Monday, November 17, 2014, 12:15 pm

4.6 mi, 1866 ft gain, 53:58. Upper Wallace Falls, solo. Altra Superior 1.5 Blue.

Awesome run today. My sleep schedule was even further from where I would like to be, and I got wrapped up in getting some things done, so I ended up staying up. It’s almost 2pm as I write this, and I’ve been up for 23 hours. I’ll stay up at least until dark. I expect to sleep longer than normal, so hopefully I can reset my internal clock.

Anyway, about the run… It’s so nice out, sunny and mid 40s, and I’ve been itching to get back to real trails, so I went out to Wallace Falls. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go early on, but my pace was pretty good. I pushed myself most of the way up and broke my ascent to the Upper falls best time by about 2 minutes. My first time going up in under 30 minutes, 28:35.

I took about 1.5 minutes to catch my breath and rest my legs. Then I took a couple pictures, took off my sweaty base layer to go with just my pullover and took off my gloves. I had already taken off my fleece beanie about 10 minutes in. I guess I was overdressed, but it turned out alright. I ended up spending about 5 minutes at the Upper falls view point before heading back down.

I started heading down kind of slow. Those steps up top are steep and kind of sketchy. Once past them, I started bombing down. I ended up beating my best descent time as well. I could have gone faster. I wanted to break 20 minutes, but missed by 18 seconds. Maybe next time.

The Mio behaved well. Average HR 153 bpm according to Movescount and my Ambit 2 R, 156 bpm according to Strava. Strava only counts during moving time, so it cuts out the break at the top.

 

Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 3:39 pm

3.1 mi, 45 ft gain, 27:47. Green belt in town, with dogs. New Balance MR10v2.

Ended up in bed by 8pm last night and up before 6am. Unfortunately, I’ve felt a little run down today. Probably due to staying up so long and yesterday’s hard run. Not too bad, but enough that I decided not to go very far for today’s run.

Nothing particularly noteworthy during the run. Sigurd kept pulling on the leash more than usual. It made it a little harder to keep the pace slower.

Mio was reading high early, then low, then finally right. Average HR 123 bpm.

 

Wednesday, November 19, 2014,  pm

7.19 mi, 72 ft gain, 1:13:40. RR access road through town, with dogs. New Balance MR10v2.

I wasn’t sure about where or how far I’d run today. I was about to head out onto US2 after stopping for the dogs to pee and decided to hit the RR access road instead. Down into the park, I hopped over the tracks and ran the other access road that goes into Startup.

The wind was really blowing. When the wind isn’t cold, I find that I really enjoy running in the wind, with, against or at any angle. It mixes things up a bit.

I was going to turn around at 2 mi, then 2.5 mi, then 3 mi and finally decided to turn around at 3.5. On the way back, there was a train going by a little before I got back by the tracks. I turned around and ran back out a little until the train was passed. I didn’t really want to run that close to a moving train with the dogs. Then once I was just nearing the gate to turn along the RR tracks, another train came in the other direction. It was moving slow, so it was probably stopped on the tracks in town waiting for the other one to go by. I think there are 4 lines of tracks on that small stretch.

I ended up only waiting for the engines to go by. It was a short train anyway. After it went by, the wind really picked up. At times, the wind slowed me down by up to 1 min/mi pace. I leaned in and kept going, trying to keep my HR around the same level.
It was a pretty easy day. Average HR 126 bpm.

 

Thursday, November 20, 2014, 3:16 pm

6.40 mi, 269 ft gain, 59:22. Road to Wallace Falls TH & back, with dogs. New Balance MR10v2.

It’s been a pattern recently. I set out for just a short 3-4 mi run and end up going longer since I feel so good. Nothing really stood out to me during the run. It just felt great.

Once I got to Wallace Falls State Park, I tied the dogs to one of the metal bbq grills and ducked into the bathroom. After a short stop, I grabbed the dogs and headed home.

It was windy again, but not nearly as much as Wednesday. Kept my HR pretty low again. Average 128 bpm.

 

Friday, November 21, 2014,  pm

3.15 mi, 28 ft gain, 25:59. Road through town, with dogs. New Balance MR10v2.

Apparently I accidentally hit pause at 2.04 mi and didn’t notice until about 0.3 mi from the end. Distance is a guess based on running this route a number of times.

I considered going longer today, but I’m running an 8k race tomorrow. It was raining too. I’ll probably wear just about the same thing for the race as I did today. It worked pretty well with the rain.

Average HR 135 bpm. This is probably off a bit.

 

Saturday, November 22, 2014, 8:05 am

1.14 mi, 148 ft gain, 12:26. Ravenna Park, solo. Altra Superior 1.5 Blue.

Warmup for the 8k race. I didn’t sleep well at all last night. I got around 3 hours of sleep, waking up once in the middle as well. I woke up at about 3:40 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I tried writing down the ideas I was having, rolling around to different positions, letting the dogs on the bed, playing games on my phone. I stayed in bed until almost 7am when my alarm was going to go off.

During my short warmup run my HR was elevated significantly from normal, likely due to not sleeping much. Fortunately, I don’t think it really had any effect on my race. I think the Mio was a little buggy as well. There were a couple spikes. Average HR 146 bpm

 

Saturday, November 22, 2014, 8:32 am

5 mi, 480 ft gain, 33:54. Ravenna Refresher 8k race, solo. Altra Superior 1.5 Blue.

I went out fast, probably too fast. I tried to moderate my pace a little at times. Three other guys and I went out sort of together. I tried to hold back a little bit, because I didn’t think I’d be able to keep my starting pace for that long. After the first short climb, I passed two of them on the following downhill. Then there was just one guy in front of me.

I ended up chasing after him for the rest of the race. I kept it pretty close until the last climb of the first lap, when he started to pull away a bit. I think I finished the first lap in about 16:40, which would have won the 4k, though the guy ahead of me was faster by about 20 seconds.

I could tell I slowed down on the second lap. I made a conscious effort to maintain pace as much as I could. Once I hit the flat gravel access road on the bottom, it seemed a lot longer than the first time. I wasn’t that sure about how far out I was once I hit the short asphalt sections. So I didn’t pour it on again until I knew I was just a couple turns away. Then I let it go.

It turned out that the guy ahead of me was running the 12k, so I wasn’t actually racing against him. It was good motivation to push harder, though.

The top 3 male and female finishers of each event, 4k, 8k and 12k, were given a bottle of Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider. I also won a $40 gift card to the Balanced Athlete in the raffle. When they announced my name, they said my finishing time was 33:55.9, but the official results online say 33:54. Either way, I’m happy. I won my first race ever.

The event was well organized. The trail was very well marked and the refreshment area at the finish line was great. I don’t know about the aid station as I blew right by it at the start of my second lap. The only thing that I thought could be better was the other racers. There was very little cheering for other runners as they came around for their next lap or when they finished. I tried to cheer and clap for a little while, expecting that others would join in to no avail. The race staff cheered for people though.

My mile splits, according to Strava, were 6:31, 6:34, 7:02, 6:58, 7:11. Average HR 176 bpm.

 

Sunday, November 23, 2014, 3:05 pm

13.16 mi, 478 ft gain, 2:04:36. WFSP, May Creek Rd, home, out & back along US2, Solo. New Balance MR10v2.

I wanted to keep my HR below 140 bpm for the most part. I went up to around 145 bpm on a couple hills, and closer to 150 bpm nearing the end.

I started out not sure which way I was going to go. Once I hit US2, I turned left, partially due to traffic. I went out to Wallace Falls State Park and used the restroom. I then continued around on May Creek Rd and back home. Another pitstop at home, and I went back out. I just ran west along US2 for a couple miles and turned around.

My quads were kind of sore from the race. They haven’t been sore from a run in a long time. My left calf got really tight the last couple miles today. I’m not sure why. It was a little painful toward the end.

With the pit stops, my Average HR 128 bpm. According to Strava, for only moving time, my average HR was 137 bpm.

 

Weekly totals: 43.6 mi, 3312 ft gain.