Ethan Cannon

Supposed to go running with my daughter, but she wanted to turn around after a mile. Either it was too cold today or she just is no longer interested. Too bad. I finished with running abbreviated farmers fields. 

Como classic, rain route. It was pouring the whole way. 

Didn't calculate this until Saturday. In light of how my long run went, maybe I shouldn't be surprised. After running with the family, did west river roundabout route, and came back in 6:28 pace. 

Today was the last day the temple was open for over six months. That is a huge bummer. It was a very rainy day, you could hear the rain in the temple. It was still raining when I started my run, so I put my key inside one of my gloves. My original plan had been to chill on the way out and make it a "barn burner" on the way back, but by the time I saw one of my old teammates a mile or two in, I could tell that I wasn't going to hold back on the way out. The rain went from a heavy drizzle to a light drizzle and stopped around the turnaround on the road by pine point. At the halfway, I took my GU. It was interesting, I was not surprised to not be aerobically challenged by the pace, but I knew I was a ticking time bomb before "the wheels came off", as so often happens. I haven't blitzed a long run in a while so I was just expecting this to happen. But mile after mile on the back end, it didn't. As the miles ticked by, I just felt stronger, knowing that if I did start to feel bad, it wouldn't have very long to affect me. Now, I was going faster than normal on the back end, but still enjoying it more. Crazy. So I ended up hitting 5:35 pace, my fastest long run of all time!!! I've repeatedly been in the ~5:45 range, but never below 5:43 or so as I recall. I guess the combination of the Gateway, where I tend to run really fast, with the magic of the week after Get in Gear (when I ran a fast LR last year) was enough to do it for me. I'm very pleased and wish I could say this means I am super fit. It's not a bad sign, but I really do feel like it had everything to do with the odd fact that I just didn't run out of gas. Somehow my glycogen was fine. No idea why. Look at these splits! 5:44, 5:53, 5:37, 5:40, 5:39, 5:36, 5:46, 5:46, 5:37, 5:36, 5:38, 5:31, 5:31, 5:31, 5:23, 5:17. 3:47 and 3:38 for the first and last parts, and about 4:30 each way in the middle without a mile marker. Crazy that I just ran 19 miles faster than my marathon pace. I definitely should be able to PR at that distance!

Met a random biker at Pine Point who was talking about all these tiny little towns that I have never heard of lol. 

After running with the fam, I found that east river flats was finally flooded. Interesting. 

Rainy morning to run como classic rain route. 

6:35 pace coming back from boom island. I don't have splits for going out because I took a spill on the bridge to the island. It's crazy I didn't fall all winter and then this happened. I cut my knee somewhat but the clotting worked well and I was able to finish going out and then come back without having issues. Just some minor scrapes on the hands. 

I have been feeling sick the past couple days (better today though) which caused poor sleep, plus I feel like my body needed a little to recoup from my LR, so I pushed my workout back to today and was looking for something chill. This meant avoiding the track. I settled on 2 X campus loop, where you start and end on dinkytown greenway and run down to river flats, then back up on Oak street like normal. This is 2.45 miles. I ran 12:26 and 12:13, with 3:30 rest in between and each rep I had to stop twice for a traffic light for 5-30 seconds or so. This was 5:04 pace and 4:59 pace. Used the new scale today and weighed 156.0 (protocol: before drinking after the run). 

Almost unbelievable 6:28 pace on a perfect sunny morning on farmers fields. I felt tired today but didn't feel like going slower. I don't think I've run under 6:30 pace over an entire normal easy day in years. I know it's just a run but I sure hope this type of thing somehow translates to better performance when it really counts. 

6:06 pace on west river road. 6:00 pace coming back. It was a perfect morning- sunny and 50 degrees or so. Great way to enjoy the side trails of WRR for the first time since the bloom. Felt tired today, at least near the beginning. The goal was to just take it really chill. I'm surprised I went as fast as I did with having done the side trails. 

Totally unintentional but this is the highest mileage week I've done this year by 0.75 miles. The LR is the reason. The standard deviation of my weekly mileage has been really low thus far. 

I ran from work for the first time ever. I unfortunately have gotten used to waking up in the morning, opening the weather app on my phone, and being dismayed to see that the air is still very smoky. Thus it was this morning. Now thankfully, right around my deadline for heading out on my run this afternoon, the AQI started to improve a lot such that I hardly noticed it. So it was actually a nice run on west river. But I have to say, I'm definitely a morning run guy. It feels better on my body, and the roads are a lot quieter at 7:30 AM than 4:30 PM. 

Things can change fast. This morning was super nice out. We ran to 11th, then my wife fell on her knee on the way back, one week after I did the same. You'd think running was like this extreme sport or something. So then I just did the same abbreviated farmers fields run that I did recently. 

I had been anticipating this workout. I'm grateful for running, and separately for training. It's just fun. I hope that as my fitness declines over the years to come, that I can still enjoy getting out there and doing workouts, some of which will go well and others less well; I want to still enjoy the work and feel accomplished afterwards. Today I wanted to test my super shoes head to head, as the new ones didn't feel as good as I had hoped during my race. The end result is that they felt too similar to make a clear call. If I could buy a brand new pair, it would definitely be the Vaporfly 2s instead of the 3s. But I don't think it is a good idea to revert to my old 2s for upcoming races. I was supposed to do 2 miles, then a couple of 400s in each of the racing shoes separately, then another 2 miles. As usual, the first 400 was telling. It felt fast, so it wsa a good thing that I ran 70-71. 4:48 through the first 1600 before it caught up to me a bit and I finished in 9:47 for the first rep (goal was 10:00). I got 3-4 minutes rest between that and each of the 4s, which were run in 70-71, because it took a while to change shoes. On the last one I wasn't sure what I would do. I focused on trying to do a good or ok job on each lap, just like I had on my way home from my fast long run a few weeks ago. Once again, each split turned out ok. I hit 1600 in 4:50 and finished in 9:43. When you look back on previous workouts like miles or 800s, that's not bad at all. I'm not sure I'm in way better shape than I was when I ran Ks a little ways back, but either I've improved a lot or the rain and wind that day really slowed me down, as my 3K split was faster than I averaged for each K that day. 

Started my run at 5:45 this morning. I had planned to go shorter and double for the first time in two years, but I woke up and couldn't fall back to sleep. I had my PhD qualifying exam today, and wanted to at least run somewhat to engage my brain. As I write this, I am feeling kind of gross and really hope I can get the rest I have fallen behind on. Felt tired and slow but still ran 6:43 pace on a beautiful, overcast morning on east river road. I've only run once in the morning when it was dark, and it was sure nice this morning to have light despite the early hour. 

6:39 pace, como classic. Little light rain at the end. 

We were going to go down to Minnehaha falls for my wife's race and I was planning on doing a loop around pike island but she wasn't able to do it, so I wanted to try something new. So I went as if I was going to do resevoir woods, but then went straight north for a few miles all the way to Lake Johanna. I ran through that park, then looped around and ran by Bethel University (which looks super nice, btw). This was a really fun place to run. Felt very warm and humid, but tbh I'm really surprised I only ran 6:27 pace (UPDATE: miscalculated. 6:06 pace. Didn't mean to go that fast but that seems more like it). Feel very tired. 

6:49 pace, east river flats on another muggy morning after it rained. 

Once again I noticed the odd thing that I was more tired on a Monday than on other days of the week. In fairness, I was also fasting yesterday and had only eaten one meal since that before my run. 

6:34 pace back from west river roundabout (likely a little slower on the way out). Started raining at the end. This afternoon it has been dumping. My hip has felt painful to the touch today (and I think it previously was like this too) but I'm not currently noticing anything major while running. I will plan to take tomorrow off from a workout (which I have a well planned reason why anyway) and hope that gives it any rest it needs. 

Sheesh. 6:23 pace coming back from east river road. If I'm not mistaken, 6:28 pace overall after getting to 18th. Hip felt ok. Once again, I would love to believe these hot paces on longer, easier efforts would translate into races, at least the 1/2 and marathon distance. We'll know soon enough hopefully with Grandma's coming up. 

6:45 pace, farmers fields (rain route, as I figured things would still be very soggy after we got a whopping 2.3 inches of rain the other day)

Easy run in the rain, longer than a real pre-race for the sake of exercise and enjoyment but short enough to hopefully freshen up the legs and think like a race. 

You couldn't ask for a nicer day. Bright blue skies, weather in the 50s during my run, really nice. The wind was present but not awful. I ran a 10K "race" on river road, starting on 24th and then going south before crossing the bridge that I've only ever crossed on foot as part of Get in Gear, and heading back up north on east river road, ending before the lake street bridge. 31:58. Couldn't have asked for a nicer day but could have asked for a nicer time. Hard to believe I'll be ready for 5:04 pace for a half marathon if I can't run that pace for even 6 miles right now. In terms of effort, obviously I was just wearing my normal shoes and you'll never work as hard when you are running all alone. If you look at it as a 6.2 mile tempo at 5:09 pace, even then its still not amazing. But less terrible. I feel like some workouts have gone well, but for some reason I'm having a hard time sticking that 5 minute-ish pace for several miles in a row, and I'm not sure what the issue is. Dissapointing. 

I'm not sure exactly, but approximately 6:47 pace coming back from west river road roundabout. 

6:43 pace, Como classic rain route. Just another day of one of the best weather months I remember in Minneapolis. Felt so lucky to run through the forresty area of Como park in the rain. 

Wow! Today I ran the last possible workout I could to compare my fitness this year to last spring. I've gotten positive signals thus far from my workouts, long runs, and easy days, but very negative signals from my 10K race and 10K pseudo-race, which unfortunately are probably better predictors of half marathon fitness than anything else. Anyway, I got a bad sleep last night but went for it anyway. Really nice sunny day outside, the workout was short enough that the temp wasn't an issue. 3 by mile at the fairgrounds with 80 seconds rest. 4:42, 4:37, 4:39. Sheesh! On mapmyrun, the distance is 1.00 miles even when you do it completely by hand and cut corners in line with reality. And, I know this is the same course I ran on 6/6/23 and averaged ~10 seconds slower. Hamstring felt tight during the last rep and afterwards, so I am hoping I can take care of it the next few days. 

Yuck, another bad sleep thanks to a super loud train that came through at 5 am. 6:44 pace coming back from east river flats and definitely slower than that (probably slower than 7 minute pace) going out, due to my hamstring. Not to be more negative, but I give the Gel Nimbus' a failing grade. Less than 400 miles in, they don't feel remotely like a max cushion shoe. At this point in their lifetime, the Hokas Clifton 7s were just getting started. And yet, they still have the problems of maximalist shoes in terms of their bulkiness. Too bad.  

Wow, surprisingly slow 7:05 pace on east river flats. That's way slower than I've been going recently. But my hamstring felt better so that's good.