First "River Run" (and Longest Run) in 8 Months!

My first month back to running has all been STRAIGHT runs - starting on the treadmill at the gym, and then going pretty much straight down my road and back the last few weeks that the gym has been closed.

Yesterday, I was brave enough to venture to the river. I'd mentioned these points before, but I had been wary to hit my ol' stomping grounds for 3 reasons: more turns (a bit hard on my sore foot), more hills (questionable on my sore foot), and more people (when trying to keep a "social distance"). But I went out early on a cool/cloudy morning when the day was supposed to get brighter/nicer, so I figured there wouldn't be many people out. And I was ready to test my foot/ankle a BIT.

So I ran the 5+ mile "Franklin/Lake Street" loop:

5.11 miles total in 38:00 (7:26 pace).

The east side (St. Paul side) of River Road was pretty dead, as it usually is. The west side (MPLS side) was a bit busier, but they converted the northbound lane of River Road to be foot/bike traffic. So I ran in the road near the cones in the middle. It reminded me a LOT of running at the Minneapolis Halloween Half Marathon in 2017. Here's a photo from the start of the Greenway from that race report:

The difference yesterday was that the center of the road was 4' construction bollards
and they were much much closer together than the cones pictured at the race above.


"Close up" of my Garmin data showing me in the road and not on the trails next to the road.

My foot was a LITTLE sore around 3.5 miles in, but then it went away. And it felt fine the rest of the day. So I might have just been over-thinking my sore foot.

Four weeks ago, I was running 2.5 - 3 miles. The next week, I was up to 3-4 miles. And the last few weeks I've been just over 4 miles/run. I'm not going to keep going 5+ miles now, but it was a nice test that everything worked OK. Back to my regularly scheduled 4.x mile run tomorrow.