Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!: June 2022

First Long Run with Henry!

>> Wednesday, June 29, 2022

The boys have been biking with Mama as she runs for the last year or so. But it just hasn't worked out to do it with me - I tend to do most of my workouts before they get up. I knew once summer started, I'd have a better chance to bring Henry on a run with me, but it still hadn't worked for the first 3 weeks: three weeks ago I ran early, two weeks ago it was about to storm so it wouldn't be smart to bring the boys with me, and last week I ran really early while camping.

But on Monday, I posted this:

First time Henry biked with me during my long run! We went 10.5 miles (with the middle 4 miles around 6:10 pace), and we saw 3 turkeys, both bald eagles (Mr. and Mrs.) in the nest I like to watch across the river, and had a close encounter with a LARGE coyote! (There have been murmurs of a coywolf in the neighborhood, and what we saw was around the size of a German shepherd, so it was either a very large coyote or possibly a coywolf!)

(I wasn't able to get my phone up in time to get a photo of the coyote/coywolf, but we both got a good look before it sleeked back into the trees. We both said it was about the size of a German Shepard, and later we looked up that German Shepards are 49-88 lbs and coyotes are 15-46 lbs. So either this was an off-the-charts large urban coyote [which is very possibly] or some sort of hybrid.)

And I posted these 5 pics:

Heading down the Marshall hill around a 1/2 mile in.

Riding along West River Parkway in MPLS around mile 3.

Crossing back to the east side of the river after a few hard miles after mile 7.

Near the old Shriner's Hospital during mile 8.

Back up Marshall hill.

My left achilles was still tight and sore from my interval workout on Friday, so I kept telling Henry that we might have to cut the run short, but it didn't act up at all! I got in 10 miles and felt OK!

Only 4 "at pace" miles instead of my usual 6 as I didn't want to over-stress
my already sore heel. Pace miles 3 to 7 (splits 6 through 14 on this map).

I also snapped this pic before the selfie with Henry on the bridge above.

Henry was a champ and did great! He would call out my speed at times: 8.x mph during my warm-up, and occasionally over 10 mph during my "pace" miles. He said his legs got a little tired coming up the hill at the end, but I told him they'd be tired if we did that hill right away as well as it's a good-sized hill!

So this workout was not great for a long run, but I felt good because my heel didn't act up any more! It was a bit sore later in the day, but not as bad as the day before, so that's a WIN after a long run! And I saw my chiro later in the day for some ultrasound and some light A.R.T. on my achilles. *IF* it keeps feeling OK, I'd like to hit the track in a few days for another short/hard interval workout before the mile race in just over 2 weeks.

Some 200s on the Track

>> Tuesday, June 28, 2022

A few weeks ago, I hit the track for some 800s and 400s. And last week I REALLY shortened them up: I did 12x200 with 45 sec rest on the track.

Some potential drips on the way before sunrise.

A selfie after my warm-up before starting the heart of the workout.

I'm trying to be prepared for a 1 mile road race in a few weeks, so that's why I did some super short track work. I REALLY didn't know what to expect for this workout. I knew that 4 years ago (as I was also trying to run a sub-5:00 mile which I DID in 4:54 [4:57 on my watch]), I did this same workout with an average of 0:34.4/200. Knowing I hit sub-5:00 in a mile later that year made me shoot for around that 34.4 average again. I had hoped to be a little faster, but had no reason to think that.

I ran the first one in 0:35.2 and was a little bummed. I over-compensated on #2 and ran a faster 0:33.0. And the great news is that except for the first one, I ran the rest all faster than my average time 4 years ago! Here's what I ran:

0:35.2
0:33.0
0:32.7
0:33.0
0:33.0
0:33.9
0:33.9
0:34.2
0:33.6
0:34.2
0:34.2
0:33.2

= 0:33.675 ave

One of the rests was 0:47 (instead of 0:45) because of timing with someone else doing laps on the track, and another was 0:43 for the same reason. But the rest of the "rests" were 0:45 or 0:46.

That average of 0:33.675 was faster than 4 years ago by about 0.7 sec, but still nearly a second slower than when I first did the workout 9 years ago. I was happy with that!!

Lots of 200s.

My pace chart is to be expected...

... as is my heart rate.

It's interesting to see how my HR is still climbing at the end of these
short intervals, and how it often peaks after the running is over.

For how nasty this felt, I spent no time in zone 5.

I realized I had missed the "so short it hardly feels like a workout" sort of a workout. Afterall, the "guts" of this workout was under 2 miles even including the walking between the intervals. And the GOOD NEWS was that my legs still felt OK the rest of the day! But the BAD NEWS was that my left Achilles suddenly got tight the following day. So I'm not sure if I'll be throwing in my 2 more planned speedy track days before the 1 mile race in just under 3 weeks or not - I don't want to blow up and injure myself before the race!

Decent Training Week

>> Monday, June 27, 2022

Last week was the first week I got in 3 legitimate trainer/bike rides in about the past 7 weeks (with 1 exception that had a shorter 3rd ride). Here's what last week looked like:

I did my long run for the week on Sunday, June 19th (Father's Day) so that's why the running looks weak. And then I did some speed work on Friday that I think I'll write about tomorrow.

My strength work was soild as I had 3 good upper body days on Tue, Thur, and Saturday (which has been rare lately). It ended up being a big strength week.

And my trainer rides were decent: Tuesday was a SOLID ride where I tried something new and did a normal 3x10 min efforts (it's not uncommon to do 4x10 min efforts), and then ended with some shorter, punchier work: 5x90 sec efforts. That was fun. Thursday I took it a BIT easier because I was planning hard intervals the next day, but still did 5x5 min efforts. And then Saturday was mostly easy with a few 10 and 5 min efforts just thrown in for fun.

Back tomorrow with notes from a quick interval workout!

My Wife's First OWS in Years (and Taking a Friend)

>> Saturday, June 25, 2022

My wife has a friend who is doing her first triathlon TOMORROW. She was nervous about the open water swim part of the race (been there), so my wife took her to a local lake last week. It was my wife's first OWS since her last race in 2019, and probably her last swim since then PERIOD - she only swims when she has to. Here they are last week: