TCM 10 Miler - 11 weeks to go

Sunday
Planned: 10-12 miles running
Actual: 10.18 miles, going very slow and very hot.  Finisher of 8 minute abs.  I did not go back to sleep after this run, so that's different from yesterday.

Monday
Planned: Hills or trails
Actual: 7.15 miles on paved trails at Baker Park Reserve.  This course is all the hills.  8 Minute Abs.

Tuesday
Planned: Low heart rate run + lift weights
Actual: 3.25 miles, Avg HR 129.  60 mins elliptical.  TRX/Kettlebell class.  And then some foam rolling to wash it all down.

Wednesday
Planned: 1 mile
Actual: 1.3 miles on the treadmill, 8 minute abs

Thursday
Planned: 8-10 miles
Actual: 8 miles, Avg HR 139.  This was a solid run and I felt great.  Stretching/abs/etc were interrupted.

Friday
Planned: 1 mile
Actual: 1.9 miles at the Anoka Preserve becuase it was the most gorgeous day ever and I had the right shoes for it!

Saturday
Planned: Speed workout: 3x7 mins, 4 mins recovery for each set
Actual: Speed workout complete.  I'm thinking maybe I need to have a faster pace goal for the race.  Everything I've read about speed work basically says at this stage of training I should feel like I'm dying.  I didn't feel like I was dying but I didn't think that was a pace I could've held for 10 miles either.  Paces were 10:38, 10:54, and 11:18.  (11:18 was up a wicked hill that I hate.)

Trail Wednesday: Sadness

It's been a little while since I've had a Trail Monday.  Step back weeks, storms, and a road trip were getting in my way.  I'm having a low mileage week this week, but still needed to get in some trail work, so I headed to a trail I hadn't run on in quite some time.

Trail: Anoka Nature Preserve, where I've run before and loved, but it's quite a short trail really.

Hills: There are some rollers here, rolling down to the river bank and up away from it, but nothing terribly steep nor painful.

Ease of Running: Nightmare. This is where my sadness came.  I've been here before and the trails were grassy in the "farm" areas, and sandy to dirt in the wooded and shaded areas.   They were heaven and utterly runnable.  At least in my memory and old pictures. 
I don't know what happened in the last year.  Because now, in real life, they are big fat gravel roads.  The kind of big fat gravel rocks that hurt your feet to step on.  The loop I did was 2 miles and that was absolutely all I was going to do.

Animals: Do high school students count as animals?

Will I come back: Sadly, no.  I'm so over that gravel pit it's not funny.

5-ish miles in Anoka

I'd been to the Anoka Nature Preserve one time before and had a blast.  My goal today was to explore some more of it, hoping that the trails would be mud-free, and more of it would be open.  Verdict: Mud-free.  Great Success.

Distance: I learned today, in my exploration that the preserve isn't really super big.  I'd originally targeted six miles as my goal distance, but after exploring and still managing to make two complete circuits of the place, my head wasn't in it for the last mile.  I just couldn't work out a collection of paths that would be a mile but not land me in someplace ridiculous to finish the run.  I stopped at mile 5 and then walked about half mile back to my car.  I think in the future, this is a good place for a 3-4 mile run, but nothing more.

Trails: I also learned today that I love to explore.  I sort of knew this already.  But I got off the main trail in some places and played in the woods.  I found a swimming hole, a beaver dam, a snorkel kit (serious) and some downed trees.  I wound up heading back to the main trails because the bugs were fairly out of control in the back woods.  And yes, I did a tick-check or two.  As a bonus today, I wore my true trail shoes.  I haven't had these out to play for a while.  I had an utter failure when I packed white socks on trail running day.  Those socks are now brown.  Shaking my head.

Pictures: The best part of the run today was all the photos I took.  I told you I run with a camera right?

Hot Hot Hot Running on the Trails

I found a new favorite place to run.  Wow!  Today I went through the Anoka Nature Preserve for a short 3-mile run.  I went at the end of the word day and it was hotter than fire (almost) so I didn't want to go too far, but I was so excited to see the trails.

I could see this place on a map, close to another trail I've tried, so I wanted to check it out.  When I got home and started on this blog post, I had a hard time linking to the right place.  My friends at Google Maps unhelpfully name this place 'Rum River Park' there are two, this isn't either one of them, and my friends at Open Streets Maps didn't know what the hell to call this place and just left the space blank, as did Bing and Mapquest.  Wtf?  Eventually I looked on the City of Anoka's website and found this place listed as their newest nature preserve.  I say it's fantastic.

Aside from being thrilled with the location, I kept thinking 'I wonder when the heat's going to start bothering me' and it never really did.  I think this most recent winter (the one that didn't end until last week) really made me appreciate running in hot weather.  Before this year, a run in 85* at the end of a work day simply wouldn't have happened.  My, how things change!