Weekly Log 16-Oct to 22-Oct-2017: From Wisconsin to Bimblers

Monday:  10
AM:  6 miles at University of Wisconsin, main campus in Madison.  Beautiful campus.  A mix of paved bike path and dirt trails.

Early morning crew team out at sunrise on Lake Mendota

Nice building architecture at the University of Wisconsin

Trail's end at Picnic Point

Separate trails for runners and cyclists

PM:  4 miles on University of Wisconsin cross-country course, a few miles from downtown.

Manicured, well-signed XC course.  Site of 2018 national collegiate championships.

Tuesday:  6
Back to Rhody after being away five days.  Ran Vinny, Sammy, and Lenny trails at Burlingame.  Pushed Sammy C's hard and took 2nd position on the segment, 20 seconds behind Jonny.  (Editor's note:  that was before Jonny came back to crush his CR further and Muddy jumped in to take 2nd.)

Wednesday:  6
Hale Reservation, Westwood, MA.  Got myself temporarily lost.  Slow and easy ahead of Sunday's epic race.

Thursday:  5
Barn Island mid-day run.  Slow and easy.

Friday:  0
Planned day off tapering into Sunday.

Saturday:  5
Flat, easy run at Ninigret.

Sunday:  32
Completed my first 50K!  Awesome and brutal at the same time.  Write-up coming shortly.

Weekly mileage:  63.  Just edged out Jonny for first on the club mileage leaderboard.

Weekly synopsis:  Thrilled to complete the 50K!  Cross one off the bucket list.

Weekly highlight:  See above!  2nd place to running for the first time ever in Wisconsin,

Weekly Log 9-Oct to 15-Oct-2017: Rambling Travels

Monday:  7
Mid-day Columbus Day Burlingame trail run with Matthew.

Tuesday:  5
Local roads.

Wednesday:  7
Tommy was looking for a morning run, and was amenable to trails, so we went to Burlingame.  I both underestimated how late sunrise is now, plus didn't realize Tommy had never run trails in the dark, so it made for an interesting experience.  All went well, and finally it did get light.

Thursday:  9
Honeymoon Island State Park, Dunedin, FL.  Arrived mid-day on a direct flight from Providence to Tampa for just $39!!  New no-frills airline Frontier made it an easy decision to go down for Mark's Friends & Family Weekend at University of South Florida.

Yikes!

Osprey!

I actually wouldn't visit Mark until Friday, and I had the afternoon free before visiting a high school friend, so I researched someplace different and found this island park to run in.  I avoided direct sun by running wooded trails, but the downside was that any time I stopped for just a second to gauge direction, tiny insects would eat me alive and draw blood.  Ended up running more on the beach where it was hot and sunny, but insect free.

Miles of deserted beach

Home to plenty of birds we don't have in RI

Friday:  5
Lettuce Lake State Park, Tampa.  Interesting mix of paved trails, dirt trails, and wooden boardwalk, the latter despite signs indicating "NO jogging".  I played dumb and was glad I got out there, as I saw a gator just off the boardwalk.  Rain kept the run from getting too hot on yet another day in the upper 80s.

Friday afternoon run site

Fun running on the boardwalk

Check out this guy!



Post-run, went to visit with Mark and embarrass him
(I'm pretty sure he's thinking "I wish my dorky Dad stayed home")

Late afternoon kayak with Mark. Saw many alligators.

Saturday:  15
AM:  6 miles.  A mix of trails and roads near USF, but I underestimated the amount of road section and it left me too little time to explore on the trails.  Interesting flora.

Saturday's trail run.  We don't have this kind of vegetation
back home.

After running, met up with Mark for a morning at the ropes course.  This was part of the Family & Friends Weekend.  Had a fun time on the course, and despite my trepidation on the zipline, for me it was just stepping off the platform and after that I was fine.  I had thought we were going to lunch after that, but he said he had plans with his friends.  I had actually thought to lash out with something like "I paid good money to come down here to visit you", but that would leave the thus-far very good weekend on a sour note, and I totally get that a gregarious 19-year old would rather hang with his friends than his old man, so it's all good.  He did spend the better part of 24 hours with me, and he'll be coming home next month for Thanksgiving.

Isn't this guy a beauty?!  So happy to see him right near the base of the ropes course.
(I'd say this was for Mikey, but don't think he reads blogs anymore.)

Ropes course fun!

Here's Mark, still half-asleep, or
looking kind of glum ...



... and a picture he posted on social media,

later that day with his friends.  The mood looks a little different.

(I think he's missing his old man in this pic.)

PM:  9 miles.  I had one final afternoon to myself in Florida, and I intended to make the most of it.  Drove to Fort Desoto Park, in Tierra Verde just south of St Petersburg, and totally enjoyed myself exploring the island.  Was concerned about the 91 degree temperature, but two rain showers and an ensuing island breeze cooled things down at least a little bit.

Pelicans!

This pic and the next remind me of the one trip I made decades ago to Saipan.

Fort Desoto.  Built to defend in the Spanish American War, but never saw action.
Unlike some of the forts in RI, this one you can actually walk into the underground bunkers.

More miles of deserted beaches.
The amorous couple that I interrupted did not seem happy to see me.

Cactus!  Didn't even know they existed in Florida.
A local man told me these are Prickly Pear Cactuses
(or do you prefer "cacti"?)

Sunday:  8
Rock Cut State Park, largest park in northern Illinois.  From Florida to Illinois.  Go figure.  It was actually a handoff from one son who loves the heat (Mark) to the other who is more cold-blooded (Matthew).  After flying in the night before in scary thunderstorms, I picked up Matthew at O'Hare en route to visiting the University of Wisconsin, where the head XC coach would be waiting for him Monday morning.
A good half-way point seemed to be the Rock Cut State Park, and it worked out great.  A little bit of park roads, but mostly dirt trails and grass comprised our run today.  Running around the lake was rather scenic.

CCW trail run around Pierce Lake

Herons and pelicans have been replaced with Canadian geese

Weekly mileage:  57

Weekly synopsis:  Fun, but tiring week.  Had fun running in Florida despite the heat, and still got in a good mileage week as well.

Weekly highlight:  Exploring Fort Desoto Park.

Pumpkins 2017

Westerly, RI
Saturday, October 7, 2017

Background:  One of my favorite races of the year had arrived!  This was the 15th running of the Run for the Pumpkins, but only the 3rd installment on trails.  In 2003, the Town of Westerly Recreation Department started this run on local roads starting and ending at Cimalore Field.  Not being in the "running business", and with 5K road races in October being rather ubiquitous, the race numbers seldom got north of 40 or 50.  When a record low entrants of 17 was recorded, the Town approached the WTAC and asked if we could co-host the race and manage logistics.

These flags are shown before we cleared the new 1/3 mile Pumpkins Connector
trail, but nonetheless you can see the terrain is fairly hilly with some rugged features.

The race entrants did increase, but only topped 100 once we switched it up completely by moving it to new trails at Bradford Preserve.  With town permission, we cleared a number of overgrown trails and also created new trails, including a connector to Bradford Preserve field and another connector to Woody Hill Management Area.  Each successive year I feel the need to make some tweak.  Last year, it was building a very short connector trail to bypass a loose gravel and rock sketchy downhill, and this year it was building a 1/3 mile twisty connector trail to combine the XC course and Pumpkins 5K course and make an optional 8K.

Race day:  Showed up at 7:30am (2 1/2 hours before race start) and met up with partners in crime Muddy, Jonny, and Mikey.  We came armed with 800 flags (yes, 800!), about 25 directional signs, and Mikey brought 6 mile markers (4 for the 8K, 2 for the 5K).  Only these weren't ordinary mile markers; each one was a real pumpkin.  Not sure how, but Mike lugged 5 of these pre-painted beauties out into the woods.  The 6th one he asked me to bring, and fortunately I was able to shirk my duties and con Muddy into carrying it.  This time we gave enough time and I wasn't running around at the last minute trying to finish things.

Mile 1:  After my RD pre-race remarks, we also lined up on the starting line.  Then some idiot (that would be me) looked down and saw that he didn't have his bib.  That should have been grounds for DQ, but fortunately the crowd tolerated me as I quickly got my bib (thanks Jana!) and pins (thanks John!) and lined back up.   The bell (yes, a bell from timing company!) went off, and a number of us went out pretty hard to jostle for position entering the woods.  After 1/4 mile, we exited the field into the woods to start the 100' trail climb.  After I passed an unknown runner, I was passed by Muddy and Jonny, putting me in 5th position.  A 31-year old guy from Providence was leading, with Tommy 5K in tow.  At the top of the hill, Jeff Vuono did an awesome job as course marshal at the course split for 5K and 8K.  The next 1/2 mile is a slow incline on the XC course.  I could see Jonny a little ways ahead of me, but no one else.  6:51.

Start of the 2017 Run for the Pumpkins:
Tom on far left, shirtless Jonny behind me, and me to their left.
Looks like Mikey B in a cap a few places back.

Mile 2:  As we entered the upper field, I pulled up very close to Jonny.  I was feeling good, but knowing the next mile would drop over 100' (which plays to my advantage), I held steady.  Once we left the field and got into a downhill, I passed Jonny.  He gave me some encouragement, but I told him he'd like me retake me on the uphill.  I accelerated downhill and soon saw and caught up to Tom (Muddy must have passed him somewhere along the way).  I know I should pass on the left, but I was on the ragged edge of control on one of the steeper descents and just yelled "On your right" as I went by.  When the trail flattened out, I could hear Tom right on me and thought he'd pass, but I made it to the end of the 2nd mile just ahead of him.  6:12.  Very fast trail mile!

Mile 3:  The hardest part of the course would be the next 1/3 mile of twisty newly cut trail, and I would both suffer and revel in it.  At switchbacks, I could see Muddy ahead of me holding down 2nd place, and when I glanced who was trailing me, it was Jonny on my heels!  Not a good thing to be hunted by him on trail uphills.  I had home course advantage knowing every single turn on the course, and maybe that was a factor as I held my position through the Pumpkins Connector climb and the rest of the mile, bring us into Woody Hill.  8:05.  Not surprisingly my slowest mile.

Mile 4:  This mile brought us into and through the Hansel & Gretel twisty trail.  We started to catch the back of the 5K'ers at this point, and all were graceful to step aside where appropriate.  I feel I'm reasonably fast on this, but just could not shake Jonny.  Muddy was not far ahead of me, but the distance wasn't narrowing either.  Passed Beth towards the end of this mile and somehow had the strength to mumble "Thank you". 7:12

This year I extended the rock portion of the Hansel & Gretel
section of trail by exposing more rock (above), but
also gave the anti-rock crowd a bypass option.

Mile 5:  Fearing that Jonny was about to run me down, I knew I had to push real hard this mile to stay in the game, and fortunately it was another downhill.  I caught right up to Muddy on a downhill and was about to try to pass, but we got jammed up with about three 5K'ers that he was working on going around himself.  Fortunately, I got one more chance on a final downhill and passed him.  Knowing the hill was ending soon and we'd be exiting onto a flat field where both Muddy and Jonny are faster than me, I just hammered with everything I had and hoped for the best.  Success!  In my sprint, I not only held off my chasers but also narrowed the gap on the winner and finished just 5 seconds behind him!  Muddy was 8 seconds behind me in 3rd, Jonny a mere 1 second behind Muddy in 4th, and Tom came in behind him, with a number of WTAC runners to follow suit.
Final split:  5:54 pace!

Final results:  33:19.  2nd overall out of 44 finishers in the 8K.  1st in age group.  Full results here

Would wearing trail minimus shoes have benefitted me in
my performance at all?  I love the light feel, rotate them in with other
shoes, but this was the first time ever wearing them in a race.  7.2 ounces.

Super psyched with the results!  I gave it my all, and came out with better than expected results.  For the event overall, we had about 100 paid entrants, and over 100 total finishers in the 5K, 8K, and Kids' 1K run.  The rain held off until afternoon, and the next two days were washouts, so we got lucky.  I love the whole fall feeling to this race (ghosts, pumpkin mile markers, apples, cider, pumpkin muffins, etc), the family event with the kids' race inclusion, and the fact that this 100% on trails, some with a good challenge.

Fall decorated trail race course

More fun decorating the course

 

Weekly Log 2-Oct to 8-Oct-2017

Monday:  6
Road run.  Local hospital loop.

Tuesday:  8
Bradford Preserve.  Flagging and course setup for Matthew's final home WHS XC meet ever.  :)
So proud to see Matthew wrap it up with 1) the overall individual win, 2) course record, 3) establishing himself as 2017 Southern Division champ, 4) leading the team to a win, and 5) first time WHS boys qualified as a team for states since 2008.

Wednesday:  4
Morning run at Woody.  Lazily got up too late and had to cut my run short to make it back in time for a work meeting.  No one to blame but myself.

Thursday:  8
Ran Rhody course at 6am, starting and ending on Buckeye Brook Road.  Abdominal pain the entire way.  Every root I hit or rock I jumped off felt jarring.  Really uncomfortable.

Spent two hours in the evening putting on final touches on the Pumpkins Connector Trail, including some minor snipping with loppers and smoothing/rounding out a few sections where turns were just too tight to run at a fast pace.

Friday:  4
Ran and lined the Pumpkins course with ghosts and graves.  Pumpkins race in the morning!

Saturday:  13
Run for the Pumpkins!  Write-up to follow shortly.

Sunday:  10
Back to Bradford Preserve and Woody Hill.  Narrowly missed the rain, but suffered through humidity.  Ran with Matthew.  Had originally planned to tack on more miles, but the tired and sore legs had other ideas.

Weekly mileage:  52

Weekly synopsis:  Not bad mileage, especially for cutting a couple of days short.  Consciously trying to mix in at least one day of roads each week, which I did.

Weekly highlight:  The Pumpkins trail race!  Nothing else even came close.  Awesome time; awesome race.

 

Weekly Log 25-Sep to 1-Oct-2017: Indian Summer Continues

What should the caption here be?
Perhaps "You know you have a problem when ..."?
Or "Imelda Marcos would be proud"?

Monday:  5
Evening beach run on a rather hot late September fall day.  Stepped awkwardly (barefoot) through a pile of rocks and bruised the arch of my right foot.  Otherwise, it was all good on a warm evening and I finished up with a jump into the ocean.

Tuesday:  6
Hot, hot day for late September.  83 degrees and hot high Noon sun.  Made a poor choice to run roads and paid for it.  North End roads.  Slow pace at almost 8 minutes and quickly dehydrated.  Not fun.

Weird thing happened in the evening.  Was grilling in my backyard when I heard a loud rustling sound that seemed to be emanating from my woods.  Walked out there to find a neighbor dragging cut tree branches onto my property, and I asked what he was doing.  He said the tree branches looked ugly near his house, so he was dragging them back here.  Oh, so YOUR trees that YOU cut down looked ugly on YOUR property, so you dragged them on to my property.  While I believe him that he truly didn't know where the boundary was, it still frosted me that he illegally dumped on my property and blocked my perimeter trail in many places so that it's not even passable anymore.  He did agree to drag them all back.   This is at least the 4th time that someone has dumped yard waste on some portion of my property.  End of rant.  Harumph.

Wednesday:  6
Dedham, MA.  Body just didn't want to move.  Had originally thought of running repeats on Wilson Mountain, but clearly that wasn't happening.  Ran a 2-mile loop through Whitaker Woods, and then connected to run a single loop up and around Wilson Mountain.

Thursday:  11
AM:  5 miles on local roads out to Avondale.  73 degrees and dripping humidity at 6am made this run just plain unenjoyable.
PM:  6 miles setting up WHS XC course for their meet.  Other than forgetting to bring the mile markers, all went well.

Friday:  3
Late afternoon mowing of upper field XC trail at Bradford Preserve.  Includes running to and fro with a can of gasoline.

Saturday:  15
Met up with Tommy and Mikey at 7am for a trail run / workout in Bradford Preserve and Woody.  After a short warm-up, we ran 10 x (1-minute hard, 1-minute easy).  On downhills and twisty stuff, I could stay pretty close to Tommy; the rest of the stuff I was trailing him.  After the workout, Mike surprised me by asking to run the new RINEMBA trails, so that's what we did!  Pour Judgment is clearly my favorite of the lot.  We finished with about 11 miles, and I went out for a few more solo.

The afternoon and evening got really weird and a bit scary.  At the risk of TMI, I've been having some mild, dull lower abdominal pain for about 3 weeks now.  It was dull enough that I ignored it hoping it would go away.  (That's the proper response, right?)  Fast forward to today, as when I got home the pain turned acute to the extent that it hurt any time I walked or moved.  Something is wrong, so when the sharp pain continued after lunch, I went to South County Urgent Care to have it checked out.  After two hours, I finally got seen and after some poking around, I was told that I likely had appendicitis, but they needed a CT scan to confirm, so I needed to go to SC Hospital ER right away, and they first suggested an ambulance.  Between the ambulance suggestion and Google results showing the solution is immediate surgery, I was starting to get scared.  My first concern was all the running I would miss, much like my ventral hernia surgery a few years back when I lost three weeks of running and was going stir-crazy.  At about 8pm, I had fallen asleep in my hospital bed in the ER, when they came in to give me the results.  Good news:  I do NOT have appendicitis, there is nothing dangerous or concerning, and I mostly likely am having some sort of abdominal muscular issue that they are asking me to avoid heavy lifting or strenuous work, and are referring me to my PCP for.  Whew!  What a relief!  No surgery, and no running interruption.

Sunday:  14
Made an early morning trek to Madison, CT for a "Bimbler's Bite", which is a series of samples of the Bimbler course.  Got there 10 minutes early.  Sat in my car looking at my phone like the introverted geek that I am.  When others started to get out about 5 minutes before, I joined them.  A woman named Molly looked at my license plate and asked if I really drove all the way from RI.  I thought that was an odd question given that she had NH plates (she and I were the only out-of-staters).  Anyway, a few of us were talking and it seemed like I was the only one that had never run a 50K race before, so I felt out of place, until we started running and then all was good in my world.

We started out with a group of 16, but quickly broke into separate groups based on pace.  A group of six of us formed the lead pack, led by a runner named Joe who had run Bimbler's 6 times before and had the course map loaded on his watch.  Mostly I ran and talked with Molly, as we ran 2nd and 3rd place, and it was easy to talk to her about our respective running backgrounds and races.  At points Joe would have us stop and wait for the rest of our merry band to regroup.  A few times I felt I wanted to pick up the pace more, but as a guest on the run, I didn't want to be a d!ck and constantly run ahead of the leader (which I inadvertently did once).  The climbing and terrain were more than I expected and by the end of the run, my legs had had enough, and I was already gone longer than planned, so I quickly got in the car and headed back to RI.

View from Bluff Head

View from Bluff Head

Neat farmhouse, framed by a view of the bluff we had just run down from

Weekly mileage:  59

Weekly synopsis:  Happy with this week's volume and getting two medium-long trail runs in during the weekend.  Finally, the weather turned more fall-like as we headed into October with Sunday's run 43 degrees at the start.  Next week we have the Pumpkins race, but falling on a Saturday of a long weekend, I'm hoping for another reasonably high mileage week.

Weekly highlight:  The Bimbler's Bite trail run.  Got me out of my comfort zone of only running with people I know, ran in an entirely new area to me, and took in some great single-track trails and views.