Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!: August 2021

Rice Lake State Park and Mountain Biking at Kaplan's Woods

>> Monday, August 30, 2021

Before the boys head back to school this week, we explored Rice Lake State Park yesterday. For us, it was MN state park #64 out of 71.

Then the boys and I hit some single track mountain bike loops at Kaplan’s Woods. They LOVED that! I was really impressed with how well they did, and they can't wait to mountain bike again.

The photo my wife took before us boys headed into the woods.

A couple of shaky selfies over my shoulder at the boys riding behind me.

There were a few small bridges made out of branches...

... and then this bigger one over some rocks that the boys loved!

Riding on the wood chips back to the car.

The 3 of us did 2 loops (of about a mile), and then Henry and I did a 3rd loop faster without Charlie. Henry was working that last loop! There are 6 more miles of harder trails out there, and we've love to come back at try the next level (although I bet all 3 of us would be off our bikes a lot to navigate jumps/branches/obstacles).

Shorter Runs This Week

>> Saturday, August 28, 2021

After 3 weeks of being happy that I logged over 20 miles of running, I dropped down to 16.7 miles this week. As I mentioned in Thursday's post, I had a long run on Monday that got shortened because of some calf/achilles pain.

And then Wednesday's easy run was short as well: just 3 miles on the treadmill. I used the treadmill for just that purpose: to hop off whenever things started to hurt.

But luckily, yesterday's run went fine. It was on the treadmill again (so I could stop when pain showed up), but I got 5.1 miles before deciding to quit - NOT because of any pain! So here's my week so far:

After my painful short run on Wednesday, I just did an easy and short spin on Thursday. So this week will go down as an easier and shorter week all around.

Next week's long run will be totally by feel, and it will be on the treadmill. (Boring.) I'll cut it short again if pain starts to creep in, but I'll be on the treadmill so I can stop whenever and not have to run 2 more miles because I'm still far from home. I'll be aiming for 10 miles, so we'll see how far I can go.