Northfield to Southfields

After the warm Birkie trail marathon weekend the weather has taken a turn towards fall here in Minnesota. The leaves and temps are falling fast. There hasn't been a frost yet, but we're hovering close. I'm starting to relearn what amount of clothing is appropriate for what temperature ranges and activities and getting ready for snow to fall. This is great weather for being active outside, and I did a lot of that last weekend.

Saturday a number of Vakava skiers came down to Northfield for a long ski. Nine of us started out, but Jeff decided to turn back a bit early since he has been pretty run focused to get ready for his 100 miler this fall. The other eight of us ventured South to Cannon City, had a nice tail wind to push us on the long, flat, straight road to Nerstrand, and then took in the great scenery and big climbs along the Valley Grove section of road before dropping back into Northfield and over to the Porath's for french toast. My total for the ski came out to 56km, including 2x up the Ibson climb on the Valley Grove section, so I'm sure everyone who made the full loop was over 50k.

Sunday morning Nate and I headed out early for the cities to bike around and cheer at the Twin Cities Marathon. Twin Cities is the first marathon I ever ran, way back in 2008. I also helped pace a speedy gal named Brooke when she ran Twin Cities as her first marathon in 2012. It is a difficult course, mostly due to the long climb up Summit ave from miles 21 to 25 and the steep drop to the finish afterwards. We were there mostly to cheer for my friend Erik Teig. His goal was to run a 2:24, so to stay ahead of him we didn't have time to wait and cheer for other runners we knew. As is we had to ride pretty hard to get ahead of him, and failed to do so a couple of times. Even so we saw him at several points along the course. He was in a good pack and running very consistently. He came through the half at 1:11:56, about a close to perfect pacing as it gets, but started to fade on the long slog up Summit. He finished in 2:26:30, a 10 minute PR and good for 22nd in the race. He is an awesome guy and a great runner, I had a blast cruising around yelling at him. Afterwards I biked back and forth on Summit cheering on anyone I recognized before heading off to get a rollerski in and meet Erik and friends to hang out for the evening.

What I did not do all of last week is go running. I finally got out today after not putting on running shoes for 11 days. My longest stretch without running since March I'm sure. It was nice to have that down time after the Birkie Marathon, but now I better get my legs back under me before I head East to run the Columbus half in a week and a half.

I have made good use of my reduced training hours though, catching up on some house projects and yard work that had gone neglected for far too long. The leaves are starting to fall, so yard work will kick up in earnest when I get back from Columbus, but late October / early November is usually a good time for working outside and a nice place to cut back on training for a week or two before ski season kicks off.

On a blog related note I realize my posts have been less picture filled lately, I'll have to get back on the photographing band wagon going forward.