Finally! A Track!!

Just a quick note.

For weeks I have been trying to find a better option for Track workouts, my NYC Marathon ramp up starts in 2 week and I have scheduled a few Yasso 800's in the training plan. The problem is that even though I like the St Thomas track, it is a bit out of the way for a Tuesday morning/evening workout. We have been trying to find a nice track on the west side of the cities but most of the time the high school tracks are fenced off and locked and there are no college tracks on this side of the cities. During a moment of inspiration today I decided to call around to several of the local running stores to see if they had any ideas. My phone calls turned up some good information; did you know that in the winter there is a domed track in Plymouth? My second call hit pay dirt; they suggested that I take a look at the track located at the Edina Community Center, just off of Highway 100 and Benton. So this afternoon I decided to stretch my legs a bit and check it out. This is the track and field used by Edina High School, in fact the football team was practicing while of was there but I found a couple very informative signs.



Yea!! A track, a nice track, open to the public, on the west side on the cities, and as a bonus, it is about halfway between my house and Kris's place. So tonight we met at the track for her track work out and it was great!! Kris is not fond of tracks as she gets bored with the round and round, but being a former track athlete it feels like home to me. Now I I could just get them to setup the pole vault.

Splash & Dash 2.0 and Masters

OK, so I need to write updates as soon as I can and work on catching up on older events when I get a chance. The Madison Ride/Chicago Rock & Roll Half Marathon blog is in the works but it is getting a bit long at this point so I will finish that up when I can and get the most current events posted.

Two topics for this blog; Gear West Splash & Dash and Master Swim:

On Tuesday night I participated in the second Gear West Splash & Dash. For those of you unfamiliar with this event it is structure like this.

The swim is 200 meters consisting of 2x50 meter out and back swims. You will swim out and around a buoy and back then run out on the beach around a cone and then back in for another out and back swim. You will transition to a 1 mile out and back run north on Brown Rd. Rest then repeat. (200M 2 lap swim/1 mile run, short rest, 200M 2 lap swim/1 mile run)

At the first Splash & Dash, seven of us competed under questionable weather conditions and for me it was more of a learning curve. Results:

I am happy to report that Splash & Dash 2.0 was a much better performance for me. My swims and runs improved considerably and in the first run I posted the 3rd fastest (out of 15) run time of 6:33. My runs were very consistent at 6:33 & 6:34. I guess race number 13 really is lucky! Results:


Everyone had a good time, 5 of the 7 original Splash & Dash participants returned for version 2.0 and it was fun chatting with everyone during the event. It was good to see Steve Stenzel of Steve in a Speedo fame again and his wife Pharmie joined us as well. I would highly recommend this event to anyone as it is a nice break during the week and it might not seem like much but it is defiantly a challenge. How often do you get out of the water and transition right into a run? Tougher then you think!

One more shout out to my own personal rockstar, Kris “rounded out the “podium”” with third place in her division. It must be your addition to coffee that makes you faster!! ;)

Masters Swim – Since March I have been swimming with the Hopkins Masters swim group, at least once a week sometime I get my butt out of bed twice a week. When I started, I could not even keep up with the rest of the swimmers in Lane 1, for those of you who don’t know Lane 1 is the slowest lane. After 4+ months I feel I have made a lot of progress, I still might not be the fastest swimmer, nor will I ever be “fast”, no matter what Kris thinks; but in the past two weeks I have been able to make all of my times and intervals at two very challenging speed workouts. I typically am very tired after these speed workouts but I feel great, so I am very happy with my progress.

So what is next? Race the Lake – 90 Mile bike race around Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin on Sunday.