Monday, February 23, 2015, 3:49 pm

4.15 mi, 160 ft gain, 50:34. Kellogg Lake Tree Farm gate #1, with dogs. Altra Superior 1.5 Red.

It was rough starting out. My legs were sore and a little stiff. My left achilles is a bit sore too. I stopped and walked a little on the little hill at about 0.3 mi in. Walking wasn’t really much slower.

I warmed up by about the time I got to Olney Creek. The creek bed has changed a bit due to the flooding this winter. The log jam is gone, more logs moved in on the close side up on the bank, the sand bank in spots has raised about 3 feet and pushed into the brush a bit too.

I spent a few minutes at the creek letting the dogs run around. Then I headed out towards the connector hill. I turned around before getting to the bottom of the hill.

The weather was nice. The sun was out, and I ran shirtless for a while. It wasn’t that warm, but the sun still felt nice.

I was still sore and slow by the end of the run, but I felt a lot better.

Average HR 118 bpm.

 

Tuesday, February 24, 2015, 5:12 pm

4.54 mi, 38 ft gain, 39:59. In town, solo. New Balance MR10v2.

The legs were a bit less sore today. My left achilles is still sore. It got a little worse about half mile in before it started feeling better again.
My pace was significantly better today than yesterday. I ran out about 20 minutes and turned around.

On the way back, some guy hanging out on his front porch cat-called me. Something about my legs. I’d guess that I get about 10 guys yelling things or cat-calling for every one woman.

I had a great run, anyway. Now I’m trying to figure out what race or solo adventure to do next.

Average HR 128 bpm.

 

Wednesday, February 25, 2015, 5:58 pm

5.3 mi, 380 ft gain, 56:39. Kellogg Lake Tree Farm gate #1, with dogs. Altra Superior 1.5 Blue.

Again, I didn’t keep up with writing this up until days later, so I don’t remember a whole lot about it.

I went out past Olney creek to where the road meets back up with the loop. I wasn’t sure which way to go. I ended up turning around because the logging trucks made such a mucky mess of the road. Instead, I took the road out towards the hill. I went up the hill a little bit and thought about continuing, but I figured I’d keep it shorter to continue recovering from the race.

Average HR 122 bpm.

 

Thursday, February 26, 2015, 4:00 pm

8.16 mi, 1119 ft gain, 1:28:50. Kellogg Lake Tree Farm gate #1, with dogs. Altra Lone Peak 1.5.

(Writing this days later as well).

I was going to go to the next gate, but there was a car out there. I felt pretty good. I kept the pace pretty easy, though.

I went over the hill and back. I let gravity take over a couple times on the downhills. I enjoy running downhill so much, it’s hard to believe I used to really hate it.

Average HR 123 bpm.

 

Friday, February 27, 2015, 4:14 pm

8.22 mi, 1264 ft gain, 1:28:50. Kellogg Lake Tree Farm gate #2, with dogs. Altra Lone Peak 1.5.

When I pulled up to the gate, I saw a truck coming out, just about to the gate. Before letting the dogs out, I got out and spoke to the guy briefly. I asked if they were going to be logging out there too. He said he was out there to clean up the roads, ditches and such. I got a little more info about where they’re working right now as well.

Feeling pretty good, but still kept an easy pace. I checked out one of the early side roads that’s been grown over for a couple years, and he cleaned up. It didn’t go very far. Then I went out to the little hill before heading over the connector hill.

I still kept it easy over and back, until I got back to the bottom of the steep part of the west side of the hill. Then I turned around and ran hard back up the steep part, about 0.15 mi and 150 ft gain. I setup a strava segment for that climb, but it didn’t calculate it correctly for this effort. It counted the bottom part when I was still going down and the turnaround as well. I guess I didn’t go quite far enough past the start of the segment to “zero out”. I’m pretty sure I did actually set a PR up it, though.

Average HR 130 bpm.

 

Saturday, February 28, 2015, 1:05 pm

11.04 mi, 2122 ft gain, 1:52:48. To Upper Wallace Falls (10) & back, solo. Altra Superior 1.5 Blue.

Feeling good and mostly recovered. Still don’t have all my speed and strength back, but that’s ok. Training a little tired will be helpful experience for longer stuff.

The park was packed and the trails were quite busy. I pushed the pace in places, but I didn’t worry about stopping and slowing down for hikers. I think I yielded more than I usually do too.

According to strava, I had my third best time going up the woody trail to the upper falls. With all the stopping and still a little of the race left in my legs, I was a little surprised.

I took it easier on the way back down. The road back home was good.

I planned a longer run, but I thought I needed to be back home by 3pm for something, so I cut it short. It turned out that I didn’t need to be back until 5pm. Oh well.

Average HR 154 bpm.

 

Sunday, March 1, 2015, 2:01 pm

21.78 mi, 3454 ft gain, 4:05:36. To WFSP, RR grade, Greg Ball, Wallace Lake, Jay Lake, uphill turnoff, DNR rd to Woody Trail & down,solo. Altra Superior 1.5 Red#1.

The plan was for at least 16 mi, and possibly as much as 24 mi or so. I kept the pace much easier than Saturday. I started easy on the roads to the park. I stopped briefly at the restrooms and headed up.

Just as I was getting started, I saw another runner on her way back to the TH. Both our faces lit up when we saw another runner. We exchanged waves and greetings as we passed.

I went up the RR grade to the Greg Ball trail, trying to stay below 150 bpm. It’s really easy for me to get excited and speed up in races, with hikers around and just going uphill in general.

Once I hit the DNR road at the end of the Greg Ball trail, instead of the more direct road to Wallace Lake, I took the road to the right, going uphill. It’s one of the few alternate routes to Wallace Lake that I hadn’t done yet. I liked it, some nice climbing and adds a little more distance to the trip.

Once to the lake, I kept going out to the beach on the north side and took a couple photos. Then I continued out to Jay lake. I saw some flagging tape continuing out past the food storage site, so I followed it. A very minimal path has been cut out a ways. I stopped when it ran into some blowdowns and couldn’t see any more tape.

I took the DNR rd toward the falls, but took a detour up the road I checked out a while back hoping to find a possible route up Mt. Stickney. Last time I stopped where part of the road was washed out. It was really wet and looked pretty unstable. This time it’s been dry and didn’t look like much had moved since then. I decided to go around it on the uphill side, where it looked like some other people had done the same. Either that or some good sized bear(s) with the size of the impressions in the small talus. I went up the road a ways further, up to about where my gps said was 2600 ft elevation. Looking at maps and satellite images, it looks very promising. I’m definitely going back sometime. I wanted to keep going but didn’t really want to run in the dark, even though I had my headlamp with me.

A little further down the DNR road towards the falls, I saw a critter scamper down the road ahead of me then head uphill. I stayed quiet until I got within sight. It was a bobcat, my first time seeing one in years of enjoying the outdoors. It stood there watching as I pulled out my phone and took a couple pictures. I stood and watched for a little longer. Just before I kept going, I waved my arms and made some noise to scare it off. Lots of people hike in the park, including with kids and small dogs. It’s better if it stays scared of people. It was an awesome experience.

I hit Upper Wallace Falls for the 11th time this year.

Even though the parking lot was packed and cars were parked down the road about 0.5 mi when I started, there weren’t many people left on the Woody trail on my way down.

Running the road home was kind of rough. Tired leg training was in full effect. I still finished the last 0.1 mi or so strong.

This will probably be my last long run in this pair of shoes. The Altra Superior is just about the perfect balance of ground feel and protection for me. But after over 600 mi on this pair, they’ve lost a lot of that protection. My feet were not happy for about the last 7 mi. I may still use them for short runs.

Average HR 134 bpm. This isn’t necessarily accurate. I forgot to charge my HR monitor. The battery died, and it missed the last 1.5 hours.

 

Weekly totals: 63.3 mi, 8536 ft gain.

February totals: 187.2 mi, 21420 ft gain.