cold weather running

Trail Review: Guardrail at Hartley Nature Center (Winter)

I gave the Guardrail another shot on Saturday, after my first whack at it left me a bit puzzled. This time I didn’t wander off the trail onto Blue Pots, which, it turns out, dumped me off on the trail headed in the direction I’d already traversed when I ran on it before.

Guardrail is a single-track, two-way, packed and groomed, multi-use, technical trail at Hartley Nature Center in Duluth. It winds its way through the woods like the switchbacks on Berthoud Pass in Colorado. Whoever designed this path made the most of the space available in the park, which I appreciate.

Since I am a little bit lazy, I don’t even mind stepping off the trail for the occasional cyclist. All of the cyclists I’ve encountered have been friendly and don’t come whipping around corners out of nowhere, so I am more than happy to accommodate them. I was lucky that most of them were coming from the opposite direction, so I could see them coming and pick a spot to let them pass. I hope in the summer there isn’t a significant uptick in bike traffic on the trail, but if I extrapolate my experiences last fall at Hartley (on different trails), that would seem unlikely.

The trail is accessible by taking the Old Hartley Road Trail to Tunnel Trail to Fisherman or Rhamnus. I ended up getting on the trail via Fisherman and getting off again at Rhamnus, which is the clockwise version of the loop.

Let me take a moment to mention how much I love the Tunnel Trail.

I could run that forever.

I enjoyed the twists and turns of Guardrail, even though it felt at times like it was a net uphill course, which it obviously can’t be since it’s a loop. What goes up, must come down. There were exposed icy patches on some of the steeper parts of the trail, not all of which were immediately visible, and so I was as conservative on the descent as I was on the ascent. I may or may not have briefly thrown out my heart rate training restrictions to fly across a few of the more gentle declines. They were just too good.

The trail, as I took it, ended up being about 4.9 miles, which makes it a nice medium (for me) run. The other trail I’ve run at Hartley, Root Canal, is a bit shorter, so now I have a few options at the same park. I can also combine Root Canal and Guardrail for a long run, something I’m looking forward to as I gradually increase my mileage.

Overall, this trail is one of my favorites within the city limits, with lots of access points, including Howard Gnesen Rd, Marshall St., and North Road, so it’s not necessary to drive all the way to Hartley if there’s a closer trail spur. I almost ended up living out this way, as I looked at a house to rent nearby. The house ended up being small, with an incredibly weird layout, and a trompe l’oeil “basketball court” scene in the basement, and I am glad I didn’t end up there, but I suppose a small consolation would have been easy trail access.

On The Tundra

It was a little bit colder yesterday than I realized, until I was out on the street for a run.

First of all, the cold weather makes it nearly impossible to keep my heart rate down. If it’s in the 30s, or even the 20s with no wind (a rarity around here), it’s only a problem at the beginning, but it was down in the teens yesterday and felt a lot worse than that, and at 19:xx paces I was still hovering above 142 bpm for the first half a mile or more. This training is really not ideal for cold weather. A blog I read, Miss Zippy, had the same trouble keeping her heart rate down in the cold and has had to give up on MAF training for this training cycle. I laughed because she lives in Baltimore and blamed the “very cold temperatures” for her heart rate issues. I find it funny when the 20s or 30s are called “extremely cold,” unless we’re talking about 20 or 30 Kelvin, in which case, yes.

A couple miles in, I was up near the UMD campus, crawling along the gradual but interminable incline along College Ave between Woodland and Junction, trudging pathetically along at a 17:xx pace, my path was crossed by a pack of actual fast runners. There were probably 6 or 7 of them, all tall, leggy, and graceful, all at the same pace, all making that pace look effortless even though it’s probably a pace I could only dream of. I felt like a walrus watching a pack of caribou prance by.

I was under-dressed for the weather and for the pace I was forced to take, but it took me awhile to realize that. I didn’t realize that running so slowly, keeping my heart rate low, would keep my body from warming itself up as I went along. I was 2 or so miles into the run when I realized I wasn’t warming up. The skin on my face, forearms and thighs was stiffening up, which indicated I’d already gotten a bit of frostbite. It’s fine to start out cold, I usually do, but by that point I should have been warmer. I was still just under 2 miles from home, and I realized I was facing another 25-30 minutes outside if I kept following the heart rate restriction.

With 1.5 miles to go, I cheated. I turned on the jets and let my heart rate skyrocket into the 170s or 180s and zoomed (for me) the rest of the way home.

Splits:
17:35
18:42
15:59
11:31

Oops. Also, FYI, I’m not really that fast, it was all downhill. It did feel amazing to run “fast” for me again, and I did start to warm up a bit as I charged along. I still ended up having to take a shower to warm up, which was probably not very good for the affected skin. It all turned bright red and started to itch. I need to be more careful.

I think kicking it into high gear at the end of a run when I’m cold and haven’t run fast in a long time as a sign that this slow aerobic training I’m doing is working, or at least is not detrimental. I also think I need to check the weather report before I go out, and I need to cover my legs better to block the wind. (I usually cover my arms better, with 2 layers of long sleeves.) I also need to stop writing this post and get dressed for today’s run.