Chatting with Tanya

I took Gina to swim team practice monday night and planned on completing an 8 mile run while she swam. Much to my surprise, Tanya Cady was life-guarding at the pool and I started to ask her training questions regarding 100 mile events as I waited for Gina to get into the pool. Practice started and I then started my run.

After I finished, I continued my discussions with Tanya about all sorts of stuff. She offered lots of advice about drop bag preparation, aid station protocol, (ie, how to get in and out quickly), how to handle the bugs at night, (I did not even think about this one!) what kinds of food to eat, how many shoes to use, sock changes, etc, etc, etc....

She has so much experience with these events and so willing to share with others! A very enjoyable evening...

Now that I have taken my rest days this week already, I need to get back into the woods. We had lots of snow last night so the trails will be more challenging than usual. Forget about distance, we'll just go for 'time-on-feet'.

Robert Frost Night run...

The picture is of me after my 20.3 mile run last night. The clock on the coffee maker says 11:56pm. I just made it before midnight!



Our schedule this weekend is crazy and if I wanted to get a long run in, it had to be friday night after work, after karate. So I left the house and started down the bike path. It was a quiet evening; a biting NE wind and a few random snow flakes falling down. I did not see anyone else out running...hmmmm



However I did see a coyote cross the bike path at 16 miles... He was alone and we stared at each other from about 30 yds apart. His eyes glowed bright with the reflection of my headlamp. I clapped my hands together and off he went. No deer or other wildlife sightings...



Denise was still awake when I completed my run. She went to bed while I showered and stretched a bit. I got chilled and shivering, I buried myself into my blankets and quickley fell into a deep exercise-induced coma... Great training run to experience the night time after a long day...



Oh yea, the "Robert Frost" reference. Remember his poem, "Stopping by Woods on a snowy evening"? The last stanza was very very appropriate:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Snow Tracks and Dogs

First, the dogs...

Our Bernese Mountain dog, Forrest, has been a real biscuit lately. He has been laying around all day/evening and then decides at 3:30-4:00AM that it is time to be awake. He whines, moans, barks, and generally is a pain in the neck. Needless to say, sleeping is 'challenging' to say the least during this commotion. If Denise or I go down, he slams up against us as only a Berner can do and then proceeds to lay down again... Geesh, worse than a baby...

Now the tracks...
I started my morning run today a bit earlier than usual (see above) and wanted to complete 6 miles on the bike path. Strangely, there were no tracks in the fresh covering of snow this early in the morning so I enjoyed leaving my mark on the path. Since I was running an out-and-back, I was able to observe in my tracks that my right foot angles out a bit. Not really sure what it means, if anything, but it was fun to note. It was also fun to see my tracks in the couple of icy spots where I slid a bit...

I quickly showered, gulped down a cup of coffee and awesome bowl of oatmeal, and then drove Gina to school. She had to take her book report project in today and it is not 'bus durable'...

I hope that the sky stays clear for the eclipse tonight... I also wonder if they will shoot the satellite down tonight?

Contrast weekend

Wow! What a difference a day makes! I ran 17 miles saturday morning with clear skies and cold temperatures. A nice run and actually saw a group of people running on the trail near our house. I saw more people out on the trail saturday than in the last 2 years combined!

Yesterday saw the weather turn to rain/wind and warmth! I ran again last night with the temperatures in the upper 40s.

Today, was an off day. The snow is back and the temperatures are supposed to drop even farther. This is the hardest part of winter...february and march. We get a couple of nice days an the sloppy weather returns...

We went sofa shopping today. We have been talking about a new sofa for a year and it is time. But first, what will we do about the floor? This will be another fun home improvement project to get this planned and implemented. We will not jump into this too fast, but we want to get started. A fun spring awaits.

Good Medicine

Work has been getting to me lately and I had the perfect antidote: A night run through the trees and fields. I left the house at 6:30pm and headed to the park. I went into the woods where I followed some ATV tracks to Post Road. Down Post Road's snow-covered sidewalks to the park lands at Liberty Road. There are some 'trails' through the fields that connect several gas wells. I followed some icy truck tracks to the back corner of the field.

I stopped for a bit to enjoy the quiet and stillness of the evening. The moon was shining through the milky overcast clouds. Although the moon was only half full, it was bright enough, making my headlamp redundant.

I needed to get back home before Denise and Gina returned from swimming so I retraced my tracks, literally, home. My headlamp illuminated my footprints in the snow with a bluish, white glow that was pretty cool to see.

Returned home feeling much much better about things...

"There is no such thing as bad weather...

only inadequate clothing"... This was a quote that I read on the Ultra list and it sums up today's run pretty well. It is cold, windy, snowy, and some would say nasty weather today.

I wanted to run today but the thought of sub-zero wind chills and ice on the path did not sound too good. I thought, well, let's just get out for 4 to see what it is like. I layered up, put on my face mask from the Buckeye Trail race, and headed out. To my suprise, it wasn't too bad. I made some adjustments to my mask as I ran down the street in an effort to stop my glasses from fogging up. As I turned the corner a gust of wind hit me and stopped me in my tracks!! Literally, it stopped me! I struggled to regain my motion and thought, oh boy, this is interesting.

Once I made it to the bike path, the trees helped to diffuse the wind and when the sun came out, it was almost balmy. not quite, but almost... I was warmed up and feeling pretty good. I stopped to call Denise to tell her that I was going for 6 miles instead of 4.

Great run. The neighbors probably think I am nuts, if they don't already think so...

Running in Bedford Reservation again...

Since we have had so much rain this week, the bridle trails in Bedford reservation seemed like it would be in the best condition to run. I did not want to run in the mud if I could avoid it. There will lots of time for that this spring...

Andy agreed to run with me and I hoped to pick up my pace a bit for this run. Andy is training for Boston so my 'faster' pace was still pretty pedestrian for him. He met me at Egbert Shelter and we proceeded to Frazee house on the towpath for our turn-around point. It was a nice morning, 30 degrees with a couple of random sprinkles of rain.

It was good to catch up with Andy and the miles passed quickly. 2 hours and 16 minutes later, I was back in my car heading to the bakery for breakfast treats for the family. (one for me too!!)

Back on track...

I am getting back to some consistent running again after the BT50k. Last night while Gina was swimming, I took a trip to the high school track for some 1 mile repeats. The evening was cool with temps in the low 40s and a heavy mist/light rain falling. Pretty nice for February...

I wanted to run 4 miles at a 'faster than normal' pace, and descend if possible, or make each mile faster than the previous one.

Results:
mile 1: 7:23
mile 2: 7:19
mile 3: 7:18 (whew!)
mile 4: 7:09

Now these times are not "fast" compared to you speed freaks out there, but they are fast for me.

It felt good to unload some work stress and get the legs/lungs burning a bit.

14 miles planned for saturday. It will probably be sloppy with all of the rain we are getting here. Should be fun. Time to recruit running partners...

What a Wiikend!!

Well, after our lazy Saturday convalescing from the flu, we all feel much better. With some help from Forrest, I awoke at 6am and tore into the Plain Dealer for the Circuit City ad. Much to my surprise, they were advertising Wiis again. Since I missed out last time by waiting too long, I quickly changed and headed to Circuit City at 6:30am. I arrived to again see quite a few cars in the parking lot. Then to my joy, I was handed the ‘golden ticket’ with number 10!!! I really felt lucky this time!

I couldn’t help but feel like I was lining up at the starting line for another race. I had my bib number, I had spent the last couple of months in training for this day, and now it was time to execute the plan fully, after 2 previous DNFs. (Did Not Finish) I was enjoying the company of my fellow Wii seekers as much as I enjoy the company of other runners at the start of a race. There was some nervous banter and even some trash talk among a couple of the regular participants. Alas, there was also disappointment, as a few late stragglers did not make the cut-off time for the start. You need to get out of bed a bit earlier next time Grandma!!

Finally, 3 ½ hours later, I was able to cross the finish line and collect my award. I returned home victoriously to the squeals of delight from my family!

Denise and I celebrated with an 8-mile run together. The girls are bowling on the Wii as we speak. I have jumped up a couple of pegs on the “Dad-meter” this weekend. This is good because now the ‘real’ training for August begins. Maybe now they won’t miss me as much when I am running…

The calm before the storm...

Abby, our youngest daughter, has been feeling a bit off all week. It appeared that she had a sinus infection so she stayed home from school friday for a trip to the doctors office. Well, on the way there the vomiting started...

The picture is of Gina and I friday evening about 9pm... She started being sick shortly after that, I waited until 12:30am, and Denise was the last one at 3am...

Needless to say, it was a pretty quiet at the Williamson house today... WCLV was playing some Wagner Opera that had us just laying around drifting in and out of sleep all day.

I really expected to get sick this week since after a hard training week or event, my immunuity system is squashed. I however did not expect this...