BEAUTIFUL DAY

My leg is feeling a lot better, but it’s still not 100%. Now I haven’t decided if it’s shin splints or something in the calf. Whatever it is, I’ve been icing, massaging and stretching the heck out of it and cross training.

Friday night I rode my bike on the trainer for an hour. It was boring as hell, even worse than a 2 hour treadmill run. Saturday I parked near the Mall of America and then road my mountain bike 40 minutes to Hyland Park to watch the Trail Mix 25K, 50K and relay. A couple of my teammates ran the 25K and we also had a relay team. After watching them I rode another 40 minutes back to my car.

The nice thing about training with a bunch of triathletes is that if I need to cross-train, I still have people to exercise with. Yesterday that included a 3 hour bike ride during what the morning-drive DJ called “the most beautiful day in the history of Minnesota.” Seriously, it was probably 50 degrees and sunny when we started at 8 AM. Later in the afternoon it was 70 sunny, calm, no humidity, no bugs, etc. I told my wife if it were like this every April, there’d be a lot more people living in Minnesota. The reality is that it’s not normally like this.

With the weather, it was no surprise that “everyone” was out exercising today. Our ride took us along the Mississippi River Blvd, across the Stone Arch Bridge, along the incredible bike path that is paved all the way from Hiawatha Avenue to Hopkins. This is the same path that I run on some mornings; I just didn’t realize it went all that way. On the way back went around Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet and down the Minnehaha Parkway before finishing along Sheppard Road. It’s a ride like that that makes you realize why the Twin Cities are always ranked near the top of the ‘best places to live’ lists in magazines like Outside, Runner’s World, etc.

Digging up the correct quote from Running with the Buffaloes has led to me re-reading the book. I had nearly forgotten what a great book it is. I think it tells a great story and is really well written. I’m going to talk about it in more detail and include some quotes from it starting tomorrow.

Quote of the day:
“If you want to become the best runner you can be, start now. Don’t spend the rest of your life wondering if you can do it.” Priscilla Welch