Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!

400+ Mile PR Bike Month!

>> Thursday, September 03, 2026

August was one for the record books. This was NICE:

• SWIM: 6,810 yards (odd yardage because of 1 swim in a 25 meter pool)
• BIKE: 413.63 miles (A PR since IM training... maybe a lifetime PR!)
• RUN: 110.60 miles (top 3 month)
• STRENGTH TIME: 60 hours and 23 minutes (top 3 month)

Swimming wasn't special. I skipped a swim while on a family vacation. Nothing amazing here.

Biking was HUGE!! I don't have my old paper records from when I was Ironman training in 2007, so I might have had a bigger July and/or August 19 years ago, but it's been my biggest month since then! I had a 130 mile week on a family vacation (also written about here), and just had solid rides all month.

I hit 400.7 miles 2 years ago in August, but that's the closest I've come to this 413+ mile total. But back in August of 2024, I was commuting around town on my bike a lot - it was less "training." Really only about 225 miles of those 400 were "training" 2 years ago, whereas nearly 400 of 413 were "traninig" this year! They were SOLID RIDES! (Sidenote: I still want to commute more on my bike, but just noting there's a difference between having a high mileage month with lots of easy commuter miles vs working hard on my tri bike for more "real" rides.)

Running was also good! As far as I can tell, my biggest month running was January of 2016 with 116.49 miles, and then last December with 113.68 miles. So this MIGHT be my 3rd biggest month since high school with 110.60 miles! Ramping up for the TC 10 mile again!! (Speaking of which... I looked back to [and actually FOUND] a "month in review" from August of 2010 when I was working with Coach Jen to hit my big sub-60 goal at the TC 10 Mile later that year, and I saw that I ran 108 miles that August, so I've out-done that month!)

And I think strength time was my 3rd highest ever too! I had a few more hours in May of this year, and I noted in that post that 2nd place was April with 60 hours and 42 minutes. So 60 hours and 23 minutes is just behind that 2nd place from April, so that appears to be lifetime top-3 months of strength time all with in the last 5 months! (Slightly artificially high because I try to do an extra 20 minutes of PT shoulder exercises about 3x/week since hurting my shoulder in Decemeber and starting PT earlier this year.)

Trying to keep this going for the TC 10 Mile. I'll be back within the next week with a recap of how that's been going (with notes from old "Coach Jen" workouts).

Semi-Wordless Wednesday: Marathon Training and Cross Country

>> Wednesday, September 02, 2026

My wife had her first 20-miler of this round of marathon training this past Friday (as she had to work the weekend). I know how much she hates running alone, so I dropped of Charlie on his bike to meet up with her for her final 9 miles:

Dropping Charlie off at Lake Harriet and Minnehaha Creek.

Some sugar to finish the workout.

And then that evening, Henry had his first cross country meet of the year. He went out hard (when he usually goes out easy), and suffered. My wife and I have been trying to get him to try to go out a bit harder, as usually the gun goes off and he's immediately among the last 5 even though he'll finish near the middle. If he could start a bit harder, his results would be a LOT better.

He ran a 23:03 and was 5th (out of 6) for his team last year at this race.

This year, he ran 19:51, was 2nd for his team (out of like 15 runners as it's a sort of "pre-season" race where you can have more than 7 runners), and finished 10th overall!!!

Hurtin'!!

Good Long Run, and HORRIBLE Tempo Run

>> Monday, August 31, 2026

Two runs last week couldn't have been more different.

Both of these were old "Coach Jen workouts" from when she trained me in 2010 to my first sub-60 TC 10 Mile. And then I reused many of her workouts 2 years ago to break 60 for the 2nd time.

First, I had a decent long run on Monday. It's very similar to my normal long runs (6 harder miles in the middle, negative split 95% of the time), but it was a bit shorter and harder: 5 descending miles in the middle finishing FAST. I used my half-mile splits to make sure I was descending each full mile - I didn't care about perfectly descending every HALF-mile split, but I just made sure to make each MILE faster. Coach Jen's notes said to hit the first of those hard 5 miles at 6:30 pace and then make sure the final 2 were sub-6:00. So that's what I did:

3:14 + 3:15 = 6:30
3:02 + 3:09 = 6:12
3:05 + 3:03 = 6:09
2:57 + 2:53 = 5:50
2:55 + 2:51 = 5:46

That ended up being 10 sec faster than what I did in 2024, and 9 sec faster than what I did in 2010!!

Building from mile 2.5 to mile 7.5.

Half mile splits: fast from the split 5 (the bridge) to split 15.

Second, I had a horrible tempo run on Friday. It was meant to be a descending 4-mile tempo run. (Coach Jen liked to train me to get faster throughout every run.) In 2024, I started with my first mile just over 6:00, and then my final 2 miles were sub-5:50. But that speed didn't show up this time. I just could NOT find another gear on Friday. I'd speed up to where I thought I should be, but then I'd have to back-off 5 seconds later as I couldn't maintain that pace. I'd had my biggest month of biking since at least August of 2007 (19 years!), and I was finishing up 3 weeks of running that were 3 of my 4 highest mileage weeks all year. I think my legs were just gassed.

So instead of starting just over 6:00 and then dropping fast like 2 years ago, I started at 6:21 and was only able to drop to 6:01 by the final mile. D'oh. My splits over that descending tempo run were 6:21, 6:16, 6:10, and 6:01... so at least they were descending. But they were slow. I ran those 4 miles nearly 90 seconds slower last week than I did 2 years ago.

Hard from split 5 through split 12.

Can't win em' all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Big Training Week Last Week

>> Saturday, August 29, 2026

Here's what last week looked like:

The biggest number for that week was the 26.4 miles of running. A normal / good week for me is usually 23.x miles. I think I've only been at 25 miles or more twice this year, and once was last week. TC 10 Mile training is ramping up!!

In workouts that I've posted about, you can see my decent run of 2x10 minute efforts that was Monday, my OK speed workout up north that was Friday (and it was LONGER which really added to the week), and then just a basic hilly bike ride that was Saturday to cap off the decent week.

I missed / skipped Thursday's upper body workout because we were gone, and the hotel we stayed in just had a bike, elliptical, treadmill, and 3 sets of SUPER light weight dumbbells on the white plastic shelf under the broken TV:

Also my Wednesday and Friday "legs and core" workouts weren't as great as normal. It was a weird week. But I still got in about 21.5 hours of training (slightly below "average," but still not "bad"), and my run total was HIGH!