Friday, November 2, 2012

Weekly Log 10-29-12 to 11-4-12

Monday: 0 - home with the family watching the storm.  Incredible gusts of wind between 3PM and 4PM.  Many trees (mostly oaks) fell on/near the roads around our house.  Looks like a war zone.  Power went out before 3PM.  Fun evening in the dark.  Cooked up (gas stove) food we needed to use from our freezer. 



Tuesday: 8 miles - trails/roads around my house in the morning.  I ran from my house south.  Lots of oaks down, but wire were all intact until I reached a road block on Buckeye Brook Road.  I backtracked and entered the woods at the bottom of Shumankanuc Hill Road.  My plan was to run down to the Vin Gormley Trail and then run back up Kings Factory Road.  Numerous large trees blocking the trail, but I guess it could have been worse.  I reached the road and headed north.  I should note how terrible I felt running.  I just didn't have any energy for parts of the run.  Anyway, I reached a point where trees had fallen on wires and blocked the road.  I bushwacked around them and returned to the road.  Immediately there was another tree down with wires across the road.  Okay, time to turn around.  I bushwacked my way through the woods until I found Schoolhouse Pond Trail.  I then ran Sammy C's back to the bottom of my road.  I stopped along the way to chat with my neighbors.  Total time: 1:02:23. 

Wednesday: 9 miles - Quonset roads speedwork alone.  I wasn't feeling any sort of run.  I've been dealing with no power at home, and it's been very busy at work.  Running doesn't feel like a priority.  Anyway, I eventually mustered up enough desire to run intervals.  I then spent too much time trying to get my custom workout on garminconnect to transfer to my watch.  It never worked.  So, instead of 8x200/4x400, I programmed 12x200 into my watch.  I drove out to Quonset, and because of the wind direction, I did my cool down course as my warm up and vice versa.  My warm up was peppy - 3 miles at 7:01 pace.  Good sign.  I then ran 5 200's with the wind, 4 into the wind (hard - thought about cutting the workout short), and 3 with the wind again.  As usual, I have no idea of my splits while I'm working out.  Results: 34/37/35/36/35 34/35/37/37 36/37/35.  Total time: 1:03:26. 

Thursday:  11 miles - Rome Point trails and beach alone.  First day of November, and it felt right to get back to my usual cold weather running spot.  I haven't run my 11 mile course here since last winter or spring.  My legs felt good with only a little soreness from yesterday's speedwork.  My pace felt easy, and my splits were good.  The beach was in decent shape - more rocks/less sand.  I saw the first brant of the year.  There wasn't much tree damage in the woods, but somehow I managed to rip open my leg on briars bushwacking around one fallen tree.  It didn't hurt, but looked disgusting.  Total time: 1:17:17. 




Friday: 15 miles - Ryan Park trails (10M) and Wickford roads to/from alone.  I've been thinking about doing this run for a couple of weeks, and I finally had the opportunity to do it.  My legs were a little tired, but I was able to push them pretty hard for the duration.  I was running in the low 6:50's on the roads to the park and was in the 6:30's on the roads back.  I was just under 70 minutes for the trail portion.  It felt good to run this hard for this long, as I was feeling like I was only running hard on shorter stuff recently.  Total time: 1:42:17. 




Saturday: 7 miles - roads from my house to Carter Preserve trails and back.  I got to spend this entire spectacular autumn day outside starting at 8:30AM.  Lots of yardwork followed by burning brush in the fire pit for the rest of the day.  My wife talked me out of running in Burlingame, as she ran into a ton of hunters out on opening day of deer black powder season.  So, at 2 in the afternoon I ran the roads out to the powerline trail at Carter Preserve.  My pace was in the high 6's, and probably too fast, as my legs were tired.  I powered up the powerline hill.  I then ran down the wide trail to the field.  Something about this place that is so enjoyable, even though I didn't like maintaining my pace on the thick grass.  I came back down the powerline trail and ran up the hill back to my house.  A decent little hill workout.  Total time about 49 minutes flat - having watch issues.  Fun chromium replacing with Muddy's family at night. 

Sunday: 16 miles - Burlingame trails with Muddy, Aaron, Jay S, and John.  I had a rather restless night sleep worrying about the time change since I was "hosting" a trail run beginning at my house at 6AM (yesterday's 7AM).  Everything worked out with the timing and we were off.  We ran to the Burdickville Rd entrance and headed south to the River Trail.  There were minimal down tree obstructions and only a few hunters still at their trucks, not out shooting anything yet.  The pace was easy on this chilly (37 degrees) morning.  We continued on to the Ledge Trail and then worked our way up to the top of Buckeye Brook Road, where John headed back to his car.  The four of us then followed Sammy C's the full length down to Vin Gormley.  We ran up VG to Schoolhouse Pond to Secret.  The trails were in decent shape for the most part.  A couple of trees to bushwhack around, but nothing major (except for the pines right off of Buckeye Brook Rd).  We prolonged the run by continuing on VG and then running up the hill on the road back to the red gate.  Then it was just a couple of nice hills on the trails back to my house.  Total time: 2:04.  I miss my space watch.  Really fun family outing later in the day - hiked the Green Fall Pond loop and then went to Clyde's for hot cider and donuts. 




Overall:  A great week after some Sandy uncertainty in the beginning.  I hope to get an Election Day track workout in and maybe a race on Sunday if things pan out.  I'm doing a software update for the watch, so I'm thinking that'll do the trick. 

Weekly Total: 66 miles
Last Week: 60 miles
Year to Date: 2528 miles

3 comments:

  1. Glad you made it through the storm unscathed. I don't know about you but we ended up getting power back on Wednesday afternoon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We finally got power back Thursday night.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oof, that sucks. Glad you finally got it back on.

      Delete