trail running

PP5M Training: Week 7

Another jumbled-up week, spending Thursday-Sunday trying to cobble together some miles to salvage it.

Monday: OFF
Tuesday: OFF
Wednesday: 4.5 mi, trail/run mix
Thursday: 4.6 mi, trail
Friday: 5.1 mi, trail
Saturday: 4 mi, paved trail, including 35 min tempo run @ 12:33 average pace
Sunday: 10.3 mi, road
Total: 28.5 mi

Yes, I did my speed work and my long run back to back. It wasn’t ideal, but it was what best fit my schedule.

Friday was a really frustrating day for me. I jumped on the Superior Hiking Trail at the Kingsbury Creek trailhead, heading towards town. I was moving along at an ok clip, in spite of the heat, but I ended up losing the SHT and was dumped out into a West Duluth neighborhood. I circled back, and sure enough, at the underpass, the SHT split off from the larger, multi-use trail. I was cranky enough about getting off the trail, but even more annoyed when I saw the vegetation had encroached on the trail and I was going to have to run through long grasses and other plant life. I assumed every tick in the northland would be wriggling into my socks. It was a pretty tough section of the trail, I was hot and crabby, and when I got to a steep uphill section, I threw in the towel, turned around, and headed for the car.

Saturday’s tempo run was supposed to be longer, but I kept lollygagging and I had to cut it short, since I was meeting my family for frozen yogurt (which HIT THE SPOT after that run, let me tell you!) I parked at Brighton Beach and ran the Lakewalk path from there, which was flat enough to not impede my tempo progression. Even though it was only in the 60s, it felt really hot for some reason, and I was glad to have the run over with.

Sunday’s long run actually felt fantastic, save for the first mile or so, which is always slow for me, and the 8th mile, which dragged. My overall pace was 15:51, which was similar to my last double-digit run (apparently I haven’t done a double-digit run since April, oops!), and that route was flat (Park Point + Lakewalk) plus I took a break and had sports drink and candy to refuel. For Sunday’s run, I just had a hand-held with water. It was over 80 degrees and muggy for most of the run, but because I waited til after 5, and it was partly cloudy, the heat was bearable. My back’s a bit sore today, which isn’t surprising.

The 10 mile run will be my longest of the training cycle. It’s twice the distance I’m covering in the race, and since it’s only 2 weeks out, I’m not sure I’ll see too much of a benefit from it. It will be helpful towards my base for my fall training cycle, though. This upcoming week, I’ll be scaling back down a bit, and then the week of the race, I’ll back off to just a few easy runs and a little bit of speedwork. I am really excited for the race, to see what I can do with a full 9 weeks of training and planning behind me.

Waiting for the Sun

In The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan laments that she always watches for the longest day of the year, and then misses it.

Not this year for me.

I told my friend Emily of my plans to scale Ely’s Peak to watch the sunrise on the solstice, and she joined me. Saturday, after I finished watching the marathon, I drove out to Gary New Duluth to give the little peak a test climb. It started pouring just before I got there, so I decided to sit in my car and wait it out. It’s one thing to keep hiking when it starts raining, but another to start hiking when it’s already raining. I only sat in my car for 20-30 minutes.

Once the rain reduced to a little drizzle, I got out of my car and headed up the trail. It’s a detour due to construction from the railroad (even the parking area is not the traditional lot, but a temporary one just down the road), but it is still a nice route. There’s a steep uphill right away, up some stairs, and then onto a gravel road just about wide enough for an ATV, where railroad tracks used to be. As the trail turns off toward the end of the road, there’s a cave, where the railroad went through the rock. I didn’t explore it because I was by myself and I couldn’t tell how deep it was at the time (I couldn’t even tell that it was a tunnel), and because I was timing how long it took to hike to the top. I went slowly, no running, because we wouldn’t be running the next morning. I ran a little bit on the way down, but the rocks were a bit slippery at times, plus the trail up to the peak is fairly technical at times.

I set my alarm for 3:30 in order to give myself enough time to get ready and to wake up before Emily arrived at 4. She was a little early, and petted my cat for a few minutes while I finished gathering things together. I guess this is why people lay out their clothes and gear the night before an early race. It took us about 20 minutes to drive out to the parking lot, and we sat in her car for awhile. I had planned for us to take about 30 minutes to climb up there, and the sunrise was predicted for 5:12. I think we hit the trail, headlamps blazing, at 4:35 or 4:40. We didn’t really need the headlamps, as it was already light out (but misty), but they helped when we were amid the trees and the morning light wasn’t filtering through strongly enough. Every bird in the area was singing, and beyond that there was no sound til a train rumbled through.

Once we got to the first clearing where we could look out over the city, it was pretty amazing. Emily kept stopping to take pictures, which she hasn’t uploaded anywhere, or else I’d be posting them on here. I kept asking her the time and pressuring her to keep going (especially because the tunnel freaked me out a little, I was pretty sure people were sleeping in there, and I didn’t want to startle them. I was glad sleeping was all that was going on.) We made it to the top at 5:08. I planned well, patting myself on the back right now.

Then we waited for the sunrise.

The view just before sunrise.

The view just before sunrise.

It was pretty crazy because for a few minutes, there was just this little sliver of light, and then all of a sudden, there was the sun. I thought it would be a little more gradual, but *poof* there was a good portion of it. We watched for awhile, as the mist dissipated and we could see more of the trees below us, and then hiked back down.

Misty Mountain Hop

Misty Mountain Hop

We drove back into town, where the mist had migrated, and the sun was glowing behind it, the clouds making interesting shapes across it. At home, I fed my cats, ate some chips, wound down, and went back to sleep for 5 more hours. It was the weekend, after all.

Hand Held Test Drive

I fulfilled one of the items on my summer gear wish list by purchasing a couple of hand-held water bottles.

I bought two UltrAspire hand-held water bottles from the Trail and Ultra Running store at a nice discount. They are having a blowout sale (I think they are shutting down the store and focusing more on content, but I’m not sure) so I bought two of these 20 oz hand-held water bottles for $7.00 apiece + shipping. I did absolutely zero research. They’re sold out now, probably thanks to their regram of my pic. I’m an influencer!

I took one of the bottles out for a test drive yesterday evening. I was running 6 trail miles, which I have done without a water bottle plenty of times, but I wanted to see how I liked it before hauling it along on some grueling 20 miler. (I don’t have any grueling 20 milers on my training calendar at the moment, but they’ll come.) I also was feeling pretty low on energy as my allergies have been bothering me, and I was so tired on Tuesday that I went home and took a nap after work.

I took a full water bottle (which had been sitting full in the fridge since Sunday, since I thought I’d be running Monday… nope… Tuesday… nope) and decided I wouldn’t drink anything til I was three miles in, just so I wouldn’t get sloshy. I didn’t really feel the extra weight, or at least I don’t think I did. I was running incredibly slowly and not even sweating much or feeling out of breath; I couldn’t find a higher mental gear. After the third mile, I took a couple sips of water and it perked me right up again and I was able to start really running and finish strong, sipping every mile or so.

Next time, I won’t run with a full water bottle if I’m going on a medium-length run. I’m not looking at using it for full-on hydration, just to keep my mouth from getting dry. While it wasn’t super heavy, there’s no reason to carry 20 oz of water when I’m going to drink less than 10 during the run itself. On a hotter day I would of course carry more, so I could use it to keep cool.

So hey, after one use, I’m a believer. I could stuff my car keys in the little front pocket (they are on a carabiner so I clipped that to a little loop on the pocket for extra security), and I could easily stuff a snack in there too. I noticed a few drips leaking during the run, so I tightened the lid again and I think that fixed it. I hope. It wasn’t a bad leak, but I don’t want a leak at all.

On a long run or during a trail race, I could bring both and even fill one with some kind of fancy expensive sports drink and one with water, and maybe I could leave the hydration pack at home. I will have to try a two-fisted run one of these days, just to see what it feels like. Maybe on a hot day when I could try out the water/sports drink combo and hopefully not look too dorky carrying two hand held water bottles.

I wouldn’t bring it on a 5K or a race where I really needed to run fast. I think it would be more of an annoyance there. I might bring it to my 5 mile race, I might not. I think it’ll depend on how hot it is and how confident I am that I can run hard for 5 miles without dying. Right now I’m not sure.

PP5M Training: Week 1

Hooray! I’m training for something again. I like it better that way.

I made a dumb mistake in calculating when I should start the 8-week training program for the Park Point 5 Miler. It’s 9 weeks away, not 8. I plan to repeat the final week of training, so I guess I’ll have a “taper” for a short race.

It’s raining off and on today so we’ll see when I get out and actually do today’s workout.

Here’s what I did last week:
Monday: 0.9 mile run, 2.9 mile walk, road
Tuesday: 4.4 mile run, road (and then a walk around Lake Calhoun that I didn’t time or log)
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: 3.7 mile tempo run, road
Friday: 4.2 mile run, road
Saturday: 6.5 mile run/walk, trail
Sunday: 5.2 mile run, road
Total Mileage: 27.8 miles

I like this training plan. Since I’ve added warmups and cooldowns and use the cross training day for running, the overall mileage is high enough that I can roll it over into a marathon training plan once I’ve finished the race. I also signed up for another race in the middle, the Midnight Sun Midnight Run on June 26th. It starts at 11:59 PM, which should be fun. It goes along the Lakewalk, which is lighted, and there should be a nice cool breeze off the lake to keep the bugs and humidity away. I needed another race between now and the 5 Miler to gauge my goal pace, and to try once more to get under 36 minutes. The obvious choice would have been the William A Irvin 5K the weekend prior, but I don’t know, running the 5K that accompanies the marathon I planned to run feels a little off. This race will also be smaller and less of a cluster.

This week of training felt great, other than Saturday’s excursion. I traversed the Superior Hiking Trail from the Magney Snively parking lot to the base of Ely’s Peak and back. I don’t say I “ran” it because there was little running involved. I was having trouble keeping my heart rate down on the uphills and used the flats and downhills to recover. It is a beautiful trail, and I really need to go back, because I need to get better at trail running. I finished with an overall pace of 2.5 mph, which is sad. Since I am considering running a trail race instead of the Mankato Marathon, I have to improve on that performance. I plan on designating the “cross training” day of the workout plan to a trail run. It’ll be more than 60 minutes, for sure, but it’ll go a long way toward my overall endurance and fitness for whatever fall race I run. I can always scale back if my legs feel dead.

My calves were so tight on Sunday that walked for my warmup (1 mile) and cooldown (.25 miles, basically once I hit 5 miles I walked the rest of the way home), but other than that I felt amazing during the run, despite the humidity. I monitored my heart rate the whole time and I didn’t have a single mile that averaged over 140 bpm. I did walk up the hills I encountered in order to accomplish that, but I am still pretty excited about the paces I was able to hit: 19:22 (warmup + stretching), 15:25, 15:29, 14:47, 15:06, 18:13 (pace for the last quarter mile cooldown). That is a massive improvement for me, aerobically speaking. I just wish it had translated better into my hike on Saturday.

The forecast for this upcoming week looks amazing for training. Wednesday is the only hot day and none of the days look horribly cold. It’s about time!

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-Wendell Berry

I love that poem so much. Never mind that I came across it because Alan Alda quoted (and misattributed) it on an episode of ER and I… well I would say I Googled it but I don’t think I used Google in 1999.

Friday and Saturday I got out for shorter runs, proving that it only takes one day to get back into the habit of running, even after taking several days off.

Friday I rewarded myself after a crappy day at school with a run through Hartley Nature Center. It was precisely what I needed mentally. Since it has been warm here and we’ve had some rain, the trails were starting to come alive. Little shoots and buds of green were everywhere, and it smelled lovely. The sun was shining but it wasn’t too hot (I didn’t start until early evening). More trails are open now, so I got to take a different route this time around. The only downside was hiking up the back side of Rock Knob and looking up to see a couple of guys peeing. I mean, the trail was right there, guys. Come on.

Saturday my plan was to head out and do some controlled hill repeats, instead of my usual “run as fast as you can stand” hill repeats. It was early evening again when I ran (6:30 or so), but still plenty light out. I did two repeats and held back a bit each time, then jogged back down. I made sure my heart rate was under the requisite 142 by the time I got back to the bottom, which in the past had sometimes required walking back down.

I was halfway up the hill for the third try and I saw a deer. Then two more. I see deer all the time when I am running, and they just go on their merry way when they see me. If they don’t, I usually say something like “Hello, deer” and sort of wave my arms a bit and they trot away. Two of the deer edged away, but this other deer wasn’t bothered.

The deer was closer than it looks in this photo, in which it is almost indistinguishable from the background. I paused my watch for a bit while I took a picture and thought about what I was going to do. The deer started to slowly move toward me and that’s when I turned around for good and got the hell out of there. (I started my watch again, because I had my wits about me!) I got across the street and the deer was still following me and looked like it might consider crossing the street, so I booked it up the hill, looking over my shoulder every so often to see if the deer was trying to catch up. It wasn’t, so that was good, but it was still a weird experience. I also saw some kind of dead, half-eaten bird and a dead raccoon, so that was nice.

I really do enjoy seeing (live) animals while I am running. I saw a bear last summer about two blocks from my house, a very exciting occurrence. It was the middle of summer, so I wasn’t really that concerned and ran right by it. This lady in her truck was yelling at me to warn me, but a bear by itself that has been chowing down on garbage and pick-a-nick baskets all summer isn’t going to eat me. A bear in early spring or a bear with cubs would frighten me. I also found a cat on the Lakewalk last fall, which I didn’t enjoy because it was clearly domesticated and had no claws (which I know because I carried it 2 miles) and had obviously been dumped there by the dregs of humanity. Other than the poor cat, the flora and fauna of the northland are part of what makes running up here so pleasant.

Tired Legs

Well, 11 miles into the week and I’m already dragging. Of course, I don’t think I’ve done 11 miles to start a week this training cycle, other than maybe when I was on spring break. (Well, then I went and looked it up while that’s true, I’ve started the week with 10 miles twice, so my whining is kind of ridiculous.)

Tuesday I did 8 hill repeats. I suffered a bit. My legs were really tight, so when I got to my usual hill, I wanted to stretch, but I had to stretch cautiously. My muscles felt like overly tightened violin strings; one more turn of the peg and they’d snap. Then when I tried to stretch my quads by doing the flamingo-type stretch which I’m sure has a real name, I actually tweaked something in my arm and side. It didn’t last but I was worried for a minute. The repeats didn’t feel that great, but I reminded myself how thrilled I was I’d done all this hill running when I was charging like a rhino up Lake Avenue on the home stretch of the 5K last weekend. I reminded myself of that feeling probably 16 times during the exercise. I had half the run in by the time I was done with the hill workout. I was feeling ok for awhile as I started the rest of the run, but my legs started to feel heavy after awhile, and then I had some lower abdominal cramping that slowed me to a walk a couple times. I spent the whole night working on homework, got home at about quarter to midnight, did more homework, and then couldn’t get to sleep because my neighbors had their windows open and music playing til after 3. I finally shut my window at 3 because I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Wednesday I woke up before my alarm (ugh), was too hot, and opened the window. Then the garbage truck came by, so I couldn’t fall back asleep. I was late to class and just dragging. I finished the homework I hadn’t done Tuesday night, and tried to convince myself I didn’t need to run, or maybe I should swap days and just run the 4 miles slotted for today. I still had a bunch of homework to do that evening, and I had a meeting, and I had been late to my group meeting on Tuesday night because I’d run so slowly, so it wasn’t looking good for getting in my scheduled mileage.

Well, my meeting was canceled, and I managed to wake up enough that I got out and did 6 mucky miles at Hartley. 6 very tired miles. My legs didn’t want to go fast. They didn’t even want to go slow. I shuffled along, getting passed by other runners, and also getting zoomed past by a dog repeatedly. I swear the dog was just showing off. Also I find it odd how many people around here do not leash their dogs. Hartley is still in the city limits! It’s not like we’re on some remote trail. I like dogs, but they really need to be on a leash, for their own safety and for the safety of other people and animals.

I wasn’t in any pain while I was running, so I was just suffering dead legs from the run the day before and from my general fatigue. I got back to the parking lot with 5.5 miles down and thought about calling it quits because I was dragging so badly. Then I reminded myself that I’ll be running on tired legs during marathons (and ultras if I ever get there), so I had better learn to suck it up for one half of a mile. So, I did, and finished at 5.98 miles, somehow still at a similar pace to most of my trail runs and a 146 bpm average heart rate. I do not know how that happened, but I’ll take it. I guess it just seemed like I was running in slow motion.

Summertime Dreams

Yes, I like Gordon Lightfoot! I listened to his records a lot as a kid. Also The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald made me terrified of Lake Superior.

Yesterday was absolutely dreary. It snowed in the early morning, changing to a “wintry mix,” as they say, and then the sun made a brief appearance as I was driving back to Minnesota over the high bridge. I take that as a sign from above.

I am absolutely sick of every road running route I have. Today would have been a nice day to get out of that rut, but I didn’t want to risk ending up on a sloppy mess of a trail, so I ran on the road. 5 miles. With wind gusting up to 35 mph. I totally walked about 20-25% of the run. There was no way on this earth I would be running uphill into the wind.

While I was learning about welding today, I made a list of state parks I need to run or hike in this summer (or spring or fall). Here’s my list so far:

Banning
Jay Cooke
Gooseberry Falls
Split Rock Lighthouse
Tettegouche
George Crosby Manitou
Temperance River
Cascade River
Grand Portage
Soudan Underground Mine
Itasca (maybe)
Lake Bemidji (maybe)

I skipped a few parks in the Arrowhead, because I’ve got to leave something for next year, and I put the Northwestern parks as maybes because I’m not sure we’ll go to Bemidji. I’ll grab a state park pass the first time I’m at one; they’re $25 and good for a year. Some of the closer parks should be good for some of my long runs during this training cycle.