eat your veggies!

It seems like the last two weeks have flown by.  I’ll start this post by giving some advice that I have learned through my experience as a Personal Trainer.  Drink more water (half you body weight in ounces each day) and eat healthy fats NOT PROCESSED CARBOHYDRATES OR FAKE SUGARS.  One more thing… I’ve never heard of anyone with a weight problem ending up that way from eating too many vegetables.  Eat your veggies!!  They’re good for you.

Thanks for listening.  Here’s what I have been up to in the last couple of weeks.  Last time I wrote, I said I was going to try and ride my bike more.  I didn’t.  I was able to get out on Thursday the 26^th for a nice ride with Nikki.  She wanted to go for a bike ride for a session so that’s just what we did.  We went from Bryant Lake Park to Lone Lake Park; conquered watertower hill twice, did my .5 mile repeat track at a walking pace, and headed back to Bryant Lake.  It was a bit chilly, but did my legs good since the day before I ran at Hyland.  Here’s a bit more about that workout:

I zipped over to Hyland Park Reserve for a run on Wednesday the 25^th not really sure what I was going to do for my workout.  When I got there I decided I would head up the tallest hill I could find and maybe then, I would have a better idea.  I didn’t really and my legs weren’t feeling all that good when I got to the top anyhow.  I figured to settle into an easy pace and get 6 or 8 miles in.  After 3.5 miles I started to feel a bit better and knew that I needed to start incorporating a bit more speed into my training, and with this being my heaviest week of this 8 week Superior prep block, I decided to do some intervals.  Call it a pyramid workout if you’d like.  I started off with a .5 mile sprint.  I don’t have the times anymore as my HRM only stores 19 workouts, but it was pretty quick.  Quicker than the repeats I had been running at Lone Lake, I know that much.  Then, after about 8 minutes of easy running, I went .75 miles at a clip as fast as my legs would take me for that distance.  Another 8 minutes of easy, then to a mile repeat.  7:14 for the mile which I thought was pretty decent.  There were a lot of steady uphills on the mile course, up from Richardson Nature Center towards ski jump hill.  The mile ended just at the bottom of ski jump hill, so I walked up the hill and found a little trail through the back side which is single track and reminded me a bit of the Superior trail I’ll be on in less than two weeks now.  I needed to run that.  I started off easy and jogged off .75 miles as I headed over towards the ski hills.  I wound around on the west side of the ski hill on an access road and took it down the hill to the fence just west of the driving range.  As I touched the fence, the gps told me it was .75 miles so it worked out just perfect.  I don’t remember what the time was on this particular portion, but I started up the access road which was a mini version of the ski hill… a great way to start my 4^th repeat of the day.  I made it up to the top of ski jump hill the back way, cruised down the hill, jogged a bit, and brought it home with a .5m survival sprint across the top of the ski hills.  A satisfying workout that left me with very little left in the tank until of course I got back to the club, showered, and filled my face with as much food as I had brought with me for the day.  I’d used up almost 2000 calories in the 1:51 that I was on the trail.  Nitrite and Nitrate free deli turkey, 6 slices of Muenster cheese, a half a cup of cashews, and a cup of carrots dipped in peanut butter, and a yellow pepper with roasted pine nut hummus… with water.  Yum!

On the 27^th, I didn’t have much time to run at all so I squeezed in 6 miles through the Park Reserve from home after work and before dinner.  The house was transitioning when I got home, so I suited up as soon as I could so I could be home for the evening.  My goal of this run was just to get my legs moving again and bridge the gap between Wednesday and my longest run of this training cycle of 20+ miles.  It was a beautiful night to be on the trail.

            Moving on the Sunday the 29^th, I had a busy day planned.  I would get up to start a 20+ miler at 6am with a friend of mine Todd.  We’ll be going up to Superior with a couple of other friends.  I’ll do the 50k and others will do the 25k.  Todd came out to join me for my first 12 of the morning.  This would be his longest run of the prep too before the 25k in two weeks now.  It was a beautiful morning and so nice to have some company through Elm Creek Park Reserve, which I consider just an extension of my back yard.  We saw a few deer, got to experience a little bit of mud and hills, but I really enjoyed his company.  After heading out 6 miles and back on pretty much the same track, we cruised back into the neighborhood, and I would have been foolish not to poke my head into the house to have a banana since I only had water on the trail.  I probably spent more time in than I should have, but got back on the trail for what turned out to be another 90 minutes.  I had a busy day planned ahead and needed to be back home and ready for church by 10:40.  I made it home after about 9 more miles at 9:45 with just enough time to eat, shower, and get ready to go for the day.  We made it just in time to church and my father in law with my brother’s in law were waiting for me in the parking lot to go to Target Field.  We actually got to see the Twin’s win that day and it was great to spend some time with the guys.  So fun!  I was pretty exhausted at this point, but you know if you’ve got little ones, there is no rest for the weary, so when we got home it was supper, tubs, and bed.  I slept well that night and wasn’t up too late either.

            Monday was great as I got all of the grass pulled out of the main flower beds surrounding the fire pit.  Now to finish them off with a few inches of cocoa bean mulch.  I’ve got some of it done and boy does it look nice!

Tuesday the 1^st I did some legs exercises as well as an upper body workout of the muscles that I typically feel the most when running.  Mostly around the rotator cuff, deltoids, lats, traps, stomach, oblique’s, posterior shoulder, and hips.  I also took a 6 kg vipr for a run on the treadmill.  That’s pretty tough carrying that thing while running at even 6mph.  I went for .25 miles on, .25 miles off, .25 miles on, and .25 miles off again.  I don’t know if that carried over, but I’ll probably try it again to train the core, shoulders, and biceps.

On Wednesday the 2^nd, I didn’t have as much time as I usually do on Wednesdays but I still wanted to squeeze in a quality run in the early afternoon so I called my friends at TC Running to find out how to get to the Minnesota River Bottoms.  They led me right to it so I headed over that way.  I’d never been to the river bottoms before, so it was neat to explore an area that I hadn’t seen before.  The only footprints I saw were my own as I think the track over there is primarily used for mountain biking.  With the lack of rain heading into Wednesday last week, the trails were pretty dry too.  Sometimes it’s the flat trails that end up biting us the most.  That was the case on this day about 2 miles into my run I found myself looking up at the beautiful blue sky from my back on the right side of the trail.  When the trail is technical and rough, we are focused on our footing to not miss a step and end up on our faces.  When the trail is “smooth” we settle into dragging our feet across the trail, not thinking that there are still roots that come up an inch or two off the dirt.  You never expect to hit the trail, and this time there were no rocks to break my fall, just some grass on the side of the trail so I was pretty fortunate.  I’ll need to be more careful in a couple of weeks though because there aren’t any trails that don’t have rocks running along the sides of them.  All in all it was a beautiful run on a warm day, and it was real fun to explore some new ground that I hadn’t run on before.

T ball practice on the 3^rd and that was a blast.  I just love working with these kids.  We had some drills that were to challenge their abilities to work together and that it did.  I love teaching kids and being around them energizes me whenever I have that opportunity. 

On Friday, the 4^th I was able to attend a Leadership Conference, the Chic fil a Leadercast.  This was the third year in a row that I’ve attended the conference held live in Atlanta and broadcast all across the nation via simulcast.  Tim Tebow was among the speakers and John Maxell too.  It is so important that we make time to invest in ourselves, not just one and done, but continually.  I really needed the encouragement that the Leadercast provided on Friday and I’ll be going again next year I’m sure.  To running that day, I ended up doing 10.5 miles to the chalet, a round through the Frisbee golf course, and back around the park home again.  A fairly easy day where I was not out to break any speed records for sure. 

Saturday to Jeffers for some family time.  It is always good to spend time with family.

This morning I was woken in the middle of the night by some rolling Texas thunder.  I hadn’t heard thunder since we lived in Frisco.  It must have dumped to because I was out of the house by about 7:30, driving to the north side of the Nature Center to cover some new ground on the snowmobile trails north of even the park reserve.  It was wet, like running through 8 inches of water in some spots wet.  One cool thing though, I came to a little wooded area at about mile 4 and it felt a little closed in.  It was a short stretch of woods.  As I entered, I heard a branch snap! Overhead and heard the flapping of some serious wings flapping.  I don’t know what kind of bird it was, but that bird did not want to see any more of me than it absolutely had too and it was off.  HUGE!  It could have been a bald eagle or a big owl or something like that.  The branch itself landed just next to me on the right and it was probably 4 inches across.  So, it was a wet morning and my legs have felt good all day today which is a good sign.  I’ll do some more weights for legs next week, probably do 10-12 again next Sunday, then really taper to race day the following weekend. 

I’m looking forward to a couple days away with friends and I love the north shore so that’ll be nice to spend some time up there too.  We have a busy week coming up.  I am thankful for my many blessings each day.  Remember to eat your veggies!!