Two Poor Long Runs

My long runs haven't been going well since pushing the distance after my calf injury in early April.

Nearly 4 weeks ago, I had a very weird long run as I was building back distance AND I had just had a colonoscopy... like 3 hours before my run. It was 10 miles total with 4 hard miles in the middle at 6:31 pace. Yikes. Super short and slow for me.

Nearly 3 weeks ago, I had a pretty normal long run! It still wasn't fast being it was 11 mile total with the middle 6 hard miles at 6:16 pace. That's not "fast," but it's a pretty standard long run. I was feeling good about that, honestly!

But then the last 2 have been rotten. Almost 2 weeks ago, I ran 11.2 miles with the middle 6 hard miles at 6:24 pace. Yikes. Not great. And for no reason.

And earlier this week, I did 11.2 miles with the middle 6 hard miles at 6:25 pace. I was just unable to find another gear. I maybe had a slight excuse this past week because the air was THICK: it was cool, but also humid and foggy in spots:

View of the Mississippi River once I got there


Noticing the fog cutting off the bottom of the downtown MPLS skyline in the distance.


A few "thick" areas during my run.


Fogged up glasses and nasty hair from the thick air after finishing those middle "hard" miles.

So I'm feeling pretty cruddy about those long runs. I had that glute pain in January that I was just feeling like I was over (meaning the pain was gone AND I was feeling like I had worked my speed mostly back), but then I was side-tracked again in early April. And I'm VERY CLEARLY not "back to normal" after that yet. And summer racing season is now upon us. Oh well... no fast races this summer! That's OK. Just glad I'm still kickin'.

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Semi-Wordless Wednesday: High Training Readiness (Because of Injury)

I had a family-filled Easter weekend, and that was after some calf pain on my final 2 runs last week. So after a lazy weekend and a skipped long run on Monday, my "training readiness" was high yesterday morning:

I don't FEEL "at my best" Garmin... I feel sad. :(

Back with a decent "week in review" tomorrow despite ending the week injured, as well as a WEIRD speed workout on Friday.

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BeginnerTriathlete is No More!

I’ve been tracking my miles on BeginnerTriathlete.com since 2009 (I’ll be calling it BT for short). All of my “month in review” screenshots of my calendar are from BT (here’s November 2025 from 2 weeks ago as an example), and BT tallied the monthly totals nicely for me. All of my “year in review” posts have screenshots of monthly graphs, checks of my weight, yearly totals, etc, and that came from BT. (Check out 2024 in review or 2023 in review as examples.) I track my shoe mileage easily through my run workouts. And ALL of my workouts and post-workout notes have been uploaded there.

And now that’s all gone.

Sometime in mid-November, there was a banner put across the top of BT saying they were shutting down in early December. I didn’t notice it until early December where I basically had a weekend to deal with all my data there. They showed how to export all your data as a .csv file, so I did that. That puts ALL my info from last 16+ years into a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet is super hard to read, as the boxes are collapsed, but at least it’s all THERE. It’s not NEARLY as easy to find as it was on BT, but it exists.

My .csv file is 4.6 megabytes. The .csv file that I downloaded with my teaching contract and the info for the 2 classes I’ll be teaching and the darkroom tech role I have next semester is 2 kilobytes (2K, not 2MB). So my workout data is a file that’s 2300 times larger.

It’s 6400+ rows tall, and 46 rows wide... that’s about 300,000 cells of possible data!

Down to row 6400. And notice how none of the cells with notes
are readable unless I click on them to expand them. Yikes.

BT was alive for 1 day past when they said it'd be, so I had some hope that maybe they’d still stick around! But that didn’t last. When I refreshed my training calendar last week, this popped up:

So I’ve started tracking my miles on 2 other sites starting on Dec 1.

I had a Training Peaks account (free) from back in 2010 when Coach Jen coached me for 2 months. It’s a common platform for coaches to upload workouts for their athletes. (I don’t know if Jen is still using that or if she’s moved on to something else, as 2010 is a LIFETIME ago when speaking of tech). The calendar isn’t color coded as nicely as BT was, the weekly totals aren’t helpful, but you can see weight data easily. One big issue I’ve been having is it doesn’t always save the notes I add for each workout (like all my splits) - they just poof away once I add them and save them, and that’s worrisome.

The other calendar I started was through Final Surge. Someone on a BT forum mentioned it was similar to BT when they announced their closing. The color coding is better, the weekly totals are better, but it’s harder to see weight data.

Overall I like Final Surge better than Training Peaks, but Training Peaks seems more likely to be around in 10 years, and BT closing has made that a real issue for me! So I’m double-reporting my data right now just to be safe. We’ll see where I end up... thinking it will be Final Surge.

Also, I’m still getting used to adding shoes under my running activities so I can keep tracking my shoe mileage. They both offer that, and that’s important to me as well! Before BT closed, I grabbed a screenshot of all of my shoes I’ve worn and tracked through BT (I don’t know when I started tracking this, but it wasn’t right away in 2009):

And here was my “current” list, where I’m really only using the bottom one:

Which means after the last few runs, I have about 575 miles
on my current shoes. Time to update soon!

A blog reader emailed me about BT closing about 2 days after, saying that he thinks my blog convinced him to start tracking his workouts on BT because of my blog. (Sorry!!) And he noted that he saw "something on Reddit where 'Alice' broke the news and said she doesn’t even have access to anyone’s data anymore." It sounds like it's GONE. Their site is now all of their articles, but no possible way to track workouts - it's basically an archived blog format now.

p.s. I don’t like to just rely on my Garmin app as I HATE navigating through time on that. For example, when I did the 8K CC race last month and wanted to compare it to the same one I did 2 years ago, I could go to BT and change the year and month in a few clicks and be looking at that race (and the training around it) from 2023. But in the Garmin app, I have to click back one month at a time. AND wait for a second or 2 for each month to load. It’s clunky. It appears that Training Peaks and Final Surge can jump through time quickly as well.

p.p.s. I also saved all of my “race reports” from BT as individual PDFs so I don’t lose all those splits and other data.

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Church Shooting in South Minneapolis

Wednesday was a horrible morning. Here's what my wife posted that night after getting home from work:

Here's the GoFundMe if you are interested in giving.

One of my college roommates texted me saying that they'd gone to my Facebook page to see the color of my son's uniform (from a recent "back to school" pic) to make sure it wasn't the Catholic school that he attended. It could have been. But it wasn't.

My son's school was in a "loose lockdown" all day just in case - the kids didn't go outside for any recess, and all teachers came out of their rooms to watch over any "passing time" in the hallways.

This needs to stop.

Local and national media picked up on my wife's co-worker's story too:

Give here.

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Semi-Wordless Wednesday: Last Swim at the U!

I'm not teaching at the U this fall, so I'm being booted from their gym. I think yesterday was my last swim in their pool, and possibly my last swim all year unless I look for an inexpensive community pool membership. Goodbye beautiful pool:

Post-swim in the natatorium.

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Semi-Wordless Wednesday: Trouble Biking Home from Work

I was about 2 blocks from home when this happened recently:

Luckily I was so close to home as both boys had sports I needed to take them to! It turns out my chain probably needed more attention than once every 19-20 years (yes, that's the age of that bike!).

Oops.

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Crappy, Wet Intervals

Thankfully, Monday was my best long run ever after some crappy intervals last week.

After being gone for 4 days with my boys and neice and nephew last week, I came home to try to get things back to normal for a few hours before leaving all day the following day for a family funeral. So my window for intervals was sort of a "AT THIS MOMENT OR NEVER" sort of a deal.

Well, "at that moment" it was pouring rain.

I left the house in a light drizzle thinking it'd be OK. Then it started raining hard as I was getting close to the track. I actually looked for a place to hide from the rain before starting my first interval - that's the line off the track heading west in the lower left:

It rained for the first few intervals. Then it TRULY STARTED POURING. Like "I can see rain sheeting across the track" pouring. Like "I can't see the buildings on the rest of campus well because they are being covered by the rain" pouring. I had to use part of my 0:45 rest time to reset my insoles because I'd slide off them when finishing each interval.

My workout was 12x200 with 0:45 rest between each. Simple. But my times sucked. I 100% blame this on the rain, and I wonder if I got SOMETHING from the workout just because I was pushing hard. I started each by walking up to the line (not from a dead stop), and this is what I ran:

0:35.4, 0:33.7, 0:33.7, 0:34.4, 0:33.7, 0:34.4, 0:34.1, 0:34.7, 0:34.4, 0:35.3, 0:35.1, 0:35.5

= 0:34.53 / 200. SLOW.

The first was slow, but then I got #2 and #3 down decently. Four and 5 were OK, and then they just got slower as I got more and more beat-up from the rain.

Compare those splits to last year's version of this workout where I was a full second faster for each!!

June 2023:

35.9, 34.3, 33.6, 33.5, 33.2, 32.3, 33.1, 33.4, 33.4, 33.1, 32.9, 33.3

= 0:33.50 / 200.

Here's a zoomed in version of my pace chart:

More moving between intervals early on, more standing on 1 foot to fix my insole later on.

Here's a 6 second video from right after I got in the house post-intervals:


Direct link: https://youtube.com/shorts/JahmGGLnYkg
I RAN INTERVALS LIKE THAT.


Naked at the side door with sopping wet clothes in a pile 10 secs later.

This was meant to be a pretty crutial workout leading up to a big race in a few weeks. And I blew it. I don't know what I'll do for an interval workout this week - I usually mix up the distances, but I feel like I need to "redo" this one. We'll see. Dammit.

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Semi-Wordless Wednesday: New Running Shoes (Sadly)

They stopped making Saucony Hurricanes recently. We knew it was coming, so my wife stocked up 2 years ago. I've been getting a LOT out of my last few pairs because I don't want to let them go.

I posted a year ago about putting over 1,050 miles on my last 2 pairs of running shoes (COMBINED... not all on 1 pair). Well, my last 2 pairs currently have 590 and 743 miles on them for a total of 1334 miles on my last 2 pairs!

So after a PR race at the Brian Kraft 5K, it was time to put these out to pasture:

Blowing out a toe and a side.


So little tread... one of the reasons I've been staying away from slick roads while racing!

I have 1 new pair of Hurricanes left, but it was time to start breaking in a "new" pair of shoes. So here's me in my Brooks Glycerins:

I had 2 easy runs with them after the BK 5K, and then my first harder or longer run was my 12 miler earlier this week. They rubbed 3 toes a little raw, so that sucks. Hoping some more deliberate sock choices will help.

Any leads on men's size 10.5 Saucony Hurricanes? I've been checking eBay.

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Car Crash / Bike Ride

NO, I didn't get hit by a car while biking, but YES I was in a car crash. But I'm fine.

My wife worked on Christmas, and my boys and I surprised her that evening at work by stopping by with a Christmas cookie and some snacks for the end of her long double shift. On the way home, it was raining and dark, and I missed a red light and t-boned a truck. I saw it just before it happened and slammed on the brakes and slowed a little. My boys and I were fine, and the guy and his significant other in the truck were even more OK - much less damange to his vehicle. My car made it home without any warning light going off, but I heard some hissing from the radiator area, so I didn't know if it'd be driveable again.

Well, it started up the following day, so I figured I'd try to drive it to our insurance-approved repair shop. It made it there without overheating and STILL with no warning lights going off!

The guy at the shop said "Oh this isn't bad." Hoping there are very few engine issues.


Dropping my car off at the shop, ready to bike home!

That's the upside to this warm December - biking home with no problem! I took the bike rack off, put it in the back seat, left them my keys, and headed for home. Crossing the Mendota Bridge shouldn't look like this at the end of December:

That's the Minnesota River with downtown St. Paul way in the distance.

Drop off was quick, and I got going on my bike so easily that I could tack on some extra miles on the way home. I did an extra 6+ mile loop in the middle of this ride to get over 20 miles on the day:

Across the 35E bridge, back to the Hwy 5 / Mendota Bridge,
BACK to the 35E Bridge AGAIN, then past Hwy 5 again towards home.

Just a 15 mph ride on my mountain bike, but it was nice to be out for 80 mins after a stressful night and morning. Here's hoping I can bike down there again shortly to get my car back!

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Bike Failure

My ride on Thursday was cut a little short. That evening, I posted this on social media:

The guy at the bike shop said “Hello! What brings you in toda...HOOOOOOLY COW!!!” I made it up Ramsey Hill, and then I violently skidded to a stop 2 blocks later as my derailleur broke off into my spokes. A woman who witnessed it said she didn’t know how I stayed upright. Big thanks to Nate (and Rachel) for getting me home with my busted bike!

And then I shared this photo:

Dang.

The bike shop still doesn't have a lead on a hanger bracket. They said this is kind of a backwards bracket, and even though they tried talked to Blue (my bike brand) on Thurs or Fri, they won't be able to find someone to chat about until Wednesday (becasue of the holiday weekend). And it screwed up my derailleur as well, so I'll need to spend some money. Hopefully they can track down a bracket so I can be biking again soon!

Off to the races today! Check back for a race report soon!!

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Failed Treadmill 3x1 Intervals

Two out of my last 3 speed workouts ended earlier than they should have.

Damn it.

I headed to one of the colleges where I teach to use a treadmill in their lobby early in the morning last week. (They put a few weights and other equipment in a former lounge at the start of Covid in a way to help "spread out" and social distance athletes while working out.) Here was the view of part of the workout area with a single treadmill parked in the corner:

I went there for this workout for 3 reasons: first, because any sort of interval workout is pretty aggressive for our not-professional-grade treadmill; second, because it has hundredths and not just tenths on the display like ours; and third, because it speeds up and slows down faster than ours which is SLOW to get to speed (which sucks when doing interval work).

It was HOT from the start, and that set the tone for this workout. My treadmill is in our unheated basement, and it has a small built-in fan and we also have a larger fan set up in front of it. This treadmill at college was in a warm lounge area with no fans.

After a 1.5 mile warm-up, I kicked off at 10.7 mph for 0.3 miles or so, then up to 10.8 mph, and then finally up to 10.9 mph for the last 0.3 or so. My first interval was 2:47.5 + 2:45.8 = 5:33.3.

I was feeling a bit rough already. After about 3:00 of walking, I sped up again. This time, I started at 10.9 mph for 0.4, then 11.0 for 0.4, and finally 11.1 to close: 2:44.2 + 2:41.8 = 5:26.0.

When I started the 3rd interval, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to finish it. This was all about how long I could last. I started at 11.2 mph for about a half mile, and then bumped it up to 11.3 mph. But once I bumped it up, I only held on for about another 1/10 of a mile. So my last "mile" interval was only 0.6 miles: 2:40.4 + 0:32.1 (0.1 mile) = 3:12.5 (0.6 mile).

I cooled down for just over a mile to hit 6 total miles on the treadmill as the sky was just starting to get light:

Street light illuminated snowbanks in the background out the window.

I just didn't feel great for this workout, and at least some of it was due to being HOTTER with no air movement. Check out how the "temp" reading on my Garmin varied from running 3x1 at home in Dec vs last week in this warm college room:

72-81 degrees in our basement in Dec
(with 2/3s of the time under 74 degrees)...


... vs 77-86 degrees last week (with 2/3s of the time at 80 degrees or higher!)

It stinks feeling like I've failed 2 out of my last 3 hard runs, but at least I'm pushing myself. Right?... RIGHT?...

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Two CRAPPY Bike Rides in One Day

Ooooh wee! I had 2 REALLY BAD bike rides last Thursday!

First, I dropped my car off in North St. Paul to be detailed (as my wife had a Groupon and now that we finally kicked the ringworm our kitten Bruce had, we wanted to deep clean the car after lots of vet trips with him to make sure it was gone for good - our house cleaning was CRAZY for about 2 months!). I put my bike on the rack and thought I’d bike back home after leaving my car. It was to be my 3rd real outdoor ride of the year (after a tempo ride in early April and an easier/longer ride earlier last week). I was going to do some 3x5 mile efforts for a decent workout!

I finished up my first effort near the end (well, the “start”) of the Gateway Trail, and I was shocked at how much that trail sucked. That used to be our “go to” trail for longer rides, but I hadn’t ridden it in years before I rode it a bit 1 or 2 years ago and realized I wasn’t missing anything. Horribly bumpy and more intersections than I remembered.

Just after wrapping up my first interval (averaging 22.1 mph for 5 miles), I got off the Gateway and pretty quickly had a blow-out flat. I was happy with how quickly changing out the tube was going, but then my old hand pump which hadn’t seen use in YEARS just exploded in my hand when I tried to use it. A small engine repair shop was just across the road, so I walked over to see if they could help. But the old (semi toothless) man who ran the place had “never seen a fuckin valve like that before.” (And really, I’m not surprised.) We tried to jerry-rig something to get air in the tube, but to no avail.

So I rode off gingerly on my hefty “Gator Skin” tires and just hoped I didn’t hurt my rims. (Or slide out of my tire!) I stood wherever I could to help take weight off my back flat tire. I tired to bunny hop bigger cracks in the road. I got just over a mile to University Ave and hopped on the Light Rail:

Greasy fingers and a $2 ride home.


Eiffel enjoying the ride with a dead flat back tire.


Split 1 to 2 was the 5 mile interval, and then I barely made it any farther.


Heart rate for my 1 interval (from about mile 1.5 to 6.5). The dip before mile 6 was from
getting stopped at an intersection, and the real end of the interval was the final big dip.

I took the wheel to my local bike shop because I wanted someone smarter than me to check out the rim and make sure it was OK. They changed the flat, checked the rim, and sold me a new hand pump. As soon as I walked out, I noticed the tire nearly splitting at one point, so I went back in. Now that it was under pressure, the huge tear in my THICK tires from that crappy trail was really apparent. So... time for a new tire as well. Damn it. But thanks Grand Performance!!

Later in the afternoon, I got a call that my car was done! Time to bike back out and pick it up! The weather gave a slight chance of some rain, and there were a few bigger drops falling when I was about 5-6 miles from home. The sky was looking a little threatening as I was getting on the Gateway:

Just lightly damp roads at this point.


Loads of construction staples. Nice.

THREE minutes after I took that last photo, something caught my eye. What looked like a huge chunk of ice hit the trail a bit in front of me and exploded. And then another. And then another. Some of the biggest hail I’d ever seen started falling from the sky. I stopped to find any sort of cover, and all I found was a tiny tree. Here were some falling near the start of the hailstorm, and my yell was NOT for effect but because I was being pelted (as I was trying to tuck as much of my body under my helmet as I could):

And here’s another video from less than a minute later:

I could hardly get started when it was done because I was pushing off on a bed of round ice balls. Look at these jerks:

DEATH BALLS OF WINTER.


With my bike (and more hail) in the background.


The trail was LITTERED with leaves and small branches. In more heavily
wooded areas, it was hard to differentiate the trail from the grass!


One of the Gateway bridges COVERED in hail.


My legs once I got to the detailer to get my car. He gave me
a plastic trash bag to sit on so I didn’t ruin my newly cleaned car!


My bike rack (and a puddle) filled with melting hail!


When I got home 90 mins later, I had welts on my shoulders/back from the hail.
There are 3 in this photo, and the one to the left was still welted up and puffy.

So what was going to be a nice long ride with 3x5 mile efforts and then just an easier “cool down” ride later in the day turned into an all around shit show. And I didn’t know if my car would be done that afternoon or not, so I put my “newly tired” bike on the trainer for an hour mid-day as well, so my training log for the day looks like this:

The 9 mile ride was the first interval and the 2 rides with the flat to and from the train,
the 13 mile ride was getting my car in the hail, and the 1 hour was the trainer ride.

Luckily I FINALLY got in a decent ride yesterday! More on that shortly.

In the meantime, NO MORE DAMN HAIL!!

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Two Good Long Runs, Then Pulling Up Injured

I was all set to write about my last 3 long runs, but then my most recent long run threw a wrench in everything.

My run 2.5 weeks ago was my first “decent” long run OUTSIDE in a long time (coming back from my injury in late May). I cracked 10 miles for the first time in about 3 months:

This 10+ mile run was also mentioned in this post 10 days ago.

I chose to head west down the Greenway just to avoid a few extra hills on my “normal” route. My miles “at pace” in the middle weren’t as great as previous long runs as it had been a while, but I was OK with that. Here were my half-mile splits for the middle 5 miles of that run: 3:22, 3:16, 3:22, 3:13, 3:09, 3:12, 3:14, 3:16, 3:14, 3:12 = 32:36.23 (6:31/mile pace for the faster 5 miles).

Then 1.5 weeks ago, I told myself I could ease back on the distance a bit, but I was feeling good and went just a bit farther (10.37 miles that week vs 10.25 the week before). And I did it on my “normal” running route which had 2 extra smaller hills and 1 more decent hill:

Here were the splits for my middle 5 miles of that run: 3:28, 3:14, 3:12, 3:10, 3:14, 3:13, 3:08, 3:16, 3:10, 3:07 = 32:15.88 (6:27/mile pace for the faster 5 miles).

And that brings us to this week’s long run. I had the same thought as last week where I wasn’t going to go as far if I didn’t feel great, but I ended up feeling pretty horrible. I ran the same “easier” route as 2 weeks before, but my injury from late May flared up a bit.

Notice I crossed the bridge along the south edge of the map to really shorten this run.

The first map in this post is an out-and-back with a bit down the Greenway, and this run was the same, but I didn't go "back" the way I went "out." I cut it short across the Lake/Marshall Bridge.

It started to feel a little sore around mile 4.5 or so. Instead of getting off the Greenway, heading south, and then turning around to do 4 more miles along the river, I did the little bit south of the Greenway, turned around and went about another half mile, and then turned to head straight for home (which was 1.5 miles away in that direction instead of 3.5 miles). So I still finished 5 harder miles (with half mile splits of 3:17, 3:18, 3:21, 3:13, 3:18, 3:11, 3:16, 3:16, 3:25, 3:15 = 32:54.87 [6:35/mile pace for the faster 5 miles]), but my cool down was only a mile instead of 2.5 miles. (I did 8.6 miles in the end instead of around 10.) And notice those slower last few splits of my “harder” miles - usually I’m speeding up through those miles, not slowing down. It wasn’t that I was pooped, but my mind was elsewhere focusing on “what did I do wrong now?” and “why does this hurt again?” and “dammit!”

So I just tried the treadmill for yesterday’s easy run, and I had to cut it short: 3 miles instead of 5+ because my right calf/achilles started to hurt. (But that’s why I chose to stay on the treadmill: so I could stop at any moment.) I stretched well and have been rolling well since, so I’m just hoping this is a minor minor setback and nothing big.

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40 Miles for my 40th Birthday

Well, I turned 40 over the weekend. It was my wife's stupid idea that I should ride 40 miles to celebrate that. I took off THINKING I'd probably go 40 miles, but I wasn't tied to the idea.

I looked through my training log and found a lot of "long rides" of 33-38 miles. I had to look all the way back to 2012 to find a 40 mile ride! (That ride was 43 miles with an 18.18 mph average.) So it had been nearly 9 years since I biked that far! (And the time before that was in 2010 when I biked with my brothers-in-law and we pulled each other 44 miles with an 18.5 mph average.)

So I gutted it out on my 40th birthday and got in 40 miles. Well, 41.29 exactly:

It doesn't look like much until you realize that everything
east of the Mississippi is a big out-and-back tacked on.


Elevation. I hit some hills!


Labeling some hills. After the turn-around, it was just the reverse, until climbing Ramsey Hill.

The wind started quite out of the south, and that's the way I headed to start. I wanted to go down Big River's, but the start of that trail was closed, so I headed down Water Street to climb Ohio Hill (for fun). Split number 3 to 4 on the map above is the Ohio climb, and I knew it wasn't going to be FAST: I was 10 miles into a 40 mile ride, so I wasn't going to blow my load right here. I ended up climbing it in 2:23, which I didn't think was too bad. When I looked back to "hill repeat" bike workouts, I found 3 workouts where I did Ohio Hill 3 times for each workout (for the first 2 workouts, I then went off and did Ramsey Hill 3 times as well; and for the final workout, I just did Ramsey Hill once on my way home). In 2013, I averaged 2:23.7 up Ohio; in 2014, I averaged 2:26.7 up Ohio; and in 2015, I averaged 2:15.3 up Ohio. So my 1x up Ohio on a long ride and as my 2nd outdoor ride of the year in 2:23 wasn't too horrible.

But things were about to get more horrible.

Being I was heading into the wind mainly to start, I'd be pushed more from the back on the way home. Here's a zoomed-in example on my map (that shows reds as fast and blues as slow):

South into the wind around mile 18, and back with the wind around mile 21.


Not the wind but the hills here: FAST (red) down the hill on Hwy 13
from near the top of Ohio, and SLOW back up the hill around mile 25.

Climbing back up from Water Street to 35E around mile 33 was grueling.

And I actually had to stop 2/3s of the way up Ramsey Hill and walk my bike. That's NEVER happened before. But I've also NEVER climbed Ramsey Hill 36 miles into a bike ride before.

I was around 19.0 mph once I got to Downtown St. Paul around mile 35, but then I had to climb into downtown, and then do that horrible Ramsey Hill climb. AND THEN the wind had switched from more southerly to being out of the west, so the final 4 miles down Summit Ave was straight into the wind. My overall average dropped to 18.3 mph by the time I made it home (with my last split heading down Summit averaging 16.0 mph - yikes).

Well, not doing THAT again any time soon...

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