Sunday Double

Sunday I decided to join Emma for a run, wrapping up her first week of post "stress reaction" recovery which included four 15 minute runs. Whooppee! Having been injured since Pineland in May I don't know how she has managed to stay sane, and now that she is running pain free I don't know how she manages to hold herself to just 15 minutes at a time. Anyway, it was nice to run with her again, even if it was just a short one around the neighborhood. We did manage to work a little hill into it:

time:15:57
distance: 1.75 miles
pace: 9:08

Later in the day, after it got dark I went out for another run, this time hoping to get in a few more miles on the local snowmobile trails before the rain hit. Although I could have got the run in during daylight hours I purposely waited until after dark, as park of my training for the WHW I want to get in a fair amount of night running on rugged terrain.

I decided to run pretty much the same route as I did on Wednesday, but do the loop portion in reverse so I could run up the Three Bitches. 2 miles of road, 1/4 mile of dirt road then a 3 mile loop on snowmobile trails. On the way back I discovered an alternate route that replaces 1/2 mile of road with more snowmobile trails. Sweet.

There are some excellent hills on this route and a nice variety of terrain, although it's pretty much smoothed out by the snowmobiles. When I reached the top of Leighton Hill on the way out there were three snowmobilers there, just cracking open some beers and I think I caught them by surprise. I thanked them for making such nicely runnable trails, but being dressed in tights I decided not to hang around too long.

The rain started before I finished the run but it was still in the mid-30's and very comfortable winter running weather.

time: 1:06:05
distance: 7.45 miles
pace: 8:52

weather: mid 30's, a few rain showers

conditions: wet roads, nicely packed snowmobile trails

gear: Inov-8 Roclite 315 with screws, Smart Wool socks, tights, t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, gloves, buff