Tuesday: Ran the third race of the 2016 AdiRUNdack Trail Series

Wednesday: Light floor work: yoga, stretching, PT exercises (quads), push-ups.

Thursday: 1.8mi at an aerobic pace. Knee was hurting toward the end. I wonder if it’s the shoes?

Friday: Bleeeeerch

Saturday: Yard work

Sunday: 5 miles in Skidmore’s North Woods. I needed a hill, and didn’t feel like driving all the way up to Moreau. I contemplated another go at Lincoln Mountain State Forest, but then I remembered that it’s spring turkey hunting season, and it’s highly likely that numerous people would be hunting up there.

So, I ran around the North Woods for a while.

It started off OK: I ran down North Broadway to the school, then turned around and came back up to the parking lot, before heading up to the Blue Trail. I had a seriously dark moment near the top of the hill on the Blue Trail, though.

I was around a mile and a half in, and I started thinking about my upcoming race plans, and wondering if they were realistic. This is my fifth week back in to dedicated running, and I logged only 10 miles. In order to hit my goal of running a 30 miler in September, I am planning on keeping most of my runs aerobic, and building up my mileage fairly aggressively (with a recovery week every 4th week). That’s going to involve a lot of time on my feet, especially on the weekends. So, here I was, 1.5 miles in to an easy training run, and I was wondering how in the world I’d ever be able to handle that volume.

That apprehension wasn’t always there. Two years earlier, I had a wonderful, strong, 10 mile race in May, my first race ever, followed by a month of excellent 5Ks at the AdiRUNdack Trail Series. I set my 5K PR on the first race and haven’t touched it since.

After that, though, things got dark. I decided to do the 2014 Savoy Mountain Trail Race and I burned out. Hard. My failure was spectacular. I know that part of the problem was that I failed to bring salt with me; the sports candies I was eating had hardly any sodium, and I only realized it after I was completely destroyed. As for the rest of the problem… we’ll get in to that another day.

Back in the present, I shook it off, and started the rocky descent down the Blue Trail. The Orange Trail, with its pretty single track and bridges, lifted my spirits, and I was feeling better by the top of the hill. I was also smelling a campfire. Some quick poking around revealed the remains of a rather large fire, with wooden benches around it. The fire was still smouldering, so after taking the scene in for a moment, I headed over to the nearest trail head to find the emergency contact numbers. When I got in touch with Campus Safety, they let me know that someone was already on the way, and as I headed back around for a second loop, I could hear a small utility vehicle making its way up to the fire.

The second loop went off without incident. All in all, Strava logged me at 500’ of climbing. I didn’t have any specific goal aside from run or walk up a hill a few times, and I did what I set out to do.

Until next week: be excellent to each other!

This was originally posted on my Ghost blog.