Training Log Archive: Ari-o

Warm up jog around the neighborhood, finding somewhere to add some water to the landscape, and not hit too many raindrops.

Fun course at Edmands, enough terrain in there to make it fun despite not being very big. Nice and open, too.

Lost a few s to 1 when I went to punch the control in the pit and my legs slipped out and I fell on my back in the mud, so I was very muddy. Otherwise I'd taken a good route and would have been close to Keegan (who beat me by 4 minutes and—looks at his log—oh looks like he ran a 3:25 1200m this week too).

Spiked 2 off the terrain but slowly recovering from mudgate, and ran 3 well enough. 4 along the trail, 5 a nice bash through the woods (some unmapped mountain bike trails to confuse the matter) and then a big goof on 6, when I went to the wrong side of the stream and had to cross it and didn't really want to get too wet/muddy so I had to find a good spot.

Over the hill to 7 (only one extra contour) and running pretty well to 8 9 10, felt a bit lethargic to 11 and probably should have just taken the trail when I saw it and not tried to go through the white closer to the control. Danced along the stream to 12 and then finish.

A decent effort but I still wish I ran faster.

Hung around for a while and then went out to pick up the controls. Delivered 8 of them to an entrance up the road for Dean to grab by car. Could have gone earlier (the last person was finishing as I ran out and my first two controls were 1 and 2 on that course) and I was a bit chilly but warmed up running again.

Long-Sprint - Splits

Nice, cool, evening, ran the three thoroughfares of Charlestown; two trips over the hill.

Pre meeting Longfellow. Longer than planned, but in time for a listen-to meeting.

My watch seems to be reading 3-5% high for mileage, but still, a 91-96 mile week without injury is nothing to sneeze at.

Run, some stroller pushing. Calf blew up right at the end of the run. Maybe I need to stretch and take a minute off after a 96 mile week.

What to do for trail adventure this week?

Up north is snow or mud season. Something in Mass. There's a thing called the Tully Lake Trail I had never heard of but found online. It sounded nice. Mel brought a friend, and I called up a friend in mud-land to see if she wanted to do a 20 mile run on dry land about equidistant. Vaccines are a good thing and an Alex came along.

We shuttled back and forth (in a car, without masks on, with the windows up!) and then set off. The trail was generally well-marked but grabbing an Army Corps map before the run would have been helpful. Also, the Army Corps. They built this dam in the '40s for flood control, and point to a time when it worked saying it saved $3 million downstream. Nice work, gents, but how much did the dam cost? ROI. But it's a nice area.

Anyway, ran a dirt road, then up a mountain, which was steep but not very long. Sun out, leaves not out, and the day warmed up pretty quickly. There was about a mile on a road, but then we entered some lovely open woods which would make for very nice orienteering (but the state park is sort of narrow, still, yum), crossed some streams, didn't get very lost at any point until just before the car drop, when we overran a section of trail and wound up on a dirt road. I did have to stop at one point to handle a pre-blister, but tape fixed that. Plus side: we got to do a state line sprint since we edged into New Hampshire.

Then Alex had an aid station for us. In the car were chips, pickles, lots of water (needed) and other assorted goodness. This was mostly destroyed. (Thanks, Ed, for letting us raid your pantry.) We started down towards Royalston Falls, which got a lot more traffic and was steep, but then beyond the falls (lovely) was flatter and less-trafficked. The rest of the run was flat along the river, boring in places, and really nice along the lake. We skipped the climb up a power line for little reason other than, it seemed, to add a climb. Mel started walking more near the end so I hung back, until my legs needed to move more near the end. This cooled me down enough that I didn't want to jump in the lake at the end.

Not a bad run, would do again.

Figured with the people time this week I'd go for a run to get another test. Why not! Juice the average positivity down. Also Harvard isn't a bad run. Ran pretty hard there, beautiful, cool, sunny late afternoon. Tested. Then had some stomach issues home which slowed the pace, but made it … in time.