In Every Run That Must Be Done; There is an Element of Fun (comments welcome)

[Naomeri]

Springtime Surprise Trip: Day 6

I didn’t rush out the door, but I didn’t exactly lounge around either. I got a 915-1015 LL for ToT, then I grabbed a LL for Midway Mania (125,200, accuracy 53%). From there, I did Star Tours back-to-back, once with standby (Kashyyyk, Mando, Ahsoka), and once with LL (pod-racing, Mando, Ahsoka)

Then it was time to walk over to Beaches & Cream for lunch. My Apple Watch goal for Earth Day was a 30 minute workout, so I took the long way, going around Crescent Lake on the Boardwalk side. I ended up hitting it just perfectly—getting to the restrooms just past B&C in 30:46, and picking up 1.44 miles of walking. I was also right on time for my reservation. I had my usual cheeseburger and fries, and got a brownie shake. The lady at the table across the aisle was very impressed by the giant brownie sticking out of my chocolate shake.



The table next to me thankfully cleared out shortly after I arrived, and no one else sat there because it took the whole time I was there for the poor busser lady to get the table cleaned up for new guests. The family there made the biggest mess possible, including letting their littlest one sit on the floor () and pulverize Oreos and french fries.

After lunch, I hopped on the Skyliner back to Pop and took advantage of the cooler weather to finally haul my Lego sets back to DS, and get them shipped home—even with the shipping cost, I still saved $50 over buying them direct from the Lego website. I bought some pins, and then hit up Gideons to get cookies for me and my grandparents.

After a little resort break, I headed to Magic Kingdom. I was thinking about staying for fireworks, but it was windy enough that they had signs that some areas would be closed during fireworks, and I was pretty sure that would include my favorite spot outside Gaston’s. Also, it was an After Hours day, so it was getting crowded. But I got a lot done with LLs. I did Space Mountain, Jungle Cruise, Pirates, Haunted Mansion, and Buzz (648,300), and then I did Peoplemover, and we got temporarily stuck in the hallway through Space Mountain, and they turned on the lights in the hallway. Can people on Space Mountain see those lights? ‘Cause that could be weird!

I decided to head back to the resort before it got totally dark, because it’s hard enough escaping through the fireworks crowds.

I got some nice moonrise/sunset pics from the Peoplemover



I also got my best picture ever on HM—it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to do the pose and it turned out perfectly

 

[Stitch&Co.]

Great pictures. I can never figure out what to do when I go by the photo pass people so I end up just doing a thumbs up. Makes me feel like Fonzie.

 

[Naomeri]

Springtime Surprise Trip: Day 7

This was picture day! I brought my DL medals with me so I could do Coast-to-Coast pics with the Springtime medals. I started at MK, but since I didn’t plan to stay there, I did my LL selection at 7am for AK, grabbing an 1145-1245 for Safari, and a 1230-130 ILL for FOP. I got to MK about 10, and headed straight for the hub grass areas for medal pics. I did some hanging on the fence, and then got them bundled in my hands (a task for which I will be getting hair ties in the future!) for PhotoPass shots.



Since I had just been in MK the night before, I didn’t waste any time and went straight for the park-to-park bus for AK. I just missed it, so I had to wait a little bit. Once I got in the park, I headed for Africa. I had plenty of time before my LL, so I found a fence with a view of the Tree of Life and did my medal pic, then found a nearby PhotoPass spot.



I grabbed a hot dog and chips before my safari. I got to see a lot of animals, but no lions (I know I was there at totally the wrong time for them to be doing anything but snoozing in the shade somewhere)

Then it was off to Pandora for FOP. I also grabbed a LL for Navi River, which I know gets a lot of hate, but I think it’s pretty and peaceful (when people aren’t streaming themselves on Insta, anyway ) On my way out, I saw some lizards about to have a conversation.



At this point, I realized that I could achieve a dream: 4 parks in 1 day (not counting having run through the parks before they open), so after I tapped in for River Journey, I made a LL for ToT. Then I made the long long walk to the AK park-to-park buses. Once I got into HS, I decided to hang my medals on the fence around Echo Lake. There wasn’t a PhotoPass person on the raised area in front of Runaway Railway, so I had to find one down on the plaza.



After pictures, I fell victim to the smell of food and had to buy a pretzel. I also had to buy a chocolate chip cookie

Then I did ToT, and booked a LL for Runaway Railway, but it ended up being down, so I used my anytime pass for Midway Mania (because of course I did ) I scored 154,400, with an accuracy of 55%, but the ring toss screen was busted, and when I told the CM at the end, he let me wait around and ride again. Embarrassingly, I scored lower on the second game (148,600, accuracy 45%) even though all the games were working

Then I took the skyliner to Epcot, with a LL for Soarin’ waiting for me. I took my fence medal pics on one of the lower lagoon plazas between the UK and France. There weren’t any PhotoPass nearby, so the other pic had to wait until later. I had planned to also ride Living with the Land, and grab a snack before I left Epcot, but Soarin’ was misbehaving and took way longer than it should have. So I just grabbed my picture and left. I’m a little annoyed that the photographer told me to look down for the Magic Shot, but at least I got it, so all my park pics match.



After I got the pics, I caught the monorail and headed back to MK to bring my 4 parks/1 day adventure full circle. I did Laugh Floor on the way to my Buzz LL (879,500) and then I sat down and had some popcorn while I decided if I wanted to do any more rides. I decided that my day had been long enough. I got one more picture from next to the bridge to Tomorrowland, and then headed out. I stopped in the candy shop on my way out for treats to take home, and I made it back to Pop by 820. I did a bunch of packing, since I was going to have to drop my bags in the morning before going to Epcot.

 

[Naomeri]

Springtime Surprise Trip: Day 8

The most tragic day ever: departure day!

But my bus for the airport wasn’t leaving until 3:05, so I had plenty of time to hang out at Epcot. I grabbed a VQ (60) and an ILL for Cosmic Rewind. I wasn’t sure I’d use the VQ, because when I’ve looked at it in the past, it’s always been such a long wait, but held onto it anyway. I also booked a LL for Frozen, because that’s about the only way I’ll get on it. once I got everything packed up and dropped at bag services, I got in line for the skyliner.

Once I got to Epcot, I walked around World Showcase, even though most everything was closed. I went into Mitsukoshi and grabbed some lucky cats and owls for my mom and grandma, and a bigger one for me. I took the opportunity of a mostly empty WS and a beautiful morning to get some nice pictures, mostly to use as backgrounds for Teams calls.





I also stopped at a PhotoPass spot and got this picture of myself that I really like



I looped around and headed for Journey of Water for my first visit. It was really neat, and not horribly crowded since it was a little earlier in the day. When I got to the Te’Fiti PhotoPass spot at the end, there was a couple with the cutest little boy, who wasn’t having the best morning. I was smiling and waving at him, and he stopped fussing, at least long enough for them to get their pictures done. While I was clearly standing in line to be next, as soon as the little family got their band scanned, this other couple just cut right in front of me! The family dad was gonna say something, and I was just like “it’s cool, I’m good.” I caught a grateful look from the photographer. I also noticed that she didn’t give the line cutters any magic shots. But I got TWO!




I was going to do Spaceship Earth to kill time before my ILL, but it had a long line—like 30 minutes! BUT! I realized it was only 5 minutes until 11, when I’d be able to make a new LL. So I wandered through the little shops up there, and then made an immediate LL for SE and walked right on. Then it was just about time for my ILL, just had to wait a couple minutes outside. I got “Disco Inferno,” but got to sit in row 9 (actually, another single rider and I were assigned row 10, but the CM waited to assign people to row 9, and I gave into peer pressure from the other single rider and we jumped over )

About 10 minutes after my ILL ride, my VQ group came up, and I’d noticed when I walked through the LL queue that the main queue seemed super empty, so I took a chance and actually used my VQ. It was a walk-on! I got “I Ran” and row 2. While I was waiting in the queue, I decided I needed lunch, so I mobile-ordered at Connections for right after my ride. It was a good burger. Then it was time to head to Frozen, and that was kind of annoying because the other people in my row were recording the whole ride—with their light on! The ride sounds were disrupted repeatedly by announcements telling them to knock it off, but they didn’t really stop. If it had been any other ride, I might’ve made a comment to get another ride, but Frozen is always so backed up, I didn’t want to disrupt the CMs loading process.

I walked back though WS to the skyliner and got to Pop right at 2 like I planned. My airport bus showed up about 15 minutes early, so I was able to get on and wait on the bus until it left right on time at 3:05. I breezed through MCO, as much as you can breeze through an airport that big. I made it to my gate with about two and a half hours before takeoff. Then they changed the gate to the whole other part (still on the same side of the tram ride, but a whole different hallway) and I made it to my new gate with an hour and half until takeoff. I made it to midway with no problems, other than being crowded by the guys that sat next to me from MCO

On my longer-than-usual walk between gates at Midway, I found a Nuts on Clark popcorn vending machine and just had to get some. It was really good!



My plane from Midway to MSP was only half full, and the guy that sat on the aisle of my window seat row was traveling with a little dog, so nobody felt the need to cram into our middle seat. I made it home on time, grabbed my bags and my grandparents and drove us all home.

All in all, it was a good trip. Though the cooler weather could’ve shown up a couple days earlier!!

 

[jmasgat]

Great medal pix....can't believe you lugged them all to all 4 parks. That's commitment!

 

[Naomeri]

Great medal pix....can't believe you lugged them all to all 4 parks. That's commitment!

They were really comfortable to carry in my Luisa Loungefly, actually. The whole bag with medals only weighed 5 pounds, according to my luggage scale

 

[avondale]

Congratulations on the races! You also got such fantastic photos throughout the trip!

 

[Naomeri]

2 Days Until: 2024 Bud Break 5K

I did not do any running after I got back from Springtime Surprise. I had some on the schedule, but I let other things get in the way and figured it didn’t really matter at the end of a not-very-well-executed-in-the-first-place training plan. I only completed 108.18/258.35 scheduled running miles, and only a quarter of my scheduled indoor cycling hours. I almost managed to maintain my weight though, only gaining 1.7 pounds over the 14 weeks.

As you can see, other than the week of Springtime Surprise (week 13), and almost week 11 (the week of Goldy’s Run), I didn’t complete the full scheduled mileage any week of this plan.



I’m 5 days into my new training plan for my A race: Race For The Kids 10 Miler on August 17. This will give me an excellent indicator of whether my Runna training plan was useful at all, since the course is almost identical to the course from Goldy’s Run last month, it just starts and ends on the other side of the Mississippi.

Because I’m trying to stay motivated, I have a few B races along the way:
Bud Break 5K on May 5–I need a do-over after 2022, when I was sick, I showed up almost late, it was cold and raining, and my headphones died halfway through.

Maple Grove Lions 10K on May 11–FB likes to tell me all the races even remotely close to me, and I decided to try this one out for a catered long run.

Human Powered Health 10 Miler on June 1–This looks like a super flat and fast course, very similar to where my 10K PR was in November 2023.

Stars & Stripes 5K on June 22–Another race FB advertised and I was like “why not?” Also, it was a good excuse to get another ruffle skirt from Sparkle Athletic.

I have completed 5/5 scheduled days, which were:
Monday: 30 minute runner’s pilates session from the Runna app. I also did 40 minutes on the stationary bike, which was a little longer than intended, but I didn’t want to stop with just 10 minutes of my movie left.

Tuesday: .1mi repeats on the treadmill. I completed this exactly as written, but clearly my treadmill doesn’t know what these speeds mean (which I’ve always sort of suspected) I’ll have to decide if I should try to up the speeds on future workouts, or keep them the same and accept that I’ll be off-pace.



Wednesday: rest day

Thursday: another rest day because I had to get up at 3:30am to drive my grandparents to the airport so they could go to my cousin’s college graduation in Ohio. I also woke up early on Wednesday to get them checked in for their Southwest flight and all the short nights are catching up with me. I figured it would be better to do my run on Friday than to fall asleep on the treadmill

Friday: Drop Set intervals on the treadmill. I learned on Tuesday that it’s a little hard to know where I am in the workout, and it’s hard to keep looking at my watch to figure out what I should be doing, so this time I wrote all the different steps out on post-its. This way, I could take them off as I started each step and I’d know what to do the next time my watch buzzed. My paces are wonky, even between intervals that are theoretically at the same speed. I think I’m just going to go with it and hope for the best



Also Friday: I made cookies! One of our favorite cookies that we make at the holidays is a butterscotch chip cookie with sea salt sprinkled on top. But they’re a little fussy because the dough has to be kept cool, but not too cool. So my grandma was browsing Pinterest and found a recipe that didn’t need the dough chilled at all, and also has chocolate chips, in addition to the butterscotch. We had all the ingredients, so I took advantage of my summer hours (my job lets everyone off 2 hours early on Fridays from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but my department decided to divide into 2 teams and alternate everyone so there’s always coverage, so we had to start the summer hours early (and will run them into mid-October) to make sure everyone got all the summer hours they’re entitled to) and made a test batch. They’re certainly less hassle than the other recipe, but I’m not 100% sold yet.

 

[Naomeri]

1 Day Until: 2024 Bud Break 5K

I got out and did my run this morning after the rain stopped. It was about 45° and windy, so I wore a t-shirt and capris. I probably could’ve gotten away with a tank, but I never like my shoulders being cold.

The Runna app is interesting because instead of saying “your long run is X miles at Y pace” it breaks it into different, but very similar, pace sections to make it interesting. And every workout has a message of some sort from one of the coaches, telling you about the workout and why it is what it is.

So this is my workout for today:



And this is how I did with it (numbers entered into my own spreadsheet because it’s easier for me to read than the visual representation in the app). I could have hit the targets on laps 2 & 3, but since my “comfortable pace” lap ended up being as fast as lap 2 should have been, I chose to speed up the other laps an equal-ish amount.



One thing I learned today is that there’s no way to disable the pace alert vibrations on my watch, so every 45 seconds or so, I get buzzed that I’m going too fast or too slow because of my run/walk intervals. I’m sending a suggestion to the devs that they give the option to have the alerts respond to the overall lap pace, instead of the current pace.

I had a unique character encounter on the east side of my neighborhood today. They stayed perfectly still until I took the picture, and then they zipped off into the woods.



I also did a strength workout through the Runna app. It was mostly body weight exercises. I’m functionally incapable of doing straight leg raises

Rocky let me take a couple good pictures (in exchange for food, of course) The unfurled ferns around her make it seem like an alien landscape

 

[Naomeri]

2024 Bud Break 5K

We’ll, this is irritating! I ran almost the exact same race today that I did in 2022, despite nicer weather and not being sick (and my headphones were fully charged!)

Just look at that—almost identical splits



It was an absolutely beautiful day for running.

I saw some pelicans on the lake on my way out of the neighborhood.



Look at that perfect blue sky—it matches my Goodrs!



So, there’s not a lot of organization at the start of this race, not even a spray-painted line on the ground to show “start your watch here!” So we just kind of wing it once the announcer says “go” We start on a nice big downhill, and then go uphill a bit, then down, then up, over and over until the end of the race. This is not a race for flatlanders I was running 30/30 intervals, except when I ran the downhills and mostly walked the uphills.



For a race called “Bud Break” we don’t actually get to see many of the flowers. I wish we got to run closer to the apple and crabapple trees, and we miss the azalea glen by about 30 feet—I could see them, but couldn’t get close enough for pictures. I did grab a couple pics of some Lily-of-the-Valley and daffodils.




I did manage to pass some people in the third mile, so that was cool. Eventually, I got to finish line and could breathe again. I got a bottle of water, and they even had some Liquid IV to throw in there. I got either cherry or strawberry, and it wasn’t the worst thing ever, but I like my Drip Drops better. I brought a bottle of tap water in my to dump on my head and cooling towel so I could give myself a refresh before changing my shirt and heading into The Arb proper (pictures to follow in another post)

Since this is the end of the week, Runna updated my estimated current race fitness. This is find of a neat way to see it count (hopefully) down to the estimated final race fitness.

 

[Naomeri]

Arb Pictures

Since it was such a beautiful day, it was an absolute madhouse at The Arb. The tulip display was close to full bloom, and they had their May Markets going. I think it’s slightly cruel that the first booth you come to at the Markets is a fresh-baked bread stall. I walked away with a whole cinnamon swirl loaf. There were several other bakery stalls, but I avoided temptation (probably because I had already eat 2 cookies and some Cheez-Its at The Arb’s restaurant

The lilacs are just starting to bloom at The Arb



They dig up and resell all (or almost all, there’s usually a few stragglers from the prior year) of the tulips and do a new theme each year.







I love the way this one glows in the sunlight.



A few of the other highlights of the upper gardens at The Arb

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Oof! Those hills look hard!

 

[Naomeri]

Oof! Those hills look hard!

Yeah, my thighs aren’t thanking me this afternoon

 

[avondale]

Those tulips are so gorgeous!

 

[Naomeri]

3 Days Until: Maple Grove Lions 10K

What speed workout would you most like to do several days after a very hilly 5K? If you answered “hill repeats,” you are not me!

This workout was schedule for Tuesday, but based on the state of my legs, I chose to spend 25 minutes on the stationary bike instead, and did the hill repeats tonight. My legs were mostly OK with this workout, but my lungs object to running hard uphill for 60 seconds. Because I needed more time to catch my breath, I did not “easy jog” back to the base of the hill—I walked. So the “recovery” time/distance in the chart combines the “20 sec walk” and the “easy jog” pieces.



I chose to the the cul-de-sac I live on for the hill repeats, which is bang on perfect for 30 second repeats, but gets weird for the 60 second repeats. I had to do a loop and a half to get 60 seconds, which had me running downhill briefly, before turning back uphill. This is my artistic representation of what my repeat routes looked like. Whatever I did, I managed to be pretty even, except for that last 30 second run, I guess I was just excited to be on the last one



One of the neighbor’s cats realized there was a human doing something weird, so he obviously had to come out and observe. Thanks for the supervision, Fez! If he were my cat, I’d train him to bring me water



My woodland chipmunks have been enjoying our beautiful weather just as much as I have.

Rocky



King



And Happy, who has apparently decided that he would rather be Bashful, since he won’t come to my hand anymore.




With the announcement about the Halloween party tickets this week, I realized that I really didn’t want to be wearing my Dr Facilier costume for 8-10 hours on Thursday, and then again for 6 hours on Saturday. So I got to come up with another costume! I chose Luisa Madrigal. I bought a printed, Dapper-style, skirt off Etsy, and a peasant blouse off Amazon, and boom, I’m almost all set. I’d like to figure out how to add a red accent to the shirt, but honestly, Luisa is really easy to pull off. And I’ve already got the matching Loungefly

 

[WillRunForPizza]

What speed workout would you most like to do several days after a very hilly 5K? If you answered “hill repeats,” you are not me!

Hill repeats are never the speed workout I would most like to do

 

[col1]

3 Days Until: Maple Grove Lions 10K

Good Luck for your 10 k

 

[avondale]

my lungs object to running hard uphill for 60 seconds. Because I needed more time to catch my breath, I did not “easy jog” back to the base of the hill—I walked.

60-second hill repeats are hard for anyone! You might consider 30-sec repeats.

The idea of the recovery is to be fully recovered so you can go hard on the next repeat, so walking is fine. I usually walk in between my repeats.

 

[Naomeri]

60-second hill repeats are hard for anyone! You might consider 30-sec repeats.

The idea of the recovery is to be fully recovered so you can go hard on the next repeat, so walking is fine. I usually walk in between my repeats.

I was going by what was scheduled, which was four 60 second repeats, and then four 30 second repeats. Since my normal run interval is 30 seconds, the 60 second run is probably good training, no matter how much I hate it

 

[azrivest]

Belated congrats on your Springtime races. You got some really amazing race pictures! And your dapper dresses were really sharp