Active Recovery...

My legs were finally feeling up to a run by yesterday so Pam & I hit the loop around Rice Lake in Maple Grove after work, managing to avoid the rain. We kept a pretty good pace for the 6.5mi with an avg HR of 160. Everything felt great except my quads were a little tired by around halfway. So I looked up my training log from this time last year and it turns out I didn't run for a full 7 days after the 50K - until the Wells Fargo half - but instead did 7 classes of yoga!! I didn't get back in town this week until Wednesday and slept in the past few mornings so I haven't actually made 1 class! But I think I'll try to hit a Vinyasa one later - great for stretching the quads.

And I need it after this morning's run - I should of course have rested but the weather was so lovely by the time I got up at 8:30am that I decided to head out to the RTA. A trip I will have to take more often - I love running in Afton but it is quite a hike for anything less than a 2hr run whereas it's only 25 mins out to Eden Prairie. I didn't really know how much I felt like doing but ended up at 4 loops which my watch recorded as 10.8mi (though I haven't yet calibrated it...) with an avg HR of 153. It was just gorgeous being out there especially getting to the top of the big climb and standing in the breeze looking south. Not to mention the wonderful sight of the 3 young deer I had disturbed. It never fails to bring back memories of my earliest running days when I come across deer while out on the trails. There is a park near my home where I used to train which has a large herd of deer. It frightened the life out of me the first few times I was running there alone and suddenly a deer would run across the trail in front of me. But it soon became part of the experience and something I looked forward to.

Tomorrow morning will be a nice easy pace around Lake Minnetonka. It's the only race I've done every year since moving here so while it may be a bit cracked to run 3 days in a row when not fully recovered I just can't quite say no...

end of post