Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Running Week Ending 5/20 + Bedford 12k

Monday- Easy 7 miles.
I just ran laps around the grass trails at wagon wheel farm down in Durham today. Such a nice run, a little muddy, and spitting a bit of rain, but warm and green and very pretty.

Tuesday- easy 3 miles am, 9.5 easy pm
Good running today. Just easy and feeling good. Got to run with Abbey in the evening, which has seemed like a rarity the past couple weeks. Ran laps around a nice grass 1k loop up the road from the house with tucker in the morning. Abbey and I ran around Governor's Island in the evening.

Wednesday- 12 miles sorta fartlek
Ran the first 4.5 miles, running fast when I felt like it and working the hills whether I felt like it or not. This got me up to the top of whiteface. From there I was exploring as I came down the backside, and ran a lot slower finding my way down. About halfway down to Durrell Mt Road the four wheeler trail I was following turned into a very steep, but smooth and graded road. I was coming down thinking it would be a bear of a climb to have to go up it, so once I got down to the bottom I turned around and climbed back up to see just how bad it would be. I went pretty hard, and it was a good tough climb, about 3:00 minutes up, and then back down easy. I got back down to Durrell Mt. Road and had about 5 minutes of uncertainty as I was kinda just hoping it was the right road, and that I went the right way, but it was and I came out where I wanted to. I took a left off Durrell mt. road and got in another mile or so on another class 6 road before heading down towards the finish of the run. I didn't work the whole climb up the last 2 miles, but didn't go easy. It was a good run. About 90 minutes total with some stops for views and trail finding counted in the total.

Thursday-0. Planned on going home in the evening and getting a run in after working 10-6, I got asked to cover the overnight, and I agreed to it before remembering I wouldn't be able to get my run in. I was worried about it for a while, but figured with the race on saturday it might not hurt me too bad.

Friday-easy 5.5 with tucker.

Saturday- Bedford 12k 42:58 57th place. 13 miles total.
I went into this race a little bit nervous, I thought 12k would be a little too long, and it probably was a little bit, but I felt like it went pretty well. It's hard going into a 12k, do you treat it as a 10k and plan on hurting?
Or do you run it more like a long race and try to ease into the racing like you would with a 10 miler? My splits were all over the place yesterday so I don't know what I did, I guess it was more like a 10k though.

Abbey and I got there a little after 8 and I was suprised to manage to catch the CMS guys for the warm up, cause I usually get there too late and miss it. It's always fun catching up with everyone and seeing how the team is doing. Did about 20 minutes and got back with just enough time for a quick run to the bathroom, and to put on my flats, and singlet. I realized I didn't have any pins with about 10 minutes til the gun, Abbey ran in and got some for me while I put on my racers. I put my bib on while running down to the line, and just had time for a strider before trying to tuck myself in a bit behind the line.

I got out fine, and was trying to stay nice and relaxed, which is always tough to do in these races with all the guys there. I missed the split at the mile, and by the time I realized it, my watch said 5:30, so I knew I was a little faster than that, and a bit nervous about it but feeling ok. Scott McGrath caught up to me just after this, and it was nice to chat with him for a few before he started pulling away. I must have gone a bit slower than 5:30 on this one, as I went through 2 miles in 11:01, I had been hoping for 11:10 and I was starting to feel that first mile. I was also thinking that i've been running 5k's mostly this spring and that I wasn't far off my 5k pace. I had been latched onto Dunham and Pawlicki through most of the first 2 miles, after they gapped me at a waterstop, I focused on trying to catch back upto them for the next 2 miles. I missed a mile split again at 3 miles, and really wish I'd seen it as I was falling off the pace hard at that point and maybe seeing my 3rd split would have woken me up earlier. Around 3.5 I saw Scott McGrath walking back towards me and told him to get back in the race and run with me, he didn't seem too excited about it, but he grudgingly got back in and came with me. Once he'd decided to race he said something about all the ground he'd lost and so I decided to start going and trying to see if we could make it up. This was awesome, as it really got me racing again after what had been a slow couple miles, going through 4 in 22:53 and an 11:52 two miles for the 3rd and 4th mile. I had a good next couple miles running with Scott, we were rolling right along and going by guys which always feels good. my 5th mile was 5:40 and my 6th mile was 5:42. The wheels started to fall off not long after 6, but I just tried to tell myself it was only a mile left and that I was running a good race. Despite lots of positive talk that last mile, I only managed a 5:52, I started to make a big move up the final hill and was going to try and catch the Gate City Striders runner, I might have gotten around him before I got to the track, but it didn't matter cause I started booting all over the place, it was pretty bad. Normally I can puke real quick and get back to the race, this was puke, run a couple steps puke, at one point I had to hold onto the fence while I finished up. It took me a second to get going after that, but I did manage to kick to squeeze in under 43:00

Overall I'd say this was a good race, I always wanna run faster, but it was the same pace as my 5 miler at reds a couple weeks ago but 2.5 miles longer. I had some really good miles in there, and was passing people in the last miles.

Sunday- 13 miles in the Belknaps with Fergus Cullen, Scott Clark, Abbey and Tucker, fun run lots of climbing! Ok, we started at the Gilford High School and headed up Belknap Mt. Road, to the carriage road up Belknap. The carriage road is a tough mile, with a long steep quarter mile climb before climbing switchbacks to the top the rest of the way. We continued up the green trail up Belknap, then wound up taking the red trail on accident instead of the blue trail, which brought us back down Belknap to the top of the carriage road. We meant to take the blue trail over to Gunstock, but we were able to get on a trail that brought us back over towards Gunstock. We just got in an extra mile and a little more climbing this way. We got over to Gunstock and took in the view, while we tried to figure out which way we wanted to go back. I knew there was a nice trail that would go back to the bottom of the Carriage Road from Gunstock but we couldn't find the trail, so we just went back the way we came. By the time we got back over to Belknap I think we were all dying for water, and looking forward to get back to the cars. Luckily it was 4 miles of downhill running all the way home. We drank a ton, and then Abbey and I went home and back to bed for an hour or so. Got up and very slowly talked myself into going out to finish mowing the lawn.

Week Total: 63 in 6 days. Best week in ages, and feeling great. I was starting to wake up a lot at night earlier in the week, and was getting worried, cause thats an early over training symptom for me, but after taking Thursday off I slept like a baby the past couple nights. So i'm gonna keep on building for another week or two before I take a down week.

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