In Every Run That Must Be Done; There is an Element of Fun (comments welcome)

[azrivest]

Hope your races go well and the temps aren't too hot

 

[Scootin'By]

A little late maybe, but, good luck. I hope the race went well!

And a Chocoholic Frolic?! Yes, please!!

 

[azrivest]

Did I see on social media that your race was cancelled?

 

[Naomeri]

Did I see on social media that your race was cancelled?

You did indeed. It was 69° with 83% humidity when I woke up at 530, which is 16° higher than the race temp for the 10 miler last year.

 

[Naomeri]

TC Loony Challenge: Day 1 (and 2)

Well, I managed to get a little sleep before my alarm went off at 415 (and again at 425) and I got up and out the door right on time at 5. Parked downtown and caught an earlier train than I planned, and made it to the starting area about an hour before the start.



The full moon was still out just before sunrise



I turned in my gear and wandered around drinking water and eating my pre-race waffle. Then it was time to get in the starting crowd and I lined up in the 11-12 minute section, because that’s about the running pace I wanted for the big hill. It was 66°F, 92% humidity, and partly cloudy. I somehow forgot how hilly this race is.



I kept my pace fairly steady, not too fast, but fast enough that I’d be able to finish before the 5K started. Which I did, with just 7 minutes to spare. There didn’t seem to be as many people cheering along the course as in previous years, but aid could be misremembering.



I got a bottle of water, drank some of it, dumped a bunch on my head (and on some lady’s hands to rinse of the excess hand sanitizer) and lined up towards the back of the pack because I was going to mostly walk. I ran a little, walked a lot, and finished in just under 49 minutes. I was just exhausted from lack of sleep and all the dang hills.




I got my gear bag, and lounged on the delightfully long Capitol lawn grass for a while before catching a train back to my car.






Loony Challenge Day 2 has been cancelled due to black flag conditions. I know a lot of you living in warmer places are kind of scoffing at our “high” temps being bad enough for cancellation (and Twin Cities in Motion is getting an earful on their FB posts) but our low temps for this weekend are supposed to be our highs at this time of year. Last year, it was 53° for the 10 miler, and this year it was 69° when I woke up. Apparently, I still have to drive all the way to the Capitol to get my gear bag back though, which sucks big time!

 

[azrivest]

Congratulations on a great performance with that elevation and those conditions

Sucks for the gear bag

 

[JAMIESMITH]

Congratulations on a successful race day! I'm sorry tomorrow's run was cancelled.

 

[Stitch&Co.]

Sorry to hear your race was canceled. You’ve done a lot of training for it. But at least all that training hasn’t gone to waste since you have more races lined up.

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Congrats on making it through the back-to-back 10K and 5K! That's a big challenge in itself.

Sucks about day 2 being canceled though, and having to go back to pick up your gear bag is adding insult to injury! I guess that's yet another reason why making runners drop off their gear bags at the expo was a dumb idea...

 

[Naomeri]

There was a slight silver lining to having to go get my gear: I was talking to the volunteer as we trekked up the hill to get my bag (arranged by number, with the highest at the top of course) and I was nice and polite (because I’m a decent person, unlike all the jerks whining on the TCM FB page) and she thanked me repeatedly for being so understanding, which makes me think some people were less than nice . Then she told me to grab what I wanted from the water pallet, so I got a free case of Aquafina, which is a decent consolation prize.

Honestly, it’s probably for the best for me that it was cancelled—my training has been pretty spotty this summer, and with the heat, it was going to be a SLOG. Also, I got some minor blisters yesterday (I didn’t even notice them until I took my shoes off, and they don’t hurt)

I got my gear at 1145, right around when the under-4 hour marathoners would’ve been finishing and the sun was brutal, even standing on lush grass—I don‘t want to think about what it would be like on-course. And for the slowest runners (our course has a 14 minute minimum pace)? I don’t know that they’d all make it, so I totally understand the organizers’ choice to call it off.

 

[jmasgat]

Congrats on the 2 races. I am super impressed at anyone who can do two races on the same day. And sitting here in MI where it's 76, I can sort of see what they did.

 

[Naomeri]

Congrats on the 2 races. I am super impressed at anyone who can do two races on the same day. And sitting here in MI where it's 76, I can sort of see what they did.

Yeah, it was 82 and full sun by noon it just wouldn’t have been nice. It’s not like Disney, where they start so early that your first 2 hours or so are basically in the dark, the 10 miler would’ve started right about at sunrise, and the marathon about 45 later.

 

[striker1064]

Congrats and great job on the races!

 

[avondale]

Congrats on the races you got to finish! Bummer about the cancellation, but I agree with you that it was probably for the best.

 

[Naomeri]

30 Days Until: Chocoholic Frolic 10K

I went for my first run since Loony Day 1 (and only). The weather couldn’t decide if it was going to be sunny, cloudy, rainy, or some combination of all 3. I was only out for a half hour, so it was a lot of changing weather in a short period of time.

But I got a great rainbow!


I just went ahead and ran whatever pace I was capable of running, and it turned out to be about 10K pace.



I did manage to get over to St Paul to get my gear bag back from the cancelled TCM 10 Miler on Sunday, and I also got a free case of water because they had pallets just sitting there and the volunteer who found my bag said I could take what I wanted. Apparently everything left over did get donated to area food programs, so nothing went to waste. They didn’t tell us until Sunday night that medal would be available at the TCM offices in St Paul. Sadly, their hours are only standard business hours and therefore basically impossible for folks working standard business hours to get to, and they’re only willing to mail to people outside the 11-county metro area, so I’m pretty irritated about that.

I’m not mad about the race being cancelled, but I am mad that there’s no better effort to work with runners to get their medals to them, and no effort at all for special consideration for next year’s races. Edit to add: I missed a line in the email from today that they haven’t been able to gather all the information to make a final decision on how they can support runners (which I take to mean compensate runners)

 

[Scootin'By]

Beautiful rainbow!

That's very frustrating about the confusion over the cancellation. Harrumph!

 

[azrivest]

Hope you will manage to get your medal Maybe if they realize no one is really going to pick them up, they'll consider mailing them more...

 

[avondale]

I love seeing a rainbow on a run - it makes the run seem so special!

 

[Naomeri]

27 Days Until: Chocoholic Frolic 10K

It was a lovely day for a run today, and I got to explore a new neighborhood near me. Sadly, this exact route probably won’t be available to me once the real snow starts this winter, since it only connects to my usual road via a walking path, and I assume no one will be plowing a walking path for a neighborhood with no finished houses (they’re just now getting ready to install all the big green electrical boxes)



The neighborhood used to be a farm, so there’s no shade near the road, but the cold wind balanced out the warm sun to keep me comfortable in a tshirt.



I also saw the ghost squirrel out on my run today. With the amount of acorns on the roads around where he lives, I’m surprised he and his friends don’t weigh 10 pounds each



I forgot to post a picture of my 10K/5K medal from last weekend. I also managed to get my 10 Miler medal from a nice guy that lives near the TCM office—he picked up a few medals for some inners and left them in his mailbox for us to grab. Apparently, there’s no way to get our Loony medals




Today was the last day of my Loony training plan, so it’s time for a look back. All in all, it wasn’t very successful. I was more than a bit ambitious in my mileage goals for a summer plan, but what really got me was the idiot idea of trying to run in the early mornings to avoid the heat—I’m not a great morning person and no amount of going to bed earlier was able to solve that, so there were a lot of skipped runs. I also skipped a lot of my stationary bike sessions. I should’ve had about 600 miles of running and 28 hours of stationary bike between April 24th and October 8th, and I had hoped to lose some weight, but this is where I ended up:

Running Stationary Bike



I’m glad that I basically maintained my weight, but I really would like to lose a bit. But now I know for next summer that I need to stick to more of a maintenance plan to get a good solid base of mileage and cement the 4 days/week routine before starting a training plan in mid-August or early September. My tentative plan for the next rD season is Wine & Dine (assuming it hits over Halloween like we’re predicting), then doing my first (and probably only, because the time of year is hard) Dopey, and then finishing with Springtime Surprise. Dopey is appropriately daunting, but I’ve successfully completed all the rD weekends I’ve attempted so far, with little-to-no ill effects. I have no doubt that if I can get a good solid base through the spring and summer, and successfully execute a Dopey training plan in the late summer through Christmas, I can complete Dopey and still be functional enough to drink around the world with some of you fine folks on the Monday after.

But before all that, I have to train for Disneyland, and after that, train for Springtime Surprise. DL training will run October 9th-January 21 (I always include the week after a race in the training plan, since so many of my races are destination races and have post-race vacation days) I have about 265 miles and 15 hours of stationary biking in the plan, including 1 virtual 10K in October, 1 in-person 10K in November, and a “virtual” 10 miler in December (my TCM 10 Miler medal needs to be earned). If I see a sufficiently fun theme for a virtual Thanksgiving 15K or 10 Miler, I might sign up (I have 9 miles on the schedule for Thanksgiving, moved from that weekend since we spend it baking cookies, but don’t leave for Thanksgiving dinner until 3pm, and don’t need to do any cooking beforehand) I made sure to keep weekday runs to no more than about an hour, unless it’s a holiday. Weekend runs max out and about 2 hours, and it should be easier to get them in because the yardwork will drop off sharply in mid-November at the latest. And the Plymouth field house will open for inclement weather contingency runs (and I might use it for my 400m repeats, regardless of weather)

 

[Naomeri]

22 Days Until: Chocoholic Frolic 10K

I have had 2 runs in the plan so far, and I actually got them both done! Granted, one got switched from Tuesday to Wednesday, but it got done, and that’s what really matters.

Tuesday Wednesday was 3 miles easy. I was a bit fast, but not excessively fast. I did turn for home just a little too soon and had to circle my cul-de-sac an extra 1.5 times to hit 3 miles.



Thursday was 5x 400m repeats at 5K pace (11:30), which I set up on my watch as a quarter mile work and .27 mile recovery (because I have to cross to the other side of the road at the beginning and end of the recovery) I wanted to do it properly, with real warmup and cooldown runs, so I switched the flat section of road I use from the one a quarter mile from my house to one almost a mile from my house. This other section also has the advantage of being a dead-end road, so there’s less traffic. I was dealing with a major headwind on the work sections, but I managed alright.



5K pace is much slower than I was running repeats at before, but that’s what the plan calls for (I’m using Hal Higdon’s Half Marathon Intermediate 2, but dropped one of the weekday easy runs because I simply can’t manage 5 days/week of running) For the WU/CD runs, I used 30/60 intervals, and 30/30 for the repeats. I was a little fast one the first one, but I mostly evened out with the rest. I’m really consistent on my recovery pace though



It was a really beautiful fall day for Wednesday’s run, and I got this nice shot of a maple in a neighbor’s yard



It’s been very windy lately, so I haven’t had a lot of chipmunks visiting, but this new one figured out that if she bangs on the door and then sits on the resin squirrel by the patio, someone will probably bring her food. I’ve named her Sugar because she’s very sweet and she lives in the woods under all the sugar maple trees.