TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

Technically speaking today is the first day of my TCM training plan, not yesterday. Pfitz calls for 1 day off or cross training day per week. Today happens to be that day – what a great way to start a new plan!? I decided it was another great day to commute to work. This time I parked at Fort Snelling, so the total ride was just under 21 miles. I nearly rode my tri bike, but decided to stick with my mountain bike. I’m considering selling my tri bike - again – so if anyone is interested in hearing more about it, let me know.

As I’m biking this morning, I was thinking, who doesn’t love the Twin Cities? All but the last 2-3 miles of my commute were on bike paths. And the scenery included Fort Snelling, Minnehaha Falls, Lake Nokomis, the Parkway, Lake Harriett, and Lake Calhoun.

My running friends will be happy to hear that I bitched out every runner on the bike paths – like any other biker would do. I’m just kidding, but it is interesting to get a view from “the other side”. When you’re cruising along at 15+ m.p.h., you pass a lot more people than when you’re just running 8 m.p.h. I can see how it’d be easy for them to get frustrated with having to weave in and out of runners and walkers.

Speaking of new training plans, I took my (nearly) 9-year-old out running yesterday. She wants to go out for the cross country team I coach. We start in early August, so I’d like to be able to get her close to running 1 mile non-stop before then. Yesterday we started by running for 2 minutes and then walking for 1 minute. After two repetitions, she wanted to increase it to 3 minutes of running. We did that two more times before running one last minute. In total we run 11 of 16 minutes. Seems like a good start. Of course, the challenge will be to keep doing that (and adding more) a few times each week.

Oh yeah, yesterday I alluded to an exciting vacation that I have planned this summer. I’m pumped to announce that I’m heading to Eugene to watch the second section of the Track & Field trials. I was able to get a press pass through MDRA and they picked up my airplane ticket. So a huge thanks goes out to Heidi and MDRA. The one bummer is that I’ll miss some events that I'd really like to see, including the 10,000m, 800m and the triple jump. However, I’ll get to see the 1500m, Steeplechase, and 5000m. It’s hard to believe, but the trials start two weeks from this Friday. I’ll be heading out on June 28th.

Quote of the Day;

"Great job…And now, get your head ready to run under 13:00.” – Coach Sam Bell to Bob Kennedy after he ran 13:02