A Minnesota 20 miler

We were up in the Twin Cities this past weekend for my sister's wedding. We took a couple days off from work for the trip and got up north on Wednesday night. Friday morning we left our hotel to drive downtown near the Mississppi river for our 20 mile long run. After doing some research on MapMyRun and the MDRA website I determined our best route to get in the miles and not get completely lost was to run along the Grand Rounds River Byway. It was a great path along the Mississippi and Minnehaha rivers. We planned to do two 5 mile out and backs in each direction to keep our car as a central point so we could have Gatorade and water. The weather was a little on the warm side in the mid 60s, but still very manageable.

We forget how spoiled we are on the lakeshore in Chicago. I assummed there would be plenty of water fountains along the path, but it took us 5 miles to find our first fountain, which actually was a water pump. The Minnehaha path followed a nice quiet river through some parks, a golf course, nice neighborhoods, and a couple lakes. It reminded me of the River Path in Chicago in some ways, but it was a smaller river and a bigger park. There weren't many runners out on Friday, but we did see several bikers. At the 5 mile mark with the water pump we turned around and went back to the car. On the way back we did find one more water fountain with about 2 miles left.

After a brief break at the car to take some GU and Gatorade we set out north along the Mississippi for the last 10 miles. The path had been very flat until this point when it decided to go downhill a ways very close to the river. Going downhill is fine until you have to go back the other direction. We made it about 3 miles when the path came to a closed off fence area near the I-35W bridge which collapsed last year. I was suprised to see lots of torn and twisted pieces of metal from the bridge lying out behind the fence. We were forced to turn around a couple miles early and head back to the other direction, after a mile we were able to find a water fountain with some gross milky looking water. We were so thirsty that we would have drank anything though. It was getting warmer and we hit the hill so we walked back up a little bit before running to the car for another GU and Gatorade break.

We still needed to run 4 more miles to complete our training run, so we set out 2 miles in the other direction towards the Minnehaha river again. Cassie and I were both feeling the distance considerably at this point so our run had slowed to more of a shuffle. We found the fountain again after 2 miles and then shuffled back to the car to finish the run. On the last mile I started loosening up again despite the pain, and ended feeling strong. I think our 22 mile day two weeks ago was a more difficult run for me.

We're returned to Chicago on Sunday afternoon and ran a nice 5 miler along the river. It's such a great feeling to complete that final long run. Now we just have a couple shorter long runs for our taper period and we're driving to Duluth for Grandma's Marathon on June 21st. I am already looking forward to a victory wade in cold Lake Superior after running 26.2 miles. It's going to be sweet.