The beginning of the week was weak! The weather and timing of some events made it very difficult to really get after my plans so I had to postpone and resituate. With first few days being nothing special, maintenance running, I was gearing up for sow thing gnarly.
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were nice hour long runs and the rhythm of the week smoothed before some gnarliness...
Saturday - Voltroned and headed to Mt Ascutney. Greg wanted something epic or gnarly and a trip up the snow covered auto road was that. The conditions were better than forecast (didn't rain), and made for a good day once we reached the top.
We climbed well and were running in between 12 and 12:30 min miles on the way up. I felt good/great, mostly due to the excitement, which is always a welcome sensation while running. Greg seemed fine as well as we took our time and reached the end of the auto road in 45 min and some change. This has to be a winter FKT and I'll challenge anyone who wants to meet and settle the best way possible: race!
Greg kept the watch and clipped all the splits...
Laps/splits:
12:12
12:40/24:52
12:33/37:26
8:31/45:58-parking lot
11:09/57:07-summit
7:18/1:04:26-parking lot
5:14/1:09:40
5:42/1:15:22
5:35/1:20:58
4:59/1:25:57-total time round trip
Winter FKT?! Cuss yea it is!!!
Sunday - with the weather holding off Greg talked me into joining him for a run with the Claremont boys up at there place. I was hesitant to the idea of running around Claremont; for obvious reasons that it could be an armpit of the state, but as we got out of "Claremont" and into the back roads, it was more like the armpit of a chick with nice mammary glands and the back roads represented the circumnavigation of the NLT ariola. So... The run was very enjoyable. We ended up clocking 18.2547367 GPS miles in 2 hours.
Monday - ran with a local HSer on the back roads of Grafton (every road in Grafton is essentially a back road), and showed him a nice hour loop. It was a nice recovery day as I was looking forward to an epic run the following day.
Tuesday - Bear run!!! This was awesome. I planned this run last year but hen got sucker than a Tijuana pony girl so I had to delay the run until I was for and ready. I expected the run to be anywhere from 3.5-4 hours and/or roughly 22-28 miles. Since all were in my wheelhouse I was ready to end the 2013 year with a run I was committed to last year at this time.
The path would be from the trail behind my house, to the Athens Lookout, out through Athens on a dirt road to Brookline, connecting back to the trails to the Pinnacle of Putney and weave my way back to the Athens Lookout and then the Sap Lines to the switchbacks. And... I did just this. The run was just under 3:50 and clocked in at 24+ miles which I'm calling 25. (If you feel you don't believe this distance, lace up your shoes and your mouth and come meet me for a hustle and we will test the length and distance).
The run started easy and I was surprised how little show there was. The trail was 90% clear (once I got 2 miles from my Twilight Zone snowbelt I live in). Climbing back to the Pinnacle from the road was a gnarly climb but awesome. I figured that the Pinnacle of Putney was about half way and I was only feeling 6 inches to balls deep with at least 4-6 inches to go before balls deep. I was feeling great!!!
I brought my girls with me and they were absolutely awesome!
Athens Lookout
Pinnacle of Putney 
Top of the Switchbacks behind my house.
Looks righteous! Merry Christmas. I'm glad you were able to do this run this year. Keep it rollin!
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ReplyDeleteI love the picture of Lena and Ellie looking out at Mt. Stratton from the top of Pinnacle. Griffin is way too impatient, she always grabs a stick. Pisgah used to love to sit and soak up the good views, he sometimes looked annoyed to start running again like he wanted to stay at the vista all day. Sweet run!
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