Ethan Cannon

Nice and slow 6:28 pace today. I think my hamstring will feel better by next week. Today I finally did a long run out to Theodore Wirth park. Mpls really is an ideal spot for running. It was a great overcast morning and the park was super cool and bigger than I thought. In fact, after I came home and had breakfast we went out there again as a family, and I particularly enjoyed walking in the hills, which you don't get much of around here. Idk if I'll do it again. Like with lake Johanna, this route is best used during the summer when you aren't trying to go fast. There are a couple of less nice sections (including Hennepin, which I took out there to be more direct). The nicer parts are the park of course and the Boom/Nicollet island pieces. I did get really lucky once I got to the park as I followed my gut at crossroads and it turned out that I made the right choices. 

6:51 pace on east river road. Very tired, hopefully because of my fast yesterday. Very humid so I'm glad when the clouds came. I can still feel my hamstring and will try to be mature enough to postpone or cancel my workout this week if needed to allow it to heal. 

6:47 pace on como classic. Another hot, humid, tired day. I'm not sure why I felt so tired on my run. I haven't been sleeping well but I don't think that explains it all. I decided to push back my workout to Thursday, if I feel more energized and my hamstring feels completely better by tomorrow. 

6:42 pace, boom island. Much cooler day. Glad to see I ran a little faster, still felt somewhat tired. And the ache in my hamstring means it looks like I will have to cancel my workout for this week. It's weird because the pain isn't super strong, I don't really feel much until midway through the run. But, better to play it safe. Maybe I need to be more consistent with lunges and other related exercises in addition to my routine of heel drops and hip work, as this issue really should have been preventable. 

Just 6:48 pace (including a bit of Winchell trail) coming back from west river roundabout. My energy levels felt fine however by the latter half. Hamstring continues to be a dull ache. 

6:40 pace coming back from east river flats. Glad that I don't feel the fatigue much anymore, but I'm beginning to be concerned about my hamstring. Rather than feeling rested after a missed workout, right now I would say I feel a little flat. I need to get some fast work in so at least I'm sharp going into my race in two weeks. I'd be ok missing the workouts in terms of building fitness but at least that much I need to do. I might try to do something tomorrow during my long run.  

I was really spoiled today. A light rain when I started by run turned into an overcast morning, but the sky was blue by the time we went for a bike ride immediately after this, so pretty perfect all around I'd say. For the third legit long run in a row, I tried a new route. Lake Johanna, then Theodore Wirth, and now I went the way I had sworn off (the fastest way to get to east river, though I avoided passing the dump this time) so I could get there sooner and explore hidden falls. It was super cool down there, I got to run a little more than a mile on a bike path there before I turned around. 6:07 pace on the way out. 5:55 pace coming back. It didn't feel great but I was happy to get in my 5x3 min on, one minute off. Just needed to get the legs moving again. Did that in 5:25 average (of which 80% was hard), so probably around 5 minute pace on the hard, maybe a bit slower. That's ok.

6:38 pace on the way back from east river road, slower on the way out. I was pleasently surprised by how my leg felt, after it was pretty sore this morning and hurt more than I had expected yesterday. It has actually shifted more to my groin than my hamstring. I'm hoping this is the beginning of the end and I can do a light workout Thursday. My wife ran in her new Saucony Triumph 20s today and thought they were super bouncy- no surprise when she's been using Hoka Cliftons for a long time. 

6:41 pace coming back from Como classic. Took the rain route coming home as the ground had gotten surprisingly wet with this mornings shower. Leg feeling better. 

I unforunately missed an incredible opportunity to run on the bike path at Carver park reserve, because it started raining. Instead, we only got to run to the nature center and back, which was still fun, and made me wish we could have explored more. Pushing only one of my daughters is much easier than having both. Came home and finished mileage around the St Paul campus.

Track work. Muggy morning but that didn't affect me, nor did the wind. The track was a little slippery which could have done something (wondering if traction is a weakness of the Triumphs, as I don't recall slipping like this on a track before). Plan was to do 5x800 with 90 seconds rest in 30, 25, 20, 20, X. Ended up going 2:27, 2:24, 2:20, 2:17, 2:15. I would have liked that to have been easier or to have gone faster for the effort. Oh well. I don't plan to do anything else hard before the race, though hopefully I can stay fresh with some strides at least maybe. Grateful to do a legit hard workout after skipping last week due to injury. 

6:50 pace coming back from east river flats, probably slower going out. Tired from the workout presumably. 

This felt too hard for being 6:22 pace. I wouldn't say it was a new route, more of a modified one. I ran up to lake Johanna again, but this time I took a slight detour to hit Langton lake park and a greenway. Not a bad run, just felt tired. I left pretty early, like 6:45, but this time of year I could have left an hour earlier and it still would have been light out. 

6:49 pace on east river road. Not quite a deluge but some solid rain. Felt a little cramping in my upper gastroc area again. Could be related to my hamstring issue from earlier. I stretched it afterwards. Gotta take care of it because you really don't want to be worried about your health during a race. You want to be focused on the race. The forecast is calling for almost an inch of rain on Saturday in Duluth. Yikes. We had a weather miracle last year at that race so maybe we will have one again. 

Unique run for several reasons. My other shoes were still SOAKED from yesterday so I wore Triumphs and put both by the fan afterwards as these became soaked as well- from sweat. I had my wife ride my new bike while I pushed the stroller. It was like 70 degrees yesterday evening but already in the mid 70s this morning, with a dew point close to 70. Wind and clouds helped. I pushed the stroller and the girls had a great time. I ran 6:45 pace to keep it moving- the bike is so good that my wife was hardly sweaty when we got home, which is crazy. We ran to west river, then came back on east river and looped around the stadium. I was sopping wet, but other than that we had a good time, except my left gastroc which started feeling pretty tight only near the end. This was quite dissapointing with a race coming up. I bet it has to do with overcompensating during my hamstring issue. I can only hope and pray it will be ok by Saturday, and that I can still get in enough speed that I don't feel flat by then. 

Much cooler today. I notice my calve felt not quite like a typical overuse injury, but the type of thing that kind of comes and goes. Overall that is a good thing, but I need to work on getting better as I would bet that running 5 minute mile pace for a half marathon would be the exact type of thing that would make it come on bad, and that would not be good for me. In addition to exercises, I rolled out today and boy did that feel good / painful. I ran straight up Hendon to Como park, then to the other side of the lake. 6:42 pace. No strides or anything. 

Easy run towards boom island. Then a few hard one minute runs to get the legs moving again. 

Cloudy but no rain today! Getting to the station, driving to Duluth, running in Duluth, or walking around it. That is appreciated. I enjoyed my bus ride up here- Minnesota is a lot of trees, lakes, and fields, which I like a lot. I ran a better route this year on the lake that reminded me of a better version of what they had in Chicago. Legs felt fine. 

Another great day in Duluth! This is a fun experience I’ve been lucky to have the past couple of years. It’s good to see northern MN, be surrounded by other runners (albeit rich ones if they aren’t fast enough to get free stuff like me), and see old friends. The forecast called for lots of rain but we got another Bjorklund miracle and had a dry day yesterday and modest sprinkles during the half today (last year the smoke cleared out just in time). The rain started coming more later in the race. One thing I loved about last year was how helpful it was to run with other people and help push each other. I had talked with three guys I knew-Jack, Danny, and Tom, who all seemed to be about the same fitness as me and I thought I might have a good group. I did have a good group, though didn’t run with them much. We had a nice tail wind which was great. Perfect cloudy weather. I knew I was going to get a worse place this year due to all the guys around me, but I appreciated being able to run with them. 26th is actually better than the 30th I had estimated. Calve felt a little sore at a couple points but thankfully didn’t progress. Don’t have much to say about how the race went. Went in with low expectations and more relaxed than I usually am by a lot which usually bodes well. After some fast early miles I became just a tiny bit optimistic, and kind of like the UW 5K I ran, I got tired and worried I would fall apart a few times but was able to hang on and keep clicking the miles off somehow. I feel like if I don’t feel like that during a race I’m probably running too conservatively.  It’s really helpful when the course is just straight and you can just say “if I can just make it as far as I can see then I’ll be a lot closer to the next mile marker”. Mile 8/9 is a turning point when you know you’re getting close. This time I was more prepared for the long finish (into the wind, too!) 

Here were my splits: 4:58, 4:56, 4:56, 5:03, 5:06, 4:56, 5:07, 5:09, 5:00, 5:06, 5:07, 5:03, 5:36. The splits are very similar to last year, but I'll note that I ran miles 1-3 9 seconds faster than last year and the final 1.1 4 seconds faster. The middle was a wash. I got to 10K in 31:05, faster than I ran at Get in Gear! This was my fourth 1/2 and fourth time running 1:06. Idk if I’ll ever run 1:05 but I’d like to. 

I promised my daughter I would take her to my work, so my wife biked and we ran there. About 7:18 pace? Could have felt worse for post race and pushing a stroller. Of course I felt plenty sore. 

Kansas City. 7:12 pace on Ward parkway. Still sore as expected. The low this morning was 79 so I was expecting to die out there but it really wasn't that bad. Shade, wind, and a small layer of clouds may have helped, in addition to the fact that the AC is better where we are staying so I wonder if my body temp was cooler this morning. I can definitely say I enjoy running here more than Chicago, which was my last trip. So far I am a fan of KC. You can tell the climate is different based on the greenery. 

7:04 pace in KC. Cooler this morning. I am going to name KC "Statue City" for all the little statues you see around in neighborhoods. I like that a lot. What I didn't like was how awful the sidewalks were at handling a little bit of rain. There were huge puddles everywhere and the creek boardwalk I was going to do had mud on it. So about a mile into my run, I ditched my previous plan and was proud of how I was able to run around and figure things out. Saw some very nice neighborhoods. 

6:59 pace, mostly on Tomahawk road in Indian Hills and Prairie Village, Kansas. I neglected to say that the past three days I have run in two states each day (KS and MO each time of course) which may be a first. Saw some pretty cool things. The gardens and statues they have make you feel like you are in a sculpture garden even though it's really just a neighborhood. My race recovery hasn't been as linear as it could have been- even though I have run faster each day, I felt a little banged up today. 

7:08 pace, trolley trail. 

6:22 pace on west river. Minnehaha falls was more like Niagara after all this rain. Only took a couple side paths because of mud. 6:15 pace on way back.