8 mile run on the parkway

Updated!

It has been a busy week and I had an hour to run today so I took it. I always try to get a few runs on "the parkway" (see pictures above) while visiting my dad in Minnesota. "The parkway" is a series of bike paths called The Grand Rounds that circles the Minneapolis area. There is close to 50 miles of bike/running paths around the city, it is great. Part of this path runs right in front of my Dad's house. See what it looks like in the summer here and the fall here. I like running south toward the Chain of Lakes area of Minneapolis. The Twin Cities Marathon uses some of these trails as part of the first half of their course.

The temp was probably in the 20s when I left but the wind was fairly calm and the sky was cloudy. I ran out for a half hour, turned around, and came back, adding an extra mile at the end. I am crediting myself with 8 miles for the day.

I left about 30 minutes after a big lunch, which wouldn't be my first choice, but it was my only opportunity today so I took it. I am getting better at running on a full stomach. It used to be a difficult thing to do. When you eat a meal blood goes to your stomach to help digest the food. Then when you start running blood is shunted away from your stomach to the muscles of your legs, slowing digestion. That is why you might feel the food still sloshing around in your gut. If you run after a big meal I recommend keeping the pace easy to avoid cramping and nausea. I picked up the pace a little at the end as it did not seem to be bothering my stomach.

Mesa, Colordado Vacation + 20k run

We just returned from a vacation in Mesa, Colorado where my wife's grandmother has a cabin. The first day there it snowed a 4-6 inches giving us fresh powder to ski on the next two days. I got in one run on that snowy day during the short break in snowfall. I ended up running 20k (12.4 miles) in 1:40:50. It is very hilly up there and I could definitely "feel" the altitude. I haven't uploaded my garmin data yet but the town of Mesa, CO is at 5600ft and the bottom of the ski resort is at 8200ft. The cabin is somewhere in the middle, I believe around 6500ft. I ran in my New Balance 921s which are supposed to be designed for winter conditions. I was ready to be done as my right tibialis posterior started talking to me after about 90 minutes.


My advice for anyone traveling to altitude is to run based on effort and keep it easy for the first two weeks as most of the running effort will feel tougher than normal. It can take at least two weeks to acclimatize and even then it will take more effort to run the same speeds.


The next two days were spent downhill skiing. Both my boys went to their first ski school and did great. Matt did a day and a half of lessons and Micah did a one hour lesson and did multiple trips on the magic carpet with Andi, Clark, and I. The boys enjoyed the ski lessons and far exceeded our expectations. There were so few people on the mountain that the boys both had private lessons and we felt like we had the resort to ourselves. Once at the bottom we could hop right back on the lift for another run. It was pretty cold though, the temp at the top (9850ft) was -9 degrees at 9:00am!

So I only got one run in over the last week, but we had a great vacation. I take that back, on the return trip we actually did get some track work in on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway!

3 mile tempo + 4 x800m intervals

Well I had to try the workout I gave Dale last week so here it goes.

2 miles warm up

3 miles threshold 19:15 (6:30, 6:30, 6:15)

4 x 800m intervals (2:50, 2:47, 2:46, 2:45)
1 lap recovery jog between each.

1.5 mile cool down.

It was a tough workout. I think next time I would add another threshold mile and try and be closer to 6:20 pace. I am not used to those 800s and both my calves were sore today. It is still really cold at 6:00am!

It snowed on all day Sunday and we ended up with about 6-8 inches! Last time we got snow like that was December 17, 2008. I had a great workout that day too!

26 feels like 14!

Wouldn't it be nice if I was talking about miles? Well, I'm actually talking about degrees farenheit. The forcast for this morning at 6:00am was 26 degrees but the wind chill would make it feel like 14 degrees. I think it was actually a few degrees colder than that. Dale met me at my house at 5:40am and we took off around the Rancho Vista area. The houses blocked a good amount of the wind so we tried to stay within the neighborhoods. We had a nice easy run and finished 9 miles then I headed out for one more mile to complete 10 in 86 minutes (avg 8:30). I think the wind picked up during the run because it seemed to get colder. My hands were the limiting factor today and by the end they were throbbing. It was probably the coldest run of the year. Thanks Dale for the company. I never would have made it 10 in that weather alone.


I was trying to find a list of the best US marathon times for 2010 and finally found one. It is a list of all the Olympic trials qualifiers to date. After picking out all the times run in 2010 I realized that Sergio's 2:14:02 at Twin Cities was the 10th fastest US marathon time this year (and two of those are Meb)! He is ranked 12th of all the qualifiers thus far (some people qualified in 2009). He is in some pretty good company. The Olympic Trials Marathon for men and women is scheduled for January 14th in Houston, TX. Check out the men's qualifiers list here.

Clay's Hill Workout

I met Dale and Clay for a Tuesday hill workout. First I ran to Clay's house and then we all ran over to the first hill which is used as a warm up. By now I had run 4 miles of warm up but was no where close to warm as the temp was 20 degrees. Weather.com said the low of 20 would feel like 16 degrees with the light breeze. It was cold, probably the coldest temps I have run in so far this year. That being said we hit the hill on 65th with me chasing Clay who took off hard from the start. Each hill repeat or loop is a half mile long. I finished the first one in 3:28, Clay was 3:35. I ran the next two loops on the Manzanita Hill both in 3:02 and as Clay and Dale headed back I stayed to run one more loop which I hit in 3:07. As I was running home my hands started to get really cold, so cold they started to ache badly. I couldn't wait to get home and warm them up. Even after a hot shower my hands and cheeks were still cold.

Total mileage for today was 8 bringing my monthly total for November to 108. Last week I ran 45 miles (nearly half my monthly mileage) which tells you how my mileage for November looked. Here is a list of my excuses: short taper for Santa Clarita Half Marathon, recovery from the half marathon, a cold, rainy, and windy weekend mid November, and a head cold.