Monday: 8
Independence Day holiday (observed), as the 4th fell on a Sunday. Brady and I went to Wahaneeta, and ran trails in Woody Hill, making up the run as we went. Given the holiday I expected to run into a lot of MTB riders and others, but never saw a soul out there.
Later in the day, I learned that former WLT's President Sheila was out for a run in Woody Hill just last week with her dogs as she frequently does and two of them were mauled by pit bulls and required surgery. Just horrible.
Tuesday: 8
Carter Preserve with Matthew and Brady. The cooler temps from the weekend are gone and replaced with 80° weather, sunny, and humidity. I just dragged out there. After five miles, we went back to the car with Brady to get him water, which he drank, but then just lied down in the dirt. Not good. Matthew had the great idea of bringing him over to the nearby Pawcatuck River, and that did the trick as he jumped in and put his head under to cool off.
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| Saw this guy just before the start of our run. |
Wednesday: 9
AM: 5.5 miles at Burlingame with Brady, in less than ideal conditions. 100% humidity, spider web wraps, and incessant deerflies dampened my enjoyment.
PM: Fun Run #6. Humidity had lessened (somewhat) but temps were in the uncomfortable lower 80s. Which makes it more surprising to me that I ran quite well. Started in the 1st wave and within first 1/4 mile, on Maplewood, Nick, Brandy, and Jonny E all ran past me. First mile was 5:40. At the start of the second mile, Jonny came back to me, same as last week. Shortly thereafter, on Bayberry Road, I was wondering why Nick ran onto someone's private property, until I saw a girl was operating a hose and nozzle as she was walking towards runners. Nick ran through the water spray to cool down. Ah, got it, good idea! I ran towards her but in front of a cyclist who verbally expressed his displeasure with me. Unfortunately, I couldn't get close enough to get soaked and the girl's garden hose was already fully extended. Oh well, the best of intentions.
Continuing on the run through the hills, I watched Nick and Brandy ahead of me, until Nick came back to me early in Mile 3. (Mile 2 was a 6-flat.) Nick gave some encouragement as I past. On Atlantic Ave, Brandy came back to me and she said something to the effect that she was waiting for me to catch her. I don't know about all out, but I ran pretty hard for sure and still surprised to see the clock in the "18:xx" as I rounded the corner. Finished in 18:48, with final mile my fastest in 5:42. Pretty happy with both stats, and encourages me to try for faster next time.
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| In orange Rhody cap, about to start. |
Thursday: 8
Arcadia Management Area. Roads, not trails, today. This was Matthew's choice due to ongoing ankle stability issues, but was actually just fine with me. Oddly, I feel I know the trails (at least some of them) at Arcadia much better than the roads, and had to double-check a few times while navigating the roads. Pretty neat that my new watch has maps where you can check where you are real-time on maps, showing both roads and trails. (Many of you probably already have this feature, but it's new to me.)
Friday: 8
Vin Gormley Trail with Matthew and Brady. Light rain throughout run. This was after heavy storm Elsa overnight and this morning. It was good to streams raging again, even if only for today.
Saturday: 16
3 solo at start, 11 with Matthew, final 2 solo. Road long run / workout. Two blocks of 3 miles each in middle of run. My goal was to run 6:30 (or faster), which I managed for 5 out of 6, but the last mile just held on to finish in 6:40 instead of 6:30, so I guess not too far off?
Super humid out there today. As soon as I finished the second block of 3-miles, that was right in Misquamicut State Beach parking lot, so we went up to the pavilion to get water. The water fountain is shut off due to COVID. Ugh. Went to the concession stand. They can't give out cups due to COVID. Oh, come on now. We couldn't buy bottled water because we didn't have any money on us. A huge thank you to Dawn, who despite the concession stand not being open yet, and despite us not having any money, gave us each a bottle of cold water. Tasted heavenly. I went back a couple of hours later to offer to pay, which she turned down, so I left a generous tip in the jar. There are some good people out there.
Sunday: 23 ride, 11 run
Ride with Mike on coastal Westerly roads, and a coffee stop at end at Junk & Java. Nice catch-up. Bike making clanking sounds, but it will have to do for the rest of this summer.
Post-ride, headed over to run Groton Cross Town Trail, with a few miles added on in Bluff Point State Park. Matthew and I parking cars at both ends allowed us to run P2P.
Weekly Mileage: 69 run, 23 bike
Weekly Synopsis: I got into Vermont City Marathon ("VCM")! I've been wanting to run this for a while, and this will complete a marathon in each of the six New England states for me. It's typically run on Memorial Day weekend, which I'd prefer to avoid as it can be quite hot that late in the spring, especially in way inland Burlington. So this is the perfect year, as it's in October due to COVID race delay from the spring, and that's not likely to ever happen again.
Biggest running mileage week since December, so pretty happy with that. Got in my first long run, which was a mixed blessing as I struggled and ultimately failed to run sub 6:30 for 2 x 3 mile blocks, as I just fell apart the final mile. I'm loosely (ok, very loosely) following the last 14 weeks of an 18-week 70-mile max training plan by Pete Pfitzinger (top American in Olympic marathon in '84 and '88, PR of 2:11) from his book "Advanced Marathoning".
Weekly highlight: Although I was suffering a bit at the time, pretty happy with getting a 16-mile training run in. The trick will be to keep the training going. I'm not even going to try to follow the plan to a tee, lest I fail miserably and become miserable in the process for missing fun stuff like Fun Runs and beach race. Having said that, I'll plan to switch up the training days and still hit most of the training. Writing honestly here in the blog will hopefully also keep me focused.
Weekly lowlight: Spider web wraps around the face. Those things are just the worse. Yes, even worse than deerfly bites.
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