One sweet weekend

Lots of fun was had this past weekend, but the legs are feeling the effects. I can tell that I’m getting into the meat of marathon training now; the legs are starting to get the dull ache of accumulated fatigue that will hopefully forge them into resilient, efficient, powerful pistons by race day. There are still 8 weeks until Grandma’s Marathon though, plenty of miles of long runs and minutes of tempo work still to come.

Friday afternoon we had our biggest TNC training group showing yet, six athletes got together down in Northfield for a 6x1 mile tempo workout. Nate and I found a new mile loop a couple weeks ago with even less climbing than the previous flat mile loop Nichole and I had been using. It was wonderful weather Friday, only my second no shirt workout of the year, and there were lots of kids out playing and parents sitting in the driveway watching as we sailed by. I had a good workout, just going by feel all of my times were within a few seconds of each other, and more amazingly they were around 5:30 pace. I don’t think I've ever had a tempo workout that fast, so I’m not really sure what was going on. My Tuesday workout was nowhere near that pace, nor was my race Sunday actually.

Friday night I went up to the Midwest Mountaineering Expo to listen to Nichole perform her talk on qualifying for and racing the Olympic Trials marathon (sadly with no juggling involved). I had heard most of the stories before, but it was a good reminder of how hard a person has to work to get close to their potential at something. I often got to see first-hand how dedicated she was to pursuing that goal, how hard she worked and how much she was willing to hurt, not just in hard workouts but dealing with high miles and weeks of fatigue in the hardest part of her training cycles, and it was very motivating for me to keep up my focus on Grandma’s. That focus will be much needed for the week of 40 degrees and nonstop rain that is forecast.

Nichole on her way to a world record

Saturday I spent some time with my friend Krystal. We went paddling in the morning, my first time in a canoe this year. My paddling is rusty, but it comes back a bit easier every year. Then we went on a yoga crawl bike ride thing around Minneapolis and I got to see a shortcut or two around the city I hadn't been on before. I had never done a guided Yoga class before, and I was feeling it by the time we finished.

Yoga crawl crew riding the Loring Greenway

Sunday morning Nate and Nichole picked me up for the Maple Syrup Run. I planned to run the 10k and Nate and Nichole were both in the 5k. We hoped that by running different races Nate and I could both potentially win some fantastic maple syrup. (Important tip when cherry picking races: Don’t just pick races you can win, pick races you can win that give away awesome prizes). Plus this race is on fun trails and there is a pancake breakfast afterwards, it is a real gem for a small production race. A couple of my co-workers were also running the 10k, so there were some familiar faces around. After a rain/lightning delay (rain seems to be the theme of my racing season so far) the races got underway. Nate and Nichole ran smart races and both won their respective events by several minutes. I got into an early lead in the 10k and never looked back. I was apparently one of the only ones who looked at the map ahead of the race, or figured out that they randomly used some 5k trail markers to also mark the 10k course, so I avoided getting lost unlike many of the other 10k racers. I won the 10k with a time of 37:53, which was also good enough for 52^nd place overall according to the results which did not divide up the 5k and 10k races.

Fun trails, sweet prizes, and a pancake breakfast. This race is great.

After a fun afternoon hanging out with my friend Molly, who brought me some delicious pizza in exchange for helping her summer wax her skis I headed out for a few more miles to make the day my long run day. The wind was fierce, and I did what I could to avoid it, but there are a lot of open fields around Northfield, so that wasn't always possible. For a while I was working to hold 10:00 mile pace heading into the wind, and I stumbled a couple times when it would let up for a second I was pushing into it so hard. I stayed dry until the last couple miles though, and I had only been back in the shelter of my house for two or three minutes before it started just pouring down, so all in all my timing was good.

A great day for TNC runners

Onward to another big running week, 6 hard weeks until taper time.