Morning - 9 miles. Early morning through Avondale and out to Watch Hill. Was chilly at start - 42 degrees. Got onto East Beach and ran the 3+ miles back to Misquamicut and home. Wanted to test myself on the beach, and laid down a 6:06 mile. Feeling pretty good.
Afternoon - 4 miles. Guestimate of the amount I ran with the boys on a Columbus Day afternoon inside the Foster Farm cornmaze in Hopkinton. It was pretty fun.
Tuesday: 0
Wednesday: 6
Resumed the 445 club with Tom. Found a new road for him by running him up the hills in No Bottom Pond in the dark. Good times.
Played around with Strava this afternoon, got the above image to load. You can see Tom and I were cruising on the road portions until we hit the beach mile 4 and 5.
I had no sooner created a Strava account and uploaded my Nipmuck marathon results, when a message came up on my screen, "Hey, you stole all my Nipmuck CRs!". Got a good chuckle, Seth, thanks!
Thursday: 0
Alarm went off at 4:30, went back to sleep. Lazy, lazy, lazy ...
Friday: 13 miles trails
Morning: 6 miles. Parked at Wahaneeta, tried running new trails there and Woody Hill. One ended up in lots of "No Trespassing" signs; OK, cross that one off. Much of Woody Hill is flat, but found a cool downhill gazelling trail from a rock outcropping. Then proceeded to get lost. How can I get lost in Westerly? Oh, yeah, Woody Hill Management Area is 819 acres. Ended up somehow at the dam at Woody Hill Marsh, so I could find my way back from there, now late, but just in time to get back to my car to a take an 8:30 conference call, where they wanted to pick my brain on how to find underlying revenue entities for credit default swaps. Ugh - can't we just talking about running instead?
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| 1 mile deep into the woods: Remainder of stone steps, foundation, and chimney |
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| From the dam at Woody Hill Marsh |
Late afternoon: 7 miles. Felt I left too many questions unanswered from this morning (regarding the trails, that is), and once work ended, returned back to Woody Hill to try to find out where certain trails went. Looped around past the marsh again, onto some soft leaf covered trails, and ended up on Quarry Road up in Bradford, before backtracking.
Saturday: 10
First frost, 31 degrees at sunrise. Delayed running until noon, when it was sunny and low 50s. Worked for today, but I'm going to have to "man up" and face the cold as winter approaches.
Trails yesterday and tomorrow, so took to the roads today. Ran familiar 10-mile Weekapaug/Misquamicut loop, except spiced it up a bit with Tom's declining intervals drill with 1/2 recovery (5 min hard, 2.5 recovery, 4 hard, 2 recovery, etc.). Ran the 5-minute and 4-minute portions at 5:36 and 5:37 pace, respectively, then was unable to record splits for remainder. Finished the drill down to 30-second intervals, but disappointed I wouldn't have splits. Was upset at my watch on the way back, until I figured out it was ... ahem ... operator error.
Sunday: 17
Very fun run at sunrise with Jonny and the Mudster. Met at trailhead off Sand Hill Road in Voluntown, then headed north on Narragansett Trail. This section was very rugged along the river, but once we crossed over to Nehantic on west side of Green Fall Pond, the trail got runnable again, although more blazes would have been helpful.
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| Today's trail run: Clockwise from red pin, up to Beach Pond, and back |
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| Bloodied, bruised, and muddied: Are those some good looking legs or what? My proud badge of honor from today's run. |
Crossed over 138 and then up to 165, where we headed east across Beach Pond and RI state border, and took Tippecansett south. This was perhaps my favorite trail of the day. Wound along the southeast side of Beach Pond, with soft pine needle underfooting, and several good uphill and downhill sections. Then followed southerly along the state line, until we hit the gravel road to bring us back westbound back into CT and to our cars. Good honest workout at 2:11:xx, but as we discussed, still with enough energy not to be a couch-potato for the rest of the day. Headed home for a couple of hours of yardwork on a very windy day that was still enjoyable to be outside.
Weekly totals: 59 miles
Week assessment:
Pretty high mileage week for me, despite taking two days off. Had some really good running sessions this week. This was my only non-race weekend between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, and I really enjoyed have the weekend free to run longer. There are just so many races in the fall, but I do think I need a weekend break at least once a month. Food for thought going forward. In the meantime, I'll try to add some midweek mileage and a Saturday mid-distance run (12-ish?) before running the hilly Run for the Pumpkins Sunday.
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