Monday: 10 miles - Big River trails alone. My body felt terrible last night, but pretty good today. I ended up doing a fun "loop" in middle Big River. Smile and wave at the scary dirt bikers. Total time: 1:21:30.
Tuesday: 15 miles on two runs. Beautiful warm sunny morning, so I ran 5+ miles after my son got the middle school bus. I was just going to run local roads, but the trails looked so inviting. I had trouble seeing since I hadn't put my contacts in yet. 37 minutes with over 300' of elevation gain. In the afternoon I ran a good mix of trails and roads in the Ryan Park/Wickford Village area. The weather couldn't have been nicer. Total time: 1:15:12.
Wednesday: 12 miles - Big River trails alone. Another really nice day. I still don't feel up for a workout. I parked at Greasy Joe's and ran a zigzag course in the NE corner of the park. Should have worn trail shoes as a lot of leaves are on the ground. I felt like I got in a good amount of climbing, but GPS didn't even give me 500'. Whatever. Total time: 1:31:27.
Thursday: 9 miles - solo hill workout in Saunderstown. Legs still feeling sluggish. Even though it was another warm day, I wasn't motivated to run anywhere. I decided to just slog out some hills. Then I couldn't decide where. I ended up just sticking close to the office and doing 7 repeats of Plum Point Rd. This is a very steep and challenging paved road climb. My plan was to do 5, but I was feeling comfortable climbing and enjoying myself in some sick way. It's funny to keep passing by the same unfriendly people in their yards over and over again. I was just going to return to my car at the nearby Park and Ride, but then I figured I should get in a nice round number of miles. I ran down and back up Fleetwood Drive (another 150' climb) to finish up. Total time: 1:07:25 with 1,308' of climbing. Looks like I eclipsed the 3,000 mile mark for the year today!
Friday: 10 miles - finally speedwork! Woke up with my legs feeling much fresher. I did a lot of stick rolling last night. Why don't I do this all the time? Anyway, after reading the latest Level Renner I really wanted to try the Sprint-Float-Sprint workout that Nate Jenkins wrote about. He mentioned a few variations and I of course was drawn to the fast float option. My goal was to do 5K of this - sprint 100m float/100m repeat over and over. Nate mentioned how hard this could be, especially with the fast float. I still thought I could complete 5K of this. Wrong!! I headed out to the Quonset bike path. It was super muggy, overcast, and there was a stiff SW breeze. Not wanting to sprint into the wind, I warmed up into it. The bike path had some areas covered with wet leaves, so I opted for the leaf-free Davisville Rd for most of the workout. I had my watch displaying distance in kilometers. I decided not to keep track of 100m splits, just run hard and see what the final time would be. I can't really tell how fast I was running the sprints (about R pace?) or the floats, but it looks like my GPS pace never dipped below 6:40 pace. The 100m floats went by so fast! It was clear 5K was too ambitious, so I thought I would stop at 2 miles. I then realized I was displaying kilometers and I have no idea what the 2 mile equivalent was, at least not while I was working out. I decided to go 3000m, which seemed like a standard track distance. This gave me 15 sprints and 15 floats. Result: 10:53. I stopped and caught my breath, dripping sweat. I then jogged to the start of the bike path and then did 1500m of sprint-float-sprint. It was a shock to my system to start doing this again, but I got back into the groove. Result: 5:15 - 8 sprints, 7 floats. I then did a long cool down around Calf Pasture Point and on the bike path. This workout was awesome!! Total time: 1:13.
Saturday: 16 miles - Burlingame trail loop with Muddy. A last minute plan came together to run in the early afternoon. 2 hours. We ran from my house into Burlingame and did a big clockwise loop. After 2 straight days of workouts, I knew right away this run would be a grind for me. Luckily Muddy had done a longish run yesterday so he was happy to keep the pace in check. Lots of leaves on the trails. Most of the oaks have dropped their leaves. Hopefully a week of use will crunch them up nicely for Li'l Rhody Runaround next Sunday. Total time: 2:08:08. My watch had 608' of climbing, but Muddy's barometer watch had over 1200'. I hate GPS watches if you didn't know.
Sunday: 6 miles - course planning in Ninigret. I was asked a couple of months ago to help out with a new local 5K race. It is a fundraiser for the preschool both my kids attended - the Charlestown Early Learning Center. They recently had a new building built that is 3/4 of the way funded. Read more about it here. Anyway, the race will be on January 23rd, hoping to attract runners during a time on the calendar that is empty of races. I was impressed right away with how well the event was organized. I came up with a potential course - starting and finishing at the Senior Center (where registration and post race festivities will take place). Today, after a couple of hours of yardwork, I hussled down to Ninigret to measure the course with my watch and phone before the Patriots kickoff. My plan flowed nicely, but was a little tight for 5K. I tweaked the starting line then ran it again, and it worked better. Zero elevation gain according to my watch. Should be nice and fast. I did my best to hide from the wind. Here's the course:
I wanted to run two more miles to snag 80 for the week, but it was time for the game so I left. The link to sign up if you're interested can be found here
Overall: A great week! Feeling ready to rock Li'l Rhody.
Weekly Total: 78 miles
Last Week: 59 miles
Year to Date: 3038 miles
November to Date: 92 miles
Will strongly consider the Chili 5K. I assume you have vegetarian chili on the menu? Looks fast, kind of like the Charlestown Police 5K in reverse. You're welcome to borrow the club measuring wheel anytime if you'd like.
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