Week 2 CPR Marathon Training - No tempo but plenty of fun in St. Paul, MN.

I missed out the tempo run on Thursday of this week as I was too caught up with my girls and their activities driving them to and from their practices and my sister and I were making plans to take my parents and our kid's down to St. Paul, MN to visit our sister for the upcoming long weekend.

I made plans to run with my sister's running friend and neighbor Kevin Alldredge who happens to work at the Patagonia store in St. Paul, MN. He's an ultra-marathoner, ran the Boston Marathon and overall super nice guy. We were set to run Saturday morning while my sister and I planned on leaving Winnipeg Friday afternoon, immediately after work.

We made the trip to St. Paul's in pretty decent time considering the blowing snow from the border to Fargo, but once we were out of Fargo, the roads were clear and dry so we got to my sister Connie's around 2:30 AM. After unpacking the van, getting my parents and our kid's settled in, I was finally able to pass out around 3:30 and it felt like I just closed my eyes only to open them up again to start the day and get ready for the run.

Kevin arrived at 9:00 AM and we drove down Summit Avenue to Mississippi Avenue by the river bank to start our run.

We did the Mississippi River Blvd route which took us from the start at Summit Avenue over the E. Franklin Ave. bridge (I believe this was the bridge we had to cross over to get into St. Paul during the Twin Cities Marathon) which took us into Minneapolis around a big loop that ended off at Ford Parkway and back to Summit. I didn't have the mental fortitude to go an extra couple of kilometers to round out a 10 miler as I was still very mentally and physically tired from the previous night's drive. But the run was your nice LSD, we were able to keep a conversation going, and oh what great repartee's we were having! I learned so much about his life and his philosophical outlook, what he does at work and what Patagonia does...it was pretty fun talking with him.

We're going to try and meet up end of May to do another run...this time on trails! Can't wait for that.

Week 2 CPR Intervals

Our speed work for the second week of training:

8 x 90 Seconds interval

• Option 1: Run 90 seconds at 5km pace followed by 90 seconds slow recovery jog.
• Option 2: Run 90 seconds at 5km pace followed by 45 seconds walk 45 seconds slow recovery jog.
• Option 3: Run 90 seconds at 5km pace followed by 90 seconds walk.

I chose to do option 1, Osty wasn't in today as he had a hockey commitment with his son. But he gave me some sage advice when doing this workout. He told me it's very easy to go past your 5km pace for the first 3 intervals, but the next sets will get progressively harder to the point where you won't have any gas for the last interval set and that is where you should be going for it.

So instead of blasting out of the gate on the first whistle, I kept it at stable at what my body perceived to be my 5km pace (4:50 - 5:01/km) as I forgot my watch and had to rely on Endomondo using my phone, so I couldn't get the splits. This was a hard workout as it taught me to keep everything in check no matter how badly my legs, body and mind wanted to sprint out of the gate.