Three Workouts Worth Mentioning

NUMBER ONE: BIKE

I did my first real "harder effort" bike ride last weekend. I headed out for my "normal 16 mile loop," but I added on some fun stuff. I hit some hills along the Big Rivers Trail, and then I biked along the Mississippi to THEE Ohio Hill. I told myself I was going to go UP Ohio, DOWN Smith, and UP Ramsey Hill! I hadn't ridden up Ohio or Ramsey by themselves yet this year, so heck... why not ride both about a mile apart on the same ride! :)

Ohio looks likes this:

(This map is from an older post about doing intervals - it's NOT what I did last weekend.
But just note the elevation chart!)

So I got up Ohio, went down Smith, got up Ramsey, and finished at home with over 26 miles and an 18.1 mph average. (It was 19.1 before I started the 2 hills...)


NUMBER TWO: SWIM

Yes, I actually hit the pool! I've been avoiding it because (1) I don't care for swimming, and (2) I felt like kicking was aggravating my sore foot (I'll talk more about this in the near future). But I went for a quick swim about 2 weeks ago, and it felt OK. So I thought I'd push a pace a bit more on this swim and (1) see if my foot still hurt and (2) see how much "swim fitness" I'd lost because of my 2400 yards of swimming so far in 2012. Seriously. And I only had a total of 6800 yards since MID-AUGUST of last year! That's over 7 months, people! Crap.

I ended up doing 1500 yards at a tempo pace, and here were my 100 yard splits:

1:29, 1:36, 2:30 (150), 0:51 (50), 1:40, 1:40, 1:38, 1:39, 1:39, 1:38, 1:38, 1:38, 1:36, 1:36, 1:34

24:27 total
1:37.80 average / 100 yards

That was NOT as bad as I thought it was going to be! I mean, the swim workout HURT, but I was thinking I'd be swimming 1:45s! I was happy with that! Time to try to hit the pool a little more often!


NUMBER THREE: RUN

On Thursday night, I picked up Henry from daycare, we played a bit and had a snack, and then we hit the River Road Trail for 2 x 2 mile intervals! I'd never ran any sort of intervals with him (just some 800 "pick-ups" a few days before a race), but I figured since he raced with me last weekend, he'd be OK on these intervals. We did a warm-up mile, and then we ran our first 2 mile in this:

(0.5 mile, 0.5 mile = 1 mile)

2:51, 3:00 = 5:51
2:54, 2:51 = 5:45

11:36 two mile total

That was hard and fast, and I didn't know if I could do another interval like that. I was happy with the effort I was putting into that workout!

When I slowed up quick at the end of that interval, Henry looked up at me and laughed:

He loved the speed!

I walked around with him for 3 minutes, and then I tried to hit the final 2 mile interval hard. Part way into that interval, Henry passed out! (Just like he did part way into last weekend's race!) Here's what I ran for the second interval:

2:48, 2:58 = 5:46
2:57, 2:54 = 5:51

11:37 two mile total

Nice! I only gave up 1 second overall! And when I finished that one, I snapped another photo of Henry:

I caught my breath for a few minutes and then logged another easy 6+ miles with Henry as a cool-down (all as he slept). I've logged over 100 miles running with Henry in 2012 already!!