Getting Serious

Monday- Hilly 10 miles.
Ran nice and easy today, almost 74 minutes, but that doesn't bother me. It always feels good starting the week off with a 10 miler.

Tuesday-9 miles hard 57:34 w/ 4x30,60,90
Good run today, started out nice and easy and after a mile or so I started rolling along. I started my 30,60,90's at 18 minutes and that got me to about 2 miles from home. I was considering doing another set just to make sure I didn't fall asleep over the last 2 miles, but decided that it'd probably be more helpful to try and keep the pace steady with out the watch keeping me in line. It went pretty well, I was able to keep the effort going all the way home.

Wed-11 miles Easy
For some strange reason this was my first run up to the top of Whiteface mountain in Gilford. I say it's strange cause I run by it all the time, it's right off my Liberty Hill 7 miler I do all the time. I'd run half way up before, but turned back because it was getting dark, and since then I haven't gone up. Probably because the climb has some monstrous steeps on it. Great mountain top it flattens out and has a nice view and a nice fire pit. The trail even kept going down the other side and I was tempted to continue exploring, but decided to save it for another day. I put the easy in italics because I tried to take this easy, but there's just nothing easy about mountain running. Good run though, and some good miles. I took it real easy on the way back the rest of the loop, and the first mile of the climb back to the car was a crawl.

Thursday- 7 miles 8x400 half rest 76, 76, 76, 77, 74, 73 74 71
Woke up this morning with my sinuses all stuffed up, felt ok later in the day. By the time Abbey got out of work, I didn't wanna run anymore. I got out though, and got it done. 3 mile warm up with my legs feeling like shit, not sure if I was really tired, or just trying to give myself an excuse to skip the work out, but everything felt horrible on the warm up. I figured I'd give it a go and start a couple and see how it goes. The first 2 were 76's and then I had to stop and take a dump. I got back to it and went 76 77 74 73 74 71 for the last 6. Pretty decent work out, I felt like shit but I got through the workout with decent splits. I only did a mile cool down, just cause I was tired and hungry. 7 miles total for the day.

Friday- easy 4 miles just to shake out before racing tomorrow.

Saturday-  9 miles Canterbury Cross Country Challenge- 3rd place 18:32

What a tough course this is! Up and down, tons of turns, and good stretch of single track. Fun race though on a beautiful day. We got there pretty early and went out ran the course to warm up, they had switched the course this year and ran it in reverse, which I think made it a little bit tougher. This is the 4th race in the CARS series so i knew I'd have some friends to race with.

I got a bit of a crappy start off the line, and after having to put in a little surge to get up to the front of the race I just really got rolling, so I took the lead for most of the first mile, which felt really good, but I was running over that red line a little too early I think, so then by about halfway through the second mile I was fighting to maintain my lead on Scott Clark. I tried my best to really work it through the single track, because a lot of times you can make up ground on "old guys" like him going through there. Of course I just ran trails with scott a few weeks ago, and he hasn't lost his footing yet. He was right there after we got out, and he ended up catching me going around this little island that they have you run around. This was the part of the race I was really dissapointed about, I just let him run away, and that's what I need to work on, I can run in front of someone, but I just didn't have the guts to RACE. I crawled up the next hill, and just decided to try and make sure Neal Graves, who was right behind, didn't pass me because I knew I'd be watching him run away too if I let him catch me. I was able to hold him off and finished up the race in 3rd which I was ok with, but I'm still pissed at myself now for not gritting my teeth and racing Scott. I might not have beat him, he's a tough runner, but I'd be a lot happier with myself if I'd just tried to stick with him a little longer. Oh well, it's a long summer, and I have a lot more races to keep trying to get it right.

Sunday- 11 easy.
Abbey, Tucker and I went out for an out and back on the Guinea Pond trail. This trail turns into Flat Mt. Pond trail after about 4 miles, so I got to retrace about a mile of what I did last week with Jim and Kevin. There was a lot more water out there this week, and we were getting soaked just running on the trail during the Flat mt. stretch. We went out to the Bennett st. trail junction and turned around to come back. The nice part about doing it this way is it's a nice downhill grade on the way back and the second half flew by. It was a nice run, took it real easy and got some good recovery in.

Week Total-61 miles. Good week of running, I got a lot of really quality runs in early in the week, and probably will try to set up this next week about the same way. Next week I'll be able to get in a few more miles too with the 12k on saturday.