Monday: 9 ride
Unusually long work day that started at 7am and went right through to 6pm. It's always tough on the last day before vacation as you're trying to catch up on things before leaving. It didn't help that HR scheduled an interview for me at 4pm and then asked to catch up and get my thoughts at 5pm. Who schedules a vacation to start on Tuesday? Just doing what I can to work around my wacky schedule of reporting to the hospital every Tuesday morning.
Anyway, today made for a lot of sitting on my butt (where else would one sit upon?), so I was antsy to get out and do something. Anything. I had already vowed to take a one-day break from running, so went for a very short and slow spin out to Watch Hill and back.
Tuesday: 3
Super short run at Wahaneeta before heading to the hospital.
Week #18 at the hospital Wound Care Center. Another week, another setback. The wound has almost TRIPLED in size since just last week. Argh. At 2.8 square centimeters now, it's still almost a 90% reduction from the original size back in April, but still VERY frustrating. I think back to the estimate that the wound would heal by 4th of July and remember how depressed I was when that didn't happen, so I try just to stay positive and think of the long term. I told the doctor "I'm not even going to ask you for a date estimate", and he said, "Good, because I'm not going to give you one!".
So what happened, and now what? A lot of talk about hypergranulation, likely due to too much collagen from my five applications of porcine cell matrix, caused this. So he applied a local anesthetic before a chemical cautery with AgNO3 (I remember enough from my high school chemistry days that this is silver nitrate). Basically this burns the overgrowth, so the wound is now all black and gross, but if it takes care of the hypergranulation issue and gets me back to resuming healing next week, who cares. Ugh. And how was your Tuesday morning?
In the afternoon, Mark (who had flown in three days earlier), Jana, Brady, and I drove up to Dover, NH to pick up Matthew and then continued on to Rockland, Maine for the night.
Wednesday: 5 run, 2 hike, 2 kayak
Run: Camden, Maine. One of my favorite places in New England. Cut short a planned 10-miler as Matthew was having some, er, GI issues. Started out with a trail climb up the steep backside of Mount Battie, and then the rest were roads.
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| Start of our Camden run, with the trail behind Brady as he patiently waits. |
Specifically went for and captured the "Mt Battie Rd Real Descent" Strava segment CR. Yes! 543' elevation drop over 1.26 miles, with an average grade of -8.1%. My average pace was 4:50/mile, with my fastest mile to date recorded at 4:38. Yes, that needs an asterisk as it's downhill, and my fastest track mile remains at 5:09.
The Mt Battie Auto Road hadn't yet opened to automobile traffic for the day, so I opted to take Brady off-leash for the run down the road and just re-leash him at the gate at the bottom. This worked out well, as on the really steep sections, Brady lagged me, but then he would catch right up each time the grade lessened.
Post-run we checked out of the hotel, got our COVID tests (required for entrance to Canada by US citizens, in addition to vaccination proof; must be administered within 72 hours of entrance), and had a nice breakfast in Camden at Marriner's Restaurant outside on the deck overlooking Camden Harbor.
Hike: Camden, Maine. Maiden's Cliff hike, identical to the hike the family took last year sans Mark, and while maybe we should've researched something else, Mark seemed just fine with it.
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| On the Maiden's Cliff hike, along a ridge on the Scenic Trail |
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| Mark jumping off the boulder he just climbed (He's braver than me; I'd probably break bones) |
Kayak: Mount Desert, Maine. Booked two kayaks (Mark/Brady and me) and one SUP (Matthew) from a private company at Long Pond. While I suspect my wound care medical team would not approve me kayaking (for chance I get my head wound wet and introduce bacteria), I made sure Brady didn't come into my kayak, there was no choppiness or waves, and I was super careful.
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| Kayaks Mark and I rented; looking out on Long Pond |
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| Paddled right up to these three guys (or gals); they didn't even move |
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| Mark and Brady (and Matthew in background on SUP) |
Thursday: 11 run, 5 hike
Run: Bar Harbor, Maine. Kudos to Matthew for devising a really cool route through Bar Harbor. Some roads from our hotel, then the beautiful Shore Path along the ocean, crossed into Acadia National Park and run some single-track including up and over Kebo Mountain, and a number of carriage roads arounds ponds before finishing up. I'll touch on navigation in a later post, but I was just amazed and impressed by the color maps and navigation capabilities of my Fenix 5 Plus.
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| View from our hotel balcony in Bar Harbor, looking out to the ocean |
Hike: Mount Desert, Maine. Matthew had mapped out a loop encompassing four peaks that I'm quite sure I had never visited: Bald, Parkman, Gilmore, and Sargent.
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| Easy start to the hike |
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| Matthew in front, with Mark just behind him |
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| Nice view over Jana's shoulder |
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| Peak #1 is done, three more to go |
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| Everyone looking in different directions, even Brady |
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| Brady cooled off every chance he got |
Friday: 10
Lincoln, NH. Had a nice breakfast at a place called "Two Cats" in Bar Harbor before heading to Brunswick, Maine to drop Mark off at the Amtrak station (he was heading to Boston for two days with friends before flying back to Tampa).
The plan was to drive from there to Sutton, Quebec, but we still didn't get our frigging COVID test results! Ugh, frustrating. OK, let's drive towards Sutton and hopefully the results will come in during the day. Nope, that didn't happen either. Now what? Decided to book one of the few remaining hotel rooms in Lincoln, NH (that wasn't cheap, plus it's on top of the already paid reservations in Sutton) and the four of us (Jana, Matthew, Brady, and me) went to run the Franconia Notch State Park bike path. Plan is now that COVID test results will probably come in overnight, we'll lose one day's paid lodging and head to Sutton in the morning.
Five miles uphill on the paved recreational trail with pace in the 8s. What goes up must come down (spinning wheels ...). So five miles downhill, with pace in the 6s. That was pretty neat. Stopped at cold clean rivers for Brady to get a drink.
Saturday: 2 hike, 1 rock-hopping, 4 run
Hike: Franconia, NH. Woke up only to find that we STILL did NOT get our required COVID test results needed to cross the Canadian border. Ugh. Even if they came in shortly, we would be outside of the 72 hour test window crossing the border, so we're done. Let our host know we won't be making it to Sutton after all, as a courtesy plus on the off chance he can rent out his condo tonight. It won't help to get angry or sulk, so we planned the day contemporaneously and booked a hotel room we could find in North Conway.
On to the hike: after searching dog-friendly options, we headed to the Cannon area and hike Bald Mountain and Artists' Bluff. A short and mostly easy trail, except for the spur headed up to Bald Mountain peak. We encountered a troop of NH Boy Scouts here, and I'd expect them to be experienced hikers, but quite a few were anything but as a young family with two very young girls when past them with ease as a junior leader barked out commands like, "Three points of contact at all times!". Was a relief when we finally got past them and the rest of the hike was very nice.
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| King of the Rock (this was a pretty technical section of the trail) |
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| Love this pic (from top of Bald Mountain, with Cannon ski slopes visible to right) |
Rock-hopping: Albany, NH. Lower Falls on the Swift River.
OK, maybe this wasn't a sport in the Tokyo Olympics, but it should be! If you can have canoe slalom (which looks pretty cool!), why not rock hopping? Just under a mile of walking, rock-hopping, and swimming along the Kancamagus Highway. I asked a forest ranger if dogs were allowed, and he said yes and said he appreciated me asking.
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| Fun in the Swift River |
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| No fear. He got banged up a little on the slippery rocks in the fast flowing river, but fortunately seemed just fine the next day. |
Run: Conway, NH. Plan was to run Cranmore plus Whitaker Woods. Got out of the car, got the space watches ready, and Matthew, Brady, and I were off. Except right away Brady wasn't with us, when he normally bolts ahead. Looked back and he was limping and barely moving. Uh oh. Not good. We speculated that it was when he slid and fell a bit on rocks in the Swift River that he might have injured or pulled something. It was hot and I didn't want to leave him in the car while we ran, so we drove him back to the air-conditioned hotel to rest and returned to run.
I tried but couldn't remember the route we took at Cranmore Mountain Run (I've only run it once), so we just kind of made it up as we went along. It turned out to be more enjoyable than the actual course anyway as the route we took was much more runnable. Just over 1,000' of gain. Fast downhill miles, including Mile 4 on dirt service roads at 5:55 pace.
Sunday: 10
Wolfeboro, NH
Woke up, checked e-mail, and found two surprises:
- The COVID test results finally came in. Totally useless now as they're four days old. Recommend never to go to Walgreens if you need a PCR COVID test for travel.
- The condo host in Sutton e-mailed me, said he felt badly about the situation (obviously not his fault!) and offered that if I could make it back up this year, he'll give me a free stay. Wow! I love moments like this (besides potentially getting to redeem my paid lodging) because it gives me just a little bit of faith in humanity in a sometimes divisive and cruel world.
Checked out of the hotel and headed south to Dover to drop Matthew off at his apartment to start his senior year at UNH, before heading back to RI to start another year as empty nesters (it does get a little easier).
And on to the run: Once again, Matthew had mapped out a neat route. We started from a small and likely little known XC skiing trailhead (Sewall Woods), and ran a loop of roads, dirt roads, and grass double-track, culminating with a fun gravel rail trail that actually crossed several lakes on man-made causeways. It was unique in that the actual rails still remained in many places. Fun route with nice views of Lake Winnipesaukee and several other lakes. It rained off and on during the run but it felt just fine, even refreshing. At the conclusion of the rain, we went for a quick dip (well, Matthew went for a quick dip and I waded) in Lake Wentworth.
Final run with Matthew for a while. As for Brady, he seemed much better today but we gave him a couple days off from running to fully recuperate.
Weekly mileage: 43 run, 9 hike, 9 ride, 2 kayak
Weekly synopsis: The run mileage wasn't what I was looking for, but we had a busy fun-filled vacation and some good family time and that was more important this week. I put the Canada disappointment behind, and had a lot of fun hiking, kayaking, spending some down time, and eating too much, which most days included blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup, and ice cream sundaes (not at the same sitting mind you!)
Weekly highlight: If I have to pick only one, I'm going to go with the Bar Harbor run. Honorable mention to the Wolfeboro/Lake Winnipesaukee run, my fastest ever downhill mile, kayaking, hiking in Acadia, and ice cream sundaes.
Weekly lowlight: That's an easy one - our failed entry into Canada. Moving on.
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