Training Log Archive: FoxShadow

Group ride "wednesday worlds". Great ride with lots of speed, great weather, and good people. Started with 23 guys and finished with 5, many men down. But Monica was one of the remaining 5 so good work by the hardy german. Felt good, really really good. Transformation to beast mode is near complete.

C • Wow... that is a high average 5

Rode out to Ohio Street in Saint Paul and did 10 repeats, tried to go faster on each one. Made it up in around two minutes most intervals, but the last was certainly not the fastest. Good workout. The ride home felt long, I was done.

Easy spin to recover from Sunday's race.

MTB-O! What fun this was. This was some of the most fun I've ever had with a map. Riverbend NC was an ideal location for it as the park is just big enough, and has quite an intricate trail system.

Phil and Molly set an AWESOME course that had tons of great route choice decisions, some of which were not obvious at first glance. From map study of worlds, this appeared to be a good replica of what the Euros race on. Hats off to them for an awesome course that included a score-O section and a map exchange!

I had a good day in terms of legs and a decent day in terms of nav. I bombed the first control, and I made an assumtion that the second trail from 4 to 5 went though but was wrong. Otherwise nav errors were very minimal and I just had a blast cranking though the park.

Hats off to Biz for smoking it with only a few very minor bobbles, awesome navigation.

control retrieval, and warm up.

Long (20K) - Splits

Long ride, twenty miles on gravel. Winds were tough on the way home,
I was out of blood sugar in a big way when done. Nice day outside of the wind.

Good lift at Snap fitness with Tommy O'Connor. Lots of boot camp type stuff, upper and lower body, a good night at the gym.

Rode the road bike out to Shakopee and back. Legs were tired at the end, but ended up being only 36 miles. I think my legs are still a bit tried from the last few days. Felt good generally though, beautiful weather and nice roads out there for the most part. Perfect summer night ride.

Rode up and around the lakes and down and around in Edina where I flatted. Got it fixed and raced home down France which was not a good route. Rode hard at times.

Never been under 175lbs. Time to relax, only a bit, on watching what goes in. This completes a loss of about 13 pounds from the new year.

C • Better to hit the target now 2

The Gear Junkie Smartwool Alleycat.

Good times!

Widespread reports of the first place team cheating did not deter Stephen from awarding them the win, and I did not care enough to take up the issue myself. A great route idea from Molly and Biz to hop on the light rail helped get me into the fray. Hammered the rest of the course, pushing Eric along and waiting from him as he worked his hardest on his full suspension. Great course included having to swim out to the swim platform on Harriet.

Rode there and back from my house for extra miles. Good stuff.

C • win or cheat? 2

The Most Amazing Race.

This one lived up to it's name once again.

A very fast and competitive morning qualifier this year. 90 teams, top 20 go to the main event. Eric and I crossed the line in third, and I believe that Kelly and I were about third last year as well. You want to race it smart and fast, but no reason to sprint and make the legs tighten up too much.

We took a long time to start running, reading the entire set of directions, deciding on the order in which we would do them, and then leaving.

Our first challenge was to board the bus and do the crossword challenge. BUT there was a line, we took too long to read the clues. No problem, we would do it last. We ran from the start, at TCF, to the Coffman union to bowl. We had to strike or spare. BOOM, first frame done, we are out. A bit of light rail construction choas on the way back to the stadium kept us on our toes.

Off to the soup, soap, salvation challenge. This sucked. We had to EACH finish a can of tomato soup through a straw, then deal with a particular judge during a soap measurement challenge. No problems there.

Then the crossword on the bus. We ROCKED that.

Then we had to kick a field goal while the KFAN sports guy was announcing. I ran without breaking stride towards a ball already T'ed up and boom, deep through the uprights, we were done. Got some love from the KFAN dude on a job well done which was fun.

Piece of cake, on to the main event.

Sadly, Biz and Kelly did not make top twenty, which lent a feeling of frustration and sadness to the break between events. Regardless, a good reminder to read the clues slowly in the main event.

Whoa, if I do play by play this will be far too long. How about this.

After two hours, Jesse and Grant got a bit ahead of us due to a bus stop being closed down unbeknownst to us. Further, they beat us in the first two challenges, so they opened up a 5-10 minute gap.

BUT, they missed the bus that came by just as they finished. So, we were able to get on the same one they did.

For the rest of the day, Eric and I were running a bit faster, and completing challenges marginally faster as well. We eeked out a narrow victory by two minutes! The gap was up to 10 minutes at one point, but they were chipping is back down. It was a nailbiter!

We finished in 4:34. A lot of racing. 27 miles covered, and probably 10 of actual running, 17 on bus and light rail, if I had to guess.

The title was defended successfully for the third $5,000 cash out in 12 months, in three tries.

Woot woot beep beep!

Easy spin around the city in the heat. Huge bladder of ice on the back felt good in the heat.

Torchlight 5k. Heat index at just under 100. Started out at a comfortable pace, my GPS watch said 6:14. I thought to myself, I can do this. My lifetime PR is 20:05, which is 6:24 pace. After the first two miles, I felt both that I was not running very fast, but also that my body temp was very high.

Last year, I had some heat related nausea and discomfort, and the memories were not motivating. I backed off the pace, accidentally, for a bit. My watch said 6:26 on this third mile.

But with a half mile to go, I felt that I had not really started racing in earnest. I picked up the pace a bit, to ensure I bagged my PR. With 100 meters to go I picked up the pace again and had a fair amount of juice left. Perhaps even a lot.

Crossed in 19:32. My lifetime PR. I am happy about it.

C • Good times 9

Did a bit over a mile of warmup, and 1.7 of cool down. Both with Wentzel, who smoked the course tonight!

Slower ride in the heat to get some miles in. Up the river into campus and back with Eric. Hot, but really did not feel as terribly as I was anticipating.

Quick run before lifting.

Tommy and I lifted upper body at Snap.

Heat index for Wednesday's 5k PR attempt will be over 95 degrees. So, there goes that goal. Bummer.

Awesome MNOC AR.

Teamed up with Erl, Amy (Gear Junkie) and Eric Kelly to take on the annual Adventure-O. How could I miss it?

Well, that was a question for which everyone else in OTNT had an answer: there was not one OTNT member present at this year's AR other than founder Mike Carlson and Julia hardcore volunteer and racer Bohnen. Not Biz, not Curtis, not Jerritt, Tim, Jeff, Darryn, Pete W., Jim, Ian, not anybody. No wonder WILD has trouble getting people out to their racers, not even the regular navigators are crossing over.

The good thing is that many of the regulars were putting on the race. Dana was a huge help, as was Ian, Curtis, and Biz, and others.

The race was SWEET! The woods up there are fantastic. Gorgeous open woods, fantastic fens, and a good map. The only downside were the bugs. We applied big spray four times, and even used full face nets on the last trek (which were awesome!).

We raced really well, all day long, with just a few oneish minute mistakes throughout the day. We just could not TA or move quite as fast as Bushwacker, and they got us by a well deserved 20 minutes in the end. The better team won this day and I had no regrets. We worked together really well all day long, and as a navigator, no frustrating would/coulda moment to dwell on.

Thanks to the Bushwacker crew for traveling for the event, it made it much more competitive which was great.

Many thanks to Columbia and Gear Junkie for sponsoring the event, that was awesome! Too bad the $10,000 in prizes from last year did not translate to increased attendance this year.

I have to think that the event was not announced early enough, as the main culprit for lack of attendance. Great race, once again. Perhaps even up to the standards on the godfather's courses, even. Mike said he loved the course.

C • Thanks 1

Weight is at a plateau. Need to drop one more pound before I can go back to normal mode. Just want to say I weighed 175 at least once before I relax on it.

Got down to the riverbottoms for a run. Is this the first run I have done outside a competition in a month or more? I think so. I have the torchlight 5k next wednesday, so I figured I had to see if the legs still worked.

I'm going to try to set a lifetime PR there. We'll see how that goes. I'm light, I was fast this spring after going with Kelly to the power dome all winter, but I have no idea how the legs will react. Lifetime PR is 20:05. I think I just have got to be able to get under 20 minutes. I figure I was in the sub 19:30 range a few months ago, just never raced.

Good run today, although the couple of 7:30 miles I did felt fast. Trail running is always slower though, right? ha.

After the run went to BW3's to meet Pete W and Molly and Mike to watch the WOC coverage. Totally awesome! We raged that place, got nearly almost one or two people interested in the sport, but not really. At all.

C • I think you are in shape to... 4

Spin around the city, up and down the river, with Monika to hear about her trip to Colorado. Slow and easy, nice night.

Our for a quick loop at Cuyuna before lunch.

Our for a second loop after lunch. A few strava attacks were launched, but no KOM's were acheived on my tired legs. I feel like I have more or less memorized the trail system there - really pretty day today for the spectacular views.

Headed up to Cuyuna with Eric for some MTB action on my favorite trails. Got out for a short ride before the sunset, as this was just a quick trip from 4PM saturday to 10PM sunday, door to door.

Three laps at murphey with Biz. Great workout!

fast road loop around the lake out at my folks house for the 4th of july.

Just raged at lebanon tonight, great fun. Did a full x-loop to intermediate to terrain park, then an additional abbreviated x-loop and out. Felt good after feeling sluggish yesterday.

Got out for a loop at mammoth. The brush cutter was out, so trail was nice and wide, and in great shape! Great trail, hidden secret. Had a solid bonk after about 30 minutes, but a GU taped to my top tube saved me well enough to keep going for a little bit. But still shut it down after an hour - my legs were pretty shot after race sunday and lifting monday.

City Solve posted a video of eric and I, which was completely sprung on us. I suppose it could have gone worse.

http://www.citysolveurbanrace.com/blog/

At least they also out up some art for our team name.

C • Slim Jim.... 8

C • Mint Chips? 1

1.5 mile warm up, then a good lifting session with Tommy O'Connor. Lots of legs today.