Weekly Log 4-29-13 to 5-5-13

Beginning the week, my body was in great shape considering the trail 40K on Saturday.  Have I ever mentioned I love trails?  I never have any long term soreness from them.  I do have a nice purple and black bruise on the left side of my lower abs from falling on the root during the race, but the good news is that my disgusting shin/ankle (smashed 4 weeks ago on a stonewall) is looking almost normal.  The weather could probably be described as perfect, so I have to go run it every day.  No real goals for training.  Maybe this will be a so so week of recovery and then start pushing the limits next week?  Maybe sneek into a race on the weekend or do a group trail run?  Not sure, but it'll be fun. 

Monday: 9 miles - Big River trails alone.  I parked at Greasy Joe's and ran all of Lego over to Dead Shed.  I saw online there was a huge Earth Day clean up here, and the efforts were notable, including the car remains and legos (both gone).  The vacuum was still around as was the creepy mannequin however.  My legs only felt slightly fatigued, mostly in the beginning, and most of the run was at a good trail pace (what GPS frustratingly shows as mid 9's!!).  If I was on roads, I'm sure it would be 7 flat, so I'll compromise and call it 8.  Anyway, after Dead Shed, I missed my turn, but found a cool twisty hilly mtn bike trail that led me down to Tarbox Pond.  I then followed the shoreline to the beaver dam crossing.  It looked passable, so I went for it.  Kept my feet dry and then ran some other trails until I randomly met up with the Ridge Trail.  I finished my loop by connecting to Foster's Folly.  On this final trail I heard something/someone knocking over a tree nearby that reminded me of that silly bigfoot show on Animal Planet.  Clearly they would think it was a bigfoot telling me to get out of its territory.  I obliged by picking up my pace.  Total time: 1:12:12. 



Tuesday: 8.5 miles - Big River trails solo.  Another sunny mid 60's day that needed to be spent in the woods.  I decided to head back to Big River, but this time park at the Hopkins Hill lot.  I had a plan of running a loop on both sides of this road, trying to avoid any duplication from yesterday's run.  I kept changing my mind as I went, and ran some new trails along the way.  Again my pace felt quick, until tiring at the end.  I got confused on the trails between Hopkins Hill Rd and the Cardi road, but I still managed to not repeat any sections and still find my way out.  There are lots of steep hills in this spot.  Total time: 1:06:17. 



Wednesday: 8 miles - Quonset Bike Path workout alone.  I was feeling good enough to give the Aussie Quarters workout another try.  This time I would be on the bike path instead of the track.  I assumed that it would be hard to duplicate my overall 5K time (17:58) from the track, especially considering the bike path is not flat, and has a couple of GPS interference spots due to tree cover.  But the point is to get a good workout in.  As soon as I drove there my plan changed.  The wind was whipping from the SSE, so I decided to run from east to west, rather than the planned west to east.  After an almost two mile warm up I began the workout (programmed into my watch).  Results:

44/79/47/81/47/83/49/80/49/82/49/82/51/80/52/85/47 = 18:13 5K

Notes:  I didn't think I would finish the workout.  I wanted to quit after the 6th 400.  My target times were 81 and 48, so I did a pretty good job overall, but it was my recoveries that needed to be faster.  I think this translates to a similar effort that I did on the track.  Total time: 53:25. 

Thursday: 7.5 miles - Rome Point trails and beach alone.  Another really nice day.  I felt a little flat energywise today, and my legs were tired.  I still enjoyed my run, zigzagging trails at first, and then doing an abbreviated out and back on the beach.  Tough conditions with a super high tide (thick sand) and a strong south wind.  Total time: 1:00:04. 



Friday: 13 miles - Ryan Park trails solo.  I had the opportunity to run for a little longer than normal and I thought about running to Ryan from the office, but the roads ultimately proved too unappealing.  Instead I parked at the upper Oak Hill Rd lot and ran up and down the west side trails until connecting over to the east side via the rail bed trail.  I then reconnected to the west side and ran around there a little longer before finishing up in 1:37:37.  It was almost chilly running into the wind, and hot with it at your back.  My legs were a bit tired, but overall it was a good run. 




Saturday: 16 miles - Burlingame trail loop alone from my house. 6AM start and it was chilly, so i wore two layers up top and my hat. I brought my handheld, but ditched it after a mile, not enjoying the extra weight. I entered the park at the bottom of Shumankanuc Hill Rd and picked up Sammy C's trail heading CCW. I then continued on Vin Gormley until reaching the campground. I kept running into deer on this stretch. Next was my long trail loop around the campground. Being on top of the moraine, I was feeling the warm sun. My legs began to tire about the time I reached Sanctuary Rd (with a new layer of dirt). I was able to ignore the fatigue for the rest of the way. Back in the woods, I followed Sammy C's back to my water bottle and then hoofed the last mile on the hilly road back to my house. Total time: 2:07. Lots of singing birds in the woods including a wood thrush and numerous ovenbirds. The trails were in great shape. Great run!





Sunday: 12 miles - Grills Preserve trails with Muddy.  Really fun morning stroll, exploring new trails and connecting to familiar ones.  We lingered at a couple of spectacular overlooks, and took some time figuring out how to cross the swamp/Tomaquag Brook, but the pace was decent most of the time.  The new silver dot trail is really fun - steep hills, rocks, and twists, all in a place a used to play (MC's backyard) when I was a kid.  Who knew I'd be running back there 25 years later?  Total time: 1:38:15. 




Overall:  Decent recovery week!  I guess I was feeling pretty good after the TARC debacle.  The weather has been so awesome I can't not run.  I ran some longer runs that I wasn't expecting.  I'm hoping to ramp up the intensity of some of my runs next week. 

Weekly Total: 74 miles
Last Week: 45 miles
Year to Date: 1029 miles