Miscellaneous Ramblings:
- RIP, Dick Hoyt, who died this week at age 80. I remember seeing the famed Dick & Rick Hoyt team out on the course, as he pushed his paraplegic son in a wheelchair, when I ran my first Boston Marathon in the terrible heat of 2004. He had a marathon PR while pushing his son of 2:40:47!
- RIP, Keith Frost, co-owner of Higher Grounds Coffeeshop in Richmond, who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly this week at the young age of 51. While I didn't know him outside of the coffee shop he and his wife operated, he was always upbeat, positive, and friendly. The last time I saw (~ 3 weeks ago), he got my breakfast sandwich order wrong, immediately fixed it, apologized profusely (it was just a simple mistake), and gave me a coupon for a free beverage of my choice next time. That's good service!
- Boston set for October 11, Columbus Day. I dunno. The qualifying window was stretched to 3 years, due to COVID, so my March 2019 Myrtle Beach counts. Will have to decide before registration opens April 20.
- Vermont City Marathon, typically held late May, now set for October 24. Hmmm... I'd rather run that one, and it would complete a marathon in every NE state. Like many races, they're not taking new registrations as they are full from 2020 deferrals, and are waiting to see how COVID restrictions evolve.
- Seven Sisters Trail Race, typically held early May, now TBD for October.
- Shad Bloom is back on! Let's nab that one.
Monday: 0 run, 1 walk
Legs very sore from this past weekend's hard running adventures. Afternoon post-work walk on Champlin trails with Jana and Brady.
Tuesday: 0 run, 3 walk
One more day off from running. Gotta listen to the body.
AM: Finished up Grills monitoring CCC. Last week was Bowling Lane north (i.e., WLT property bordering houses on north side of Bowling Lane); this week was Bowling Lane south. No shortage of garbage to be picked up.
PM: Afternoon post-work walk in the neighborhood with Jana and Brady.
Wednesday: 5
Return to running after two full days off. Easy run on campground trails with Brady.
Thursday: 13
Arcadia Trail, E2E2E. Started/finished from DEM lot on Arcadia Road, Richmond. Got up "early" at 6am; some of you undoubtedly find this laughable. I remember the early years of my career at Fidelity in Boston when I had to go in 5 days per week and living in Charlestown, caught a train out of Kingston at 4:40am. Yikes. Worth it for the job and good career I had, but never again.
Anyhow, I digress as usual. It was my first time ever parking at the DEM Forestry Headquarters, and there were eerily a number of "Keep Out" signs, so although I felt reasonably confident that I parked in the Visitors Lot, when a DEM truck pulled up and stopped, I took the opportunity to ask the driver if it was OK if I parked where I was, in order to use the Arcadia Trail. He enthusiastically retorted, "Absolutely! Have fun out there.". OK, that would enable me to enjoy myself more.
Parked, walked across the street, started a short and easy warm-up, and immediately tripped and fell. Ugh. Really? 3rd fall in one week. This was not a good omen. This trail was very well marked, but that didn't stop me from going off course about two miles in, at the top of a hill, where the yellow (Arcadia) merges with the blue (North-South). My Strava review confirms I lost about 30 seconds here before getting back on track. Frustrating!
By this time, after two miles and hill climbing, I was feeling quite warm. It was 34° and I shouldn't have worn a hat. There was a dead tree just ahead, and only the bottom 2' of a stump remaining, and it ended up being the perfect hanger for my orange hat. Continued on through the very technical rock garden and thought, "Oh, that wasn't so bad!". Oh, wait a minute, we're not done yet.
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| Picture of the rock garden, which I had taken several years earlier on my inaugural visit here. Yeah, it's a little rough! |
The rest of the trail run seemed uneventful. I had never been on the first or last mile of this trail, and both were fun single-track. After my initial course error, I never had trouble with course navigation again. I had to stop at about Mile 5 at the intersection of the trail with Arcadia Road and grab Brady to wait for two passing vehicles (shouldn't trail runners have the right of way?), but I don't think I lost more than another 15 seconds there at most.
Coming back, the repeat through the rock gardens was not fun, and I was tiring, but after the rock gardens, I had three miles of net downhill that I was looking for. Grabbed my orange hat on the way back, ran past the only people I saw on the trail (two hikers), and finished the run in 1:52:23, just under a minute behind Ben Q, but several minutes ahead of Bob and Zak. Done! That was #19 of 19; see my recap below.
Friday: 5
Relatively easy run at Canonchet late afternoon. Truth be told, that was not my intention. This being the final day of winter and thus the final day of the Border Patrol Challenge, I still had time to improve my standings. My poorest finish was 6th at Canonchet, because I ran it in snow and ice in late December, where others ran it in better conditions.
I was researching and planning this at noontime as I pored over spreadsheet calculations, but the math just didn't work. I'm in 2nd place behind Bob Jackman, but by 8 points. I have put in a lot of hard runs recently, but let's say I ran fast enough to pick up 4 minutes and beat Bob's time; I would only pick up a gain of 4 points (between the points added to me and taken away from Bob). So I'd still be in a deficit of four points. Well, I could then do another snow-run re-do at Tillinghast and pickup 2 points (all predicated on beating Bob's time again, which I have nothing to base any reason that I would). This is just getting pointless. If I had another week, sure, go for it, but I don't.
Ran the BCP route only as far as Table Rock Trail, then ran out on Table Rock. When we popped out on Canonchet Road for a bit, I put Brady on the leash for his own safety, and in the distance I could see a person on the road and then an outstretched leash with presumably a dog in the grass on the side of the road. As we got closer, we saw it wasn't a dog on the leash, but rather a kid about age 4-5 that a woman was walking! Why is the kid leashed? Is he hard to control? Is he a substitute for the dog she always wanted?
As we approached, the kid got excited to see Brady and was calling out to him, "Doggy!" After we ran past, he was repeatedly yelling, "Doggy, come back here! Doggy!". It was pretty funny. I guess you had to be there.
Saturday: 10
Met up with fellow WTAC'ers Nick, Justin, and Kevin (and Brady, of course!) for our first ever run of the planned Grills 10 Mile Trail Race course. With permission granted from land trusts on both sides of the river (Westerly and Hopkinton), we will have a longer trail race! I had tried several machinations of courses on Strava Route Builder, and when I came up with about 9 miles, I tried hard to make some more variations that would come to 10 miles, and with minimum overlap. Success!
There will be two sections of trail that we will have 2-way traffic: 1 mile in Hopkinton, getting from Westerly side to Hopkinton trails, and then a ~0.2 mile section on the Westerly side getting out to and returning from the race track. I think it will be fine.
Most of the course is flat, but there will also be three 100' climbs and a 125' climb to keep things interesting. Almost entirely single-track, with some short double-track/dirt road sections, but ZERO asphalt!
October 30 is race date. Based on limited parking availability, we will need to constrain registration to about 75 participants. 10K option available.
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After the planning group run, I went up to Browning Pond DEM site for a Border Patrol Challenge social gathering. I thought race "swag" might be distributed here, as it was originally planned to be mailed out in mid-January per a race e-mail, but no worry as it's supposed to be mailed out. I certainly didn't enter the challenge because it offered swag anyway, but rather because it offered a challenge when not much else was happening. I had a good time catching up with trail running friends old and new, and there was a lot of good conversation on people running the longer routes (Tippecansett and Pachaug-Nehantic), near unanimity on everyone's disdain for the Quinebaug Trail (or as Ben Q pronounced it, "Kwine-bog"), and people starting to planning out their trail races beyond the challenge.
As the challenge is now over, here are some quick geeky stats and views from my perspective:
And just a few of the more memorable BPC pics for me:
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| Yeah, NOT my favorite. Ripped up jeep roads with loose rocks. |
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| TriTown: technical and hilly, pretty neat place! |
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| Tillinghast: in the dark and snow |
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| Old Furnace: lots of snow here; well packed down in some places, deep powder in others |
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| George Washington: very deep snow continued into late February, but well packed down here by snowshoes, XC skis, and prior BPC runners! |
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| Buck Hill: ripped my legs up pretty good between ice and frozen bushes |
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| Buck Hill: sheer ice, the traction devices were needed here |
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| Mt Tom: some residual snow and ice into March |
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| Tippecansett: Brady's longest run at 21 miles! |
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| Pachaug-Nehantic: oof! 27 miles, with some very tough terrain. |
AM: DuVal Trail System with Brady. Only three cars here when I arrived, but finished to a packed parking lot of maybe a dozen cars. So many trail systems have really become popular since the pandemic started a year ago. We saw maybe ten people and five dogs in total during our run of the perimeter trails. Most of the dogs were off-leash (the SKLT policy only requires dogs to be under voice control of their owner) and all were well behaved and friendly.
PM: WLT Vernal Equinox hike, at Riverwood Preserve. Just over 3 miles late afternoon. This was a group of about 15 hikers, plus Brady.
Weekly synopsis: Kind of a recovery week, plus the final "race" of the BPC series at Arcadia. Super thrilled to finish all 19 of 19 routes. This was a fun challenge that kept me going during the winter and getting out there.
Weekly highlight: Arcadia Trail run and completion of the series.
Weekly lowlight: I'm quite a bit off on my arbitrary weekly and yearly mileage goals, but the year is far from over.
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