Detour)

>> Sunday, August 02, 2026

I posted about a detour on my tempo ride a few weeks back, and I headed back out on those smooth detour trails for some intervals 2 days after that tempo ride. I warmed up around home for a while, and then I did 4x5 mile intervals with about 3:00 easy riding in between.

It was a busy morning on the trail with a few BIG running groups out there. Like a hundred people split into smaller packs. It was WILD. I'd never come across something like that before on my rides. That made me adjust some of my rest times either getting up to speed a bit early, or waiting until getting past a big group before starting an interval.

My intervals were splits 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8:

East of split #8 is a freshly repaved trail, and I turned
around before it was the rough cruddy trail (at Randolph).

Here they are highlighted to see: in red, orange, green, and blue.

Yes, intervals #2 and #4 (the orange and the blue) were very similar on the map, but I was held up a BIT by big groups of runners in #2 (before they dispersed a bit for the day), and #4 didn't have me weaving under the 35E tunnel, so that's why #2 was my slowest and #4 was my fastest: