Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!: May 2025

Long Ride with Snake

>> Monday, May 19, 2025

The bike trail under I-35E along Shepard has been closed for a few weeks. And so is the river crossing at I-35E. I've been missing out on my favorite semi-hilly ride, along with the "tempo loop" that I like to do as a "check in" of my bike speed.

Last week, I checked on the progress (it LOOKS like it could open soon!), and then biked back up to the Hwy 5 river crossing. The only problem with that is you have to dismount, walk down 40 steps with your bike to the bridge, bike across the short bridge, and then walk up 40+ steps on the other side to get back to biking. And then cross the high and long Mendota Bridge which can be wicked on windy days! But the good news is that after doing all of that, I'm back on my favorite semi-hilly course.

The bridge that's annoying to bike across.

The fun thing was that as I was coming up the far side (the south side) the first time, a garter snake caught my eye next to the steps as I was hauling my bike up:

Hi little fella!

Close-up of his face.

That was a moderate 33+ miler when all was said and done: 19.7 mph average with just a few bursts of effort.

That was the last day it was WARM last week, and then it was 40 degrees and super windy when it was time to bike this past weekend. I stayed on the trainer for that and just did 4x10 efforts in the middle of 100 minutes of riding.

It should finally warm up again this weekend, so I can finally plant all of my started-from-seed plants in our veggie garden. It was 70-80 a few days last week, and since then we've had lows in the 40s and highs in the 50s.

Crappy, Crappy Long Run

>> Saturday, May 17, 2025

I was really due for a crappy run, and I had it on Monday. I mentioned that my intervals over a week ago felt sluggish and that I had a "training readiness" of 3. And I mentioned in my recent "week in review" post that I've been dragging and need to ease back a little.

I started my run and upped the pace (for 6 miles) as I usually do after 2.5 miles of warming up. But I just couldn't get the times to drop, even though I was working. My first 3 half-mile splits were over 3:10, which is very unusual lately. I just couldn't get my times down. After 3 miles, I knew I wasn't going to get to mile 6, so I decided to only go 5 (and my last 2 miles were a bit faster because I was happy I was skipping a 6th harder mile). So the half-mile splits of the harder 5 miles in the middle of this long run looked like this:

3:18, 3:12, 3:14, 3:09, 3:07, 3:08, 3:05, 3:02, 3:03, 3:04 = 31:27 for 5 miles (6:17.40 pace).

6:23.67 pace for the first 3, and 6:08.00 pace for the last 2.

6:58 overall pace, 6:17 pace for 5 faster miles

If I go back to mid-March, here's what each of my weekly long runs looked like:

- 3/17: 6:48 overall pace, 5:59 pace for 6 faster miles
- 3/24: 6:54 overall pace, 6:13 pace for 6 faster miles
- 3/31: 6:37 overall pace, 5:59 pace for 6 faster miles (treadmill)
- 4/07: 6:56 overall pace, 6:12 pace for 6 faster miles
- 4/14: 6:49 ovearll pace, 6:08 pace for 6 faster miles
- 4/21: 6:58 overall pace, 6:10 pace for 5.3 faster miles (before a race)
- 4/28: skipped because of the Get in Gear 10K
- 5/05: 6:48 overall pace, 6:04 pace for 6 faster miles

So of those 7 previous weekly runs, 2 had pace miles that were barely sub-6:00, 2 had pace miles at 6:0X, and 3 were in the lower 6:1Xs. This week's run was in the upper 6:1Xs... not a huge difference, but it felt SOOOOO crappy.

The next morning, I woke up with another low "training readiness" score telling me to rest:

I went for a slightly easier swim workout, and I was able to get my "training readiness" to slowly rise throughout the week! I'm thinking next week will have some more rest days!