In Every Run That Must Be Done; There is an Element of Fun (comments welcome)

[Naomeri]

I tried to get those shoes but none were available by the time I read the email . Does the honeycomb collapse on impact like the On pillows?

There’s some spring to them, but I wouldn’t say it collapses

 

[Herding_Cats]

WOOT! I love SSR for race weekends. Maybe we'll see you there if when DH decides he wants to go lets me talk him into going again. We stay preferred as well, but down by the DS entrance so we can just walk over for food whenever.

 

[Naomeri]

2 Days Until: Hot Dash 10K

I’ve really got to get back in the habit of updating this journal.

Since my last entry:
3.24 miles at 12:34 average pace
6.07 miles at 13:53 average pace
4.58 miles at 13:13 average pace
2.12 miles at 13:13 average pace (followed by walking the same distance—more on that later)
4.74 miles at 13:37 average pace
6.44 miles at 13:37 average pace

24:17 indoor cycling
33:53 indoor cycling
38:16 indoor cycling

I’m still having trouble finding my motivation. I keep finding excuses not to do things. I think it’s ADHD, and I have an appointment to start the process of evaluation, but not until June Until then, I’m just going to have to try my best.

On March 11, it was 65°F and sunny and I wanted to run the Katrina Lake Loop. Like an idiot, I forgot how hot I get and wore a tshirt instead of a tank top. And I tried to do a Magic Mile at the beginning (I only managed a 12:02, which is a far cry from the 10:18s I had last fall). Also, the straps on my sports bra wouldn’t stay up and the excessive bounce was a problem I was having trouble catching my breath, and made the decision to call the run just past the 2 mile mark, before I got to the big hill. I walked back to the car, and tried to go fast. I managed a pace of 18:58, which is pretty fast for me.

March 12 was also nice and warm, and I did manage to do my whole scheduled run. I skipped my Thursday and Saturday runs (more excuses) but Sunday, I was determined to get my revenge on the Loop, despite the high winds. I did it, and I mostly didn’t freeze (I was really missing that 65° by then) It was good to have confirmation that I’m not going to die during my 10K this weekend, even though I probably won’t be setting any PRs.

In other news: chipmunks are back!!
King



Rocky



Happy



I’ve been doing costume-y things!
First, not exactly a costume, but I got a dress for one of the spring Dapper Days!



For the Lion King 10 Miler—I wanted something reminiscent of the fabric patterns used by the Broadway performers, and I found this neat pattern on my favorite dress site, and got a matching headband, too.



For the Springtime 10K, since I’m not a huge Up fan (I prefer Pixar movies that make me cry toward the end, not gut punch me right out of the gate), so I’m reusing my Lilo & Stitch costume from W&D 2022, but I got a matching headband for myself, and got a new outfit for Stitch.



For the W&D 5K, since it’s Muppet themed, I did a search for Muppet Disneybounds for ideas and got really inspired by some of the Animal bounds. My grandparents and I agree—the wig really makes this costume work I just need to trim the bangs so they don’t stab me in the eyes



For the 10K, I had to go with Dr Facilier—this will also be my costume for the MK Halloween party. I created the fabric patterns for the clothes myself, and had them made by the same company that does my dresses. I reused my Maleficent staff, but changed out the ball for one that will glow purple.



For the W&D Half, I’ll be going as Minnie in her outfit from Chef Mickey’s. I have the ear headband I wore in DL, and a little chef hat that fits on it. I still need to work on the apron a little bit.



For Marathon Weekend, as soon as someone mentioned 50s cheerleaders and it clicked. My outfit from the DL was really comfortable (and adaptable to cold temps), plus I got a bunch of compliments , so I ordered 3 more shirts and 3 more skirts in the same style in some fun color combinations, and some adhesive felt in multiple colors, and I’m pretty much all set.

 

[jmasgat]

Great costumes!

 

[superchime]

Your costumes all look fantastic and I am so jealous of all of your preparations! I've still got work to do on my one costume for Springtime!

 

[avondale]

Nice work on the costumes! I also like the first non-costume dress - very spring-y.

 

[Stitch&Co.]

The costumes look awesome. You are so creative. And…

CHIPMUNKS!!!!

 

[Naomeri]

Hot Dash 10K

I didn’t die, I didn’t freeze, and I didn’t come in last.

I managed to get up and out the door only 15 minutes later than I planned to, which was fine because I always build extra time in. I got downtown and parked with plenty of time, and went in and picked up my bib. I ate my waffle and got myself all ready to go. I turned in my gear bag and headed to the start.

I’m not in shape to race for time, so I just set my intervals to 30/45, and tried to stick to them as much as possible. I skipped some walk breaks on downhills to balance out skipping run breaks on some of the uphills.

I don’t really have a lot to report from the race, except for a few Minnesota facts that were posted, Burma-Shave style, along the course:

• What is the ratio of boats to people in Minnesota? 1:6
• What does the word “Minnesota” mean? It’s a Siouan word meaning “Cloudy Water”
• How many Boeing 747s can fit inside the Mall of America? 32–it’s huge, plane-ly (the pun was included on the sign)
• What flavor is the state muffin? Blueberry

There was also a joke that I had to capture



Other than that, here’s some pictures!
Minneapolis Skyline from the Plymouth Ave bridge over the Mississippi



Grain Belt Beer sign



Oven Mitt Mountain was a really big hill in Mile 4



Gold Medal Flour sign on the Mill City Museum behind the Guthrie Theatre (at the top of Oven Mitt Mountain)



Competing Pillsbury Flour sign across the river from Gold Medal Flour



Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi River, which was about half of Mile 6. You come off the bridge onto cobblestones, which were not fun. Then you turn onto a brick road (reddish, not yellow ) that was also not fun to run on, but better than the cobbles.



I wanted to finish really strong, and I guess I did, comparatively, but I just couldn’t find the lung capacity to keep it up for very long. Here’s my medal!



Here’s my official results and my watch results.




I would do this race, or another race from this location again, there’s a nice place with seating and a coffee shop (and fireplaces!) to hang out pre/post race, with attached parking ramp. However, I probably wouldn’t use the parking ramp again because it took a literal hour to get out of there! It would’ve been even worse if I hadn’t been able to maneuver myself around a post to cut through the spot in front of my car, instead of having to back out and go all the way to the end of the row and back up. I made a stop on the way home to pick up a shirt from DSG, and then hit Culver’s for lunch, because I was starving. I was also pretty chilled, despite having switched to a dry shirt and sitting in a heated car for an hour and a half, so the hot bath when I got home felt good. I’m going to take it easy for the rest of the day, and I’m not looking forward to shoveling snow tomorrow (but the snow total forecast has been revised downward, so that’s a positive)

 

[Scootin'By]

Congrats on the finish! Great pictures on what looks like a chilly day.

 

[avondale]

Great job on the race! Enjoyed the photos. I was wondering how many people even know about Burma Shave any more.

I was also pretty chilled, despite having switched to a dry shirt and sitting in a heated car for an hour and a half,

For a similar reason, I discovered that my car's heating system only goes up to 83 F. After that, it calls it "max" and you can't turn up the temperature any more! Sometimes that just isn't enough...

 

[Naomeri]

5 Days Until: Goldy’s Run 10 Miler

I did not run or use the bike at all last week. I did spend the better part of 4 hours shoveling heavy wet snow on several days though, so I wasn’t just sitting around.

This was after the second time I shoveled the driveway. I didn’t even try to lift the snow, just shoved it to the side least likely to be used for the 3 days it would take for the snow to melt.



The snow even blew up against the front of our house, and frosted my grandma’s Easter bunny pot



This week is going to be super busy, but I’m determined to get my runs in. I already did today’s scheduled run, so that’s 1 down, 3 to go. Tonight, I have a concert (Red Hot Chili Pipers—not a typo—it’s rock music covers with bagpipes ), tomorrow night we have a show at Chanhassen Dinner Theatre (Beautiful: The Carol King musical) that was supposed to be 2 weeks ago, but my grandparents had to go out of town, so we rescheduled. Saturday night, I’m going to the Fall Out Boy concert. Sunday morning is my 10 miler race. In my defense, when I registered, I thought the race was Saturday morning, not Sunday, which would’ve been fine. But now I’ll be practicing for Disney by running on not enough sleep

Today’s run was supposed to be 4 easy miles, but ended up being a very nice progression run, with a cool down for the distance it took to get back home after I hit 4 miles.



The GAP from Strava shows the real splits better



I found my 2nd Dapper Days dress. I had gotten this in December 2022, hoping to use it for a Giselle costume for Princess 2023, but it didn’t fit right, and when I did the return on Amazon, the company said I didn’t have to return it, so it was just sitting around in my closet. I was playing around with it while I was snowbound last weekend and figured out that about 5 minutes on the sewing machine was all I needed to get the bodice to behave right.



I definitely picked the right dress to use for my Lion King 10 miler costume—we saw the touring production of the show on Wednesday night and I wore my dress (with a 3/4 sleeve bolero sweater because…Minnesota) and got multiple compliments and comments that it was perfect to wear to the show. I wasn’t 100% sure that the theme would be evident at first glance, but I’m totally confident now.

I have no chipmunk pictures to share, because they’re smart enough to stay in their holes during blizzards, but I do have this shot of a little red squirrel hanging out in my evergreen bush to eat the food I tossed under there for anyone who was hungry.

 

[Naomeri]

Goldy’s Run 10 Miler: Part 1

I managed to complete 2/3 of my workouts this week, plus PR’ed in my 10 Miler (technically…more on that later)

I already talked about Tuesday’s workout in my last entry, so I’ll talk about Friday’s workout here. I’ve been bored lately, so I was looking around for an adaptive run trainer app to try out, and I found Runna. I haven’t actually done any plan runs yet, because I’m right at the end of my Springtime Surprise plan. I have the new Runna plan set to start the Monday after I get home from that trip, which will train me for my 10 Miler on August 17th. But it has a “free run” function so I could get used to how it works and get it set up the way I want (like, don’t talk to me while I’m running—I can’t hear you, so just put it on the watch screen)

While I do think the app has overestimated how much faster I can get in 16 weeks, I’m willing to give it a try and see how it goes. Barring injury, it’s not likely to make me any slower



I have this past weekend’s 10 Miler as a starting baseline of what I can do for this distance, I have another on June 1 that will tell me if I’ve made any improvement in the first 5 weeks (I don’t expect any miracles there), and then I’ll have the big finale in August. If I have any improvement, or if I at least enjoy the plan, I’ll let it make me a marathon plan for Dopey.

One of the features I like about the app is that I don’t have to do any math or thinking to switch a workout to the treadmill, I just have to tap a button and it will show me the treadmill speeds. I’ll probably do a lot of the repeats and intervals workouts on the treadmill because it’s hard to find enough flat space to do repeats, and they’re so short, it’s hard to measure outdoors. Also, I suck at pacing myself at short distances

Here’s the very first workout it has scheduled for me, in outdoor and treadmill modes



I can view the entire plan from the outset, either in a week-by-week view, or exported to PDF for printing (nice for people that like to physically mark off their runs)

Pardon my messy edits—the feature to add B races is coming later this year, apparently—until then, I had to do it myself




Anyway, here’s the result of my first free run with Runna. I ended up missing my run on Thursday, so I ran on Friday and skipped Saturday, since I had a concert that night and the race on Saturday. I’m not sure why I was slow, I didn’t feel like I was that slow. But I tried a little bit of a new route, running along the lake, and it was very pretty. I’ve been hesitant to run along the lake because the road has a lot of curves, and obviously not as much space on the lake-side to bail out in the case of an inattentive driver, but it turned out ok (though I think I’d avoid the “rush hour” time of day in the future)




I had a great seat for the Fall Out Boy concert on Saturday, and I didn’t even have to stand for the whole thing, because the guy in front of me (and the girl in front of him) ended up sitting for a lot of it—yay for saving my feet!

Yes, I took a picture of the view from my seat, I’ve done it at every show, concert, and sporting event I’ve attended since phones started having cameras. It’s really empty because I got there really early because the Twins were playing the Guardians at 6:10 at the ballpark next door (which shares the good parking garages) and my concert started at 6:30.



I managed around 5 hours of sleep before I had to get up and get ready to head to the race. Because I was parking at the stadium where the race was starting and ending, I had to get there before they started closing roads at 7am, even though the races didn’t start until 8am (5K) and 8:20 (10mi).

I caught great shot of the sunrise over the lake, and the sky stayed pretty until I was almost to the U of M campus, whereupon the heavens opened and it started pouring while I read in my car. I had a poncho to put on for pre-race, which did keep the wind off me, along with a few stray raindrops.



I got my bag dropped off, watched the 5K start, took a selfie, and then made my way into the starting area. I ripped off the cheap poncho about 2 minutes before the race started.



To Be Continued…

 

[Naomeri]

Goldy’s Run 10 Miler: Part 2

Here we go, we’re about to start the race…any minute here…eventually

Yeah, it took 4 minutes between when the race started and when I crossed the start line. For whatever reason, they had a choke point between the start corral and the race course; even though they both went the full width of the road, the timing mats were not so wide, so they had to narrow the space abruptly and it slowed the release of runners down. Which, I suppose, helped with potential congestion, but it was mildly annoying for the race to start and not be moving when there’s only 2000 runners. But I got there and got going. And very soon had to step off onto the sidewalk to re-tie my shoes because they felt sloppy.

Shortly into mile 2, we passed the Weisman Art Museum, which I’ve only ever seen from a distance. This was 8:39am (this is relevant for a reason that will be revealed later)



This was at the start of a giant long hill that seemed like it would never end. It also happened to go right past the University hospital, which felt appropriate because I thought the hill might kill me I actually did well in the mile, but I’m not sure how. After a couple more miles, we crossed the Mississippi and I got this shot of downtown Minneapolis. The crazy plunge and subsequent jump in elevation is kind of funny to see on my run stats.



There was a pretty mural along the West Bank of the river. The text in the middle says “What will sustain us?” and the artist is Xena Goldman. I didn’t catch what the text on the right side said, and it’s not legible when I zoom in on the picture.



Here’s the Weisman again, now seen from the west bank of the Mississippi. This was 10:11am. So it took me 1 hour and 32 minutes to make my way along the course to get back to the Weisman.



I spent the entire race playing leapfrog with this one older gentleman, in an orange jacket and a Minnesota Gophers hat (complete with Gopher ears) who maintained a slow, but steady, pace the whole time. On my run intervals, I’d run up to him, or slightly past him, then I’d hit a walk break and he’d zip past me, and then I’d catch up again on my next run. The only time I stayed ahead of him for more than a minute was on the downhills, because I ran down them to bank time to walk up some of the nastier uphills. And he also made a pit stop at the last opportunity around mile 8.5. It didn’t take long for him to catch me after that one because it was right before an uphill where I lost my breath and had to walk even though it wasn’t that steep.

Next, there was a wicked steep uphill right at the beginning of the last mile that was a particularly sadistic thing for the race organizers to include—there had to be a better way to get there. There was a college kid standing at the bottom of the hill with a sign that said “Murder The Hill”—it was almost the other way around, that thing was short, but terrible. And then we got up to the mostly flat campus at the top, where I thought I’d be able to kick it up and kill my PR. But the wind picked up and the rain really started coming down, and the wind tunnel effect from the buildings made the rain blow right in my face no matter what direction I was facing. I thought for sure Orange Gopher was going to pull ahead for good with his persistent pace, but I managed to at least keep him in sight.

We hit a narrow alley-like bit and the rain and wind got worse, so I put on a little more speed to get through it and passed him. I was also hoping the end was around the corner, but I was wrong, and he passed me again. Then we got close to the stadium and started going around it. This is where a new obstacle was introduced: little runners (and their parents)! Some fool of a race organizer decided it was a good plan to have the kids’ race start before the 10 milers were finished, and to run said kids’ race using the same course. Suddenly, I had to not run over little kids or barrel though families of four all running hand-in-hand.

I managed to weave through, pass the Orange Gopher, and hit the hill downhill into the stadium and onto the football field. I could barely tell where the finish line was because there were people standing around everywhere and it was, frankly, a dangerous disaster area. Also, I definitely didn’t get any finish line shots (if there were any still cameras) because of the crowd.

Here’s a screen grab from the livestream video. About 5 minutes after I finished, they moved the camera position to before the start line, so it was a better view for the last 50 or so finishers. I added the arrow so you could find me. On a positive note, my outfit for the MW 10K was perfect for this.



I fought through the crowd to find a medal volunteer, and then looked around to say hello to the Orange Gopher, who couldn’t be far behind me (30 seconds, according to the official results) I congratulated him on a good race and said it was pleasure to play leapfrog with him for 10 miles. He asked how often I passed him and I said “oh, about every minute or so” Then I went off in search of food (major fail, how hard is it to have an unflavored option for chips?) and water (Dasani—gross, but wet) and my bag. I switched into dry shoes, and peeled off my gold shirt (which kept almost all the rain off my white shirt) and put on my warmest runDisney jacket. I headed to my car and it took 20 minutes to get out of the parking lot (which is better than the hour it took to leave Hot Dash 2 weeks ago). I met my grandparents for lunch at Culver’s so I didn’t die of hunger and went home to take a hot bath.

Here are my official race results:



Here are my splits, pace, and elevation data from the Runna app. I like that I can see the extended walk or run segments matched up to the hills (and the two apparently sudden drop/rise bits from crossing the river) I also really really like how even my splits are, despite the occasionally extended intervals. You can also see how in the last mile, the weather kind of kicked my butt.



Here are the splits from Strava to show the GAP



And here’s my cute Goldy medal!



One other sort of neat thing about the Runna app is that you can share your run and it puts this graphic together (you can add your picture, like I did)—I do think there’s room for improvement on this function, and shared my feedback ideas with the creators.



All in all, I would do this race again, despite a couple wicked hills and the attack of the littles at the end (which could be avoided if I were a bit faster) But I think it will be the same weekend as Springtime Surprise next year, so it’ll have to wait until 2026.

 

[jmasgat]

Congrats on your race. I hope lots of people give feedback on that finish--not good. Also, beautiful sunrise photo! And the Weisman Museum screams "Frank Gehry".

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Congrats! Sounds like a cool course but a rough finish

I'll be interested to hear what you think of Runna - The Running Channel works with them, but I haven't really looked into it myself.

 

[Naomeri]

Congrats! Sounds like a cool course but a rough finish

I'll be interested to hear what you think of Runna - The Running Channel works with them, but I haven't really looked into it myself.

I’ll keep updating on it. It also has the option for personalized Strength, Mobility, and Pilates plans, which I’ll look into before my training plan starts

 

[Cabius]

Congrats! Great recap

 

[Naomeri]

Goldy’s Run 10 Miler: Addendum

I just realized that I never explained what I meant by “technically” in regards to my PR.

It really was a PR by 14 seconds according to my watch, as far as start line to finish line. But my previous PR was actually at a faster pace because I must have done a lot of weaving or whatever, because I had 10.34 miles for that one, and only 10.07 miles for this one. So a pace of 12:55 for the old PR vs a pace of 13:14 for the new PR. It’s a real PR, and I’m happy with it, but it’s just kind of funny to have PR’ed with a slower pace.

As a bonus, this is what my “pre-packing” phase looks like—an open suitcase buried under/surrounded by all sorts of random things that I don’t want to forget

 

[azrivest]

It really was a PR by 14 seconds according to my watch, as far as start line to finish line. But my previous PR was actually at a faster pace because I must have done a lot of weaving or whatever, because I had 10.34 miles for that one, and only 10.07 miles for this one. So a pace of 12:55 for the old PR vs a pace of 13:14 for the new PR. It’s a real PR, and I’m happy with it, but it’s just kind of funny to have PR’ed with a slower pace.

A PR is a PR! Congrats on your 10-miler!

 

[avondale]

Congratulations on the 10-miler! That gopher medal is cute!