Here comes the taper!

My original plan for today was to attempt to run the courses of the three races that I will be organizing at Bradbury this summer, 6 + 9 + 12 miles. The problem is that most of the trails that make up the race course are single track and don't get any snowmobile traffic and only minimal foot traffic during the winter. So at about 7:30 this morning I set off in my snowshoes to run the 6 mile race course. It didn't take long to realize that this wasn't going to work for a long run so after 4 miles I returned to the parking lot and dumped my snowshoes.

I then headed out on the same course as I ran yesterday for my 15.5 mile run. I figured that with a few modifications to the route - skip the impossible river crossing attempts and swamp - I could make a 13 mile loop which I could run twice to get in my 30 miles for the day.

The first lap of this loop was great. Snowmobiles had been out yesterday afternoon to get the trails in good condition for me, the weather was nice and I felt really good. No ill effects from the run I did yesterday.


When I set off on my second lap a little after 11:30 it had started to warm up and oddly it also started snowing. The snow coming down wasn't really a problem, it was actually very pretty, but the warmer temps meant that the snow on the trails was getting softer and thus harder work to get through. Surprisingly my second lap was only about 5 minutes slower than the first time around. I think I was getting excited about finishing and picked up the pace for the last few miles, which made up for some of the slowing down I had been doing.

I must have miscalculated the distance of this loop because when I finished the second lap my Garmin told me I had only run 29 miles. It really sucks returning to the starting point of a run and still needing to tack on another mile to get to your planned distance. So in the absence of rational thought I headed off for the summit of Bradbury Mountain to get in that extra mile (note the big spike at the end of the elevation profile below).

I'd write more if I wasn't so damn tired.

time: 5:38:25
distance: 30.78 miles
pace: 10:59 (13:15 for first 4 miles, 10:40 for following 26+)
heart rate: 149/171