Blackstrap Night Run

As part of his final prep for the Western States 100 in two weeks Jamie planned a night time run to get in some training on unfamiliar technical terrain in the dark. I met him at Blackstrap Hill in Falmouth along with Stephen and another Jamie and we headed out just after 8pm as the sun was beginning to get low in the sky. There was still plenty of light at first but as we ran up and down some nice rocky hills we were treated to great views of the sun setting behind the White Mountains.

We kept the pace pretty easy, no one wanted to try to run fast in the limited light, and I certainly wanted to save plenty for my long Saturday run. I attempted to skirt around or jump over some of the many puddles that we came across but they just kept getting bigger and bigger and it was pointless to try to stay dry.

After about 4 miles I headed up the famous Three Bitches hill to finish my run while the rest of the guys continued on to get in 10 miles. By now the last remants of daylight were fading quick and I got to see a few things that i don't normally get to during day time trail runs. Like fireflies and bats. During my last mile through the woods there were numerous bats (or one really aggressive one) that kept swooping down from above right in front of me. Pretty cool.

Last year as I was preparing for a long stretch of night running at the VT 100 I devised a pretty slick lighting system. I took my Petzl MYO XP headlight that has an external battery pack, removed the head strap and attached the lamp and battery pack to a triathlon number belt. The advantage of the tri number belt is that is has a plastic closure that makes it easy for taking off and on. I've found that wearing a light lower on my body is similar to the effect of carrying a flashlight but your hands are free, and having a steady light shining on the ground right in front of you makes navigating technical terrain a lot easier. I also wear a smaller headlamp directed straight out in front of me for spotting further down the trail.

time: 54:05
distance: 5.32
pace: 10:10

weather: upper 60's, overcast

conditions: wet trails with big puddles

gear: Inov-8 Mudroc 280, Wright Socks, shorts, t-shirt, hat, Petzl MYO XP, Petzl Tikka Plus

5k's, Triathlon, Bike Ride??

Things are getting unusual on the workout front for me.

I've never been good at incorporating speed work into my training so the Weekly Back Cove 5k Series each summer is as close as I ever get to doing regular speed work. In the past 15 days I have now done 4 5k's, each one was getting progressively slower until last night when I managed (thanks to cool and damp weather) to pull out a slightly faster time for a new Back Cove PR of 19:33. Official results haven't been posted yet, but even if that's not quite the right time at least it's not slower than all my previous ones which is the direction I seemed to be going in.

Splits:
7:27 warm-up
race
6:06
6:25
6:24
0.1 mile @ 5:24
cool down
8:24
9:16
7:59

race time: 19:33
distance: 3.1 miles
pace: 6:18
place: 18/187

total time: 52:06
distance: 7.0 miles
pace: 7:24

Although the race felt fine I had a particular slow cool down run due to having eaten way too many eggs (they were about to expire so I ate as many as I could in one day, bad idea) and had to make a pit stop along the way. In fact, my stomach felt pretty rough all day so I was lucky to have a good run.

Backtracking to the TMR TNR at Twin Brook, I arrived a bit late and we started out with a pretty big group that quickly got broken up. I ended up running most of the way with Jim at a comfortable pace with a few up-tempo (but not sprint) sections thrown in. There is some kind of rail rebuilding going on in the notoriously wet area on the north side of TB, someone has finally realized that some of those "puddles" have been there for years and are probably wetlands where trails never should have been built in the first place. We avoided all the closed sections of trail and still managed to get our usual distance in even on an unusual route.

time: 48:23
distance: 5.62 miles
pace: 8:36

Monday night (still working backwards here) I went for a bike ride through South Portland and Cape Elizabeth. The weather was perfect for riding, about 70 degrees with a light breeze, and the roads were in great condition. There has been a bunch of repaving of the shoulder along Rt 77 and now it makes for fast riding. It was a great way to loosen up after the weekend running.

time: 51:15
distance: 15.53 miles
pace: 3:18

On Sunday I went to Point Sebago to compete in the Pirate Tri as a team with two of my co-workers. I was of course doing the running leg, but after having run 22 miles at Bradbury the day before I wasn't feeling particularly fast.

Despite setting off in the novice wave our swimmer Katherine proved that she is anything but a novice as she beat almost everone in her wave and even passed several swimmers who had started in the previous two waves. After a quick transition Kenji headed off on the 14 mile bike course and I went out for a warm-up on the run course. I figured that doing the whole 5k route would be a good way to loosen things up that were still feeling a little tight from the Bradbury run. I got back, stretched for a few minutes and it wasn't long until Kenji came in with a solid bike time. As soon as I set off I could tell that today's 5k pace wasn't quite where it should be. No problems, just a little sluggish. I had hoped that being on roads (as opposed to Back Cove) I'd be able to log a faster time but that wasn't going to happen.

I was happen to finish in 20:04. Our team ended up finishing second out of 5 mixed teams, and we beat all the same gender teams. The only team to beat us was anchored by another Trail Monster, Tom Whitaker who wasn't slowed down by the beer and pizza he had eaten the day before.

Full Results

Bradbury Badass

At the finale of last year's Bradbury Mountain Trail Running Series I presented all the runners who had completed all three races of the series with shirts declaring them each a "Bradbury Badass". My plan for this Saturday's run was to become an Ultra Xtreme Bradbury Badass by running all three race courses in one day, in order, for a total of 27 miles, and of course ending on the O-Trail.


Unfortunately it turns out that I'm not as much of a badass as I thought I was. It's not that things ever got that bad, it's just that after about 4 hours of gnarly trails stopping seemed like the right thing to do. I could have sworn I was that badass, but apparently not.

Katy, Chuck, Brooke, Emma, Ian, James, Jim, Alan, Stephen, Rick, Valerie
Thanks to Blaine for letting me steal his photo.

Emma and I were surprised to see so many people show up at the earlier time of 7am for this run, especially some of the notoriously late sleepers. It's nice to know the company we keep is so badass. At this relatively early hour the weather felt perfect for running and we set off on the Scuffle course at an easy pace. Apart from Alan sprinting off within the first few hundred feet of trail the group hung together for the entire race route in a single file line weaving through the single-track.

We finished the Scuffle in about 63 minutes and returned to the parking lot to refuel and found Dave, Mindy and Lily waiting. A few people decided that the Scuffle was enough and stopped here and the rest of us continued on to run the Breaker course. In my opinion this is definitely the most challenging of the three races even though it's shorter than the Bruiser, and this is definitely what took the most out of all of us. Emma decided to stop running midway through the first lap of the Breaker, the steep descent off of the South Ridge really aggravated her knee which has been in bad shape ever since running a very fast 50 miles at Pineland two weeks ago.

The big spikes in the middle of the elevation profile are from running up and down the mountain over and over again. The steep climbs felt particularly grueling today, not sure why but my energy level wasn't quite where I expected it to be. I was drinking plenty of water, taking SCaps and gels but the whole run felt like it was taking more effort than it should.


We finished the first lap of the Breaker in about 46 minutes and the second, slightly longer lap, in 48. A few more people decided to stop here so it was just James, Chuck, Blaine, Lily and I who headed back across the road to take on the Bruiser. Despite being quite flat in comparison to the Breaker course the pace didn't pick up much, if at all, on the tight single-track of the Lanzo trail. Even when Blaine took over setting the pace on the Island Trail we weren't going that fast, and it still felt like a relief when I took over leading the way again and eased the pace back a notch.

About 3.5 miles into the Bruiser course Blaine caught us by surprise and decided to take a shortcut back to the parking lot, about 2.5 miles back as opposed to the 8.5 miles we still had ahead of us. I think this planted a seed in the rest of our heads that cutting the run a bit short might actually be a good idea. In the past few miles none of us had really said a thing, and although it was actually quite nice running through the dense forest with only the sounds of nature and our own footsteps I think this was an indication that all our energy levels were getting low and we couldn't even spare enough to make conversation.

A mile after Blaine left the rest of us started talking about cutting the course short and finishing early. I suggested skipping the middle few miles of the course and still finishing on the O-Trail, which everyone reluctantly agreed to, but after another half mile I started to think that was a bad idea and when I suggested that we just take the shortest way out of the woods possible everyone agreed that was the best idea.

So even though I didn't complete the Ultra Xtreme Bradbury Badass run I still got in a solid 4 hours of rugged trail running on a beautiful day with a great group of people.

time: 3:56:50 (running time not including stops)
distance: 22.0 miles (average between my GPS and Chuck's)
pace: 10:45

weather: 60's to 70's, sunny

conditions: dry trails, occasional mud pit

gear: Inov-8 Roclite 315, Wright Socks, shorts, t-shirt, hat, Nathan HPL #20

Back Cove 5k

All day long I knew that I wasn't going to run as fast this evening as I did at last week's Back Cove Weekly 5k, which is probably the reason that I didn't. Oh well. It was warmer than last week, but not hot, very dry and dusty on the path which made breathing hard quite unpleasant. Ultimately the energy just wasn't there.

I did a mile warm-up, started out fast, then slowed way down, had a good sprint to the finish and then a decent 3 mile cool down run.

Splits:
7:46 warm-up
race
6:13
6:31
6:34
0.1 mile @ 5:19
cool down
7:58
7:46
7:41

race time: 19:56
distance: 3.1 miles
pace: 6:24
place: 15/202

total time: 50:13
distance: 7.0 miles
pace: 7:10

This weekend I've got another 5k coming up as part of the Pirate Tri which I'm doing as part of a team with two of my coworkers. Should be interesting I guess. I've already run my annual quota of road races for the year, I got into this when someone else in the office had already signed up but then bailed out. Not sure what to expect for this run, especially since I plan to do 27 miles at Bradbury the day before.

TMR TNR

We had a pretty big group at Twin Brook this evening, starting out with James, Chuck, Jim, Blaine, Erin and newbie Molly, who didn't complain after the initiation stream crossing so looks like she'll be a good fit. Later in the run late arrival Four joined us and then we passed even later arrivals Erik and Yana who were going the opposite direction.


Blaine and I were the only ones to take in any of the sprint lines, although we really didn't go that hard, especially Blaine who could have run away from me if he wanted to but chose not to. I was still feeling some effects of the Hell repeats from Sunday so didn't want to run too hard tonight, I'll save it for the Back Cove Weekly 5k Wednesday after work. My first one of the season went well last week, now I have to work even harder to see if I can beat that time. Ugh.

After the run James and I made a plan for Saturday, run all three races from the Bradbury Mountain Trail Running Series in succession. The O-Trail is tough enough at the end of the 12 mile Bruiser, it should be a blast at the end of a 27 mile trip around all three race courses!

time: 48:28
distance: 5.56 miles
pace: 8:43

Upcoming Mt. Aggie Run - June 27

The 2009 edition of the Western States Commemorative Run will be held at Mt Agamenticus in York, ME on Saturday, June 27th starting at 7:00 am.

Every year on the same weekend as the Western States 100 a group of guys in Southern Maine have been organizing a Western States Commemorative Run at Mt Agamenticus. This 6 hour, fat-ass style run also serves as a good opportunity for folks planning to run the Vermont 100 in July to get in a last long run on some very hilly terrain. The course is a 3 mile loop that people run as many times as they can, or want to, between 7 am and 1 pm.

Check out the report from last year HERE

2009 Western States Commemorative Agamenticus Mtn. Run

Saturday, June 27^th, 2009
Start time – Suggested 7 AM or any time convenient (short 3 mile loop makes it easy to join other runners later in the morning)

Time Limit: 6 Hours
Distance - whatever suits you
Course – 3 mile loop, elevation 691 feet, 600 foot vertical rise. Unmarked.

Course description:
Mountain trail map: http://www.agamenticus.org/pdfs/trailmap.pdf

• Start at bottom of summit road on Mountain Road at beginning at tandem yellow center lines. Pavement ends in about 1/10 mile.
• Follow the gravel road which drops to lowest point of course, 90 feet. Mile marker 1 is at dead and rotting but still standing 30 foot tree on right edge of road within sight of low point of course and the parking area where the course leaves the road for the mountain.
• At 1.1 miles turn right at parking area on proceed down narrow road to base of mountain.
• At 1.3 miles turn right and pass foundation remains of old chair lift
• Proceed up Moose Trail which later becomes Vulture’s View Trail for the 691 foot summit. This trail is steep in a number of places. It is Craig’s favorite approach up the mountain since it is the most direct and the steepest. Relative to Mt Washington Road Race which has an average grade of 11.5%, the average grade from this point to the summit is 15.8%.
• At 1.66 miles the course crosses the Ring Trail
• At 1.86 miles as the course nears the summit it passes on the left a concrete foundation of the old chair lift which has information display boards mounted on it.
• Aim for the entrance stairs of the lodge to stay o n the measured course.
• The entrance stairs are at mile 1.93.
• Continue straight towards parking lot and turn right, passing through parking lot, heading towards paved summit road.
• Summit road is mile marker 2.
• Cross road and head right (left side of old stable building) toward Horse trail visible by post with notice board.
• Horse trail heads into the woods and has several switch backs before intersecting the Ring Trail
• At 2.28 miles turn left on Ring Trail
• Keep straight traversing the mountain on Ring Trail…avoid multiple trails and lookouts on the right.
• At 2.82 cross summit road and continue straight back into the woods on Ring Trail.
• Take right at next trail intersection and proceed about 1/10^th mile to parking lot/aid station
• Note loop on log sheet, enjoy aid, repeat loop.
• Crossing starting point completes 3 mile loop
  

Aid:

• We’ll have water and Gatorade. Also, there is water at the top of the mountain on the east side of the lodge. Feel free to contribute fluids and food it you like.
  

Amenities:

• Weather and skies permitting views of Mt. Washington, White Mountains, Atlantic Ocean and the 3 states.
• The company, friendship, wisdom of the Mt. Aggie Team, other invited participants, and special guests
• Post race barbeque at the Collins’ home at 6 Old Mountain Rd in Cape Neddick. There will be burgers, dogs, and beverages. You might want to bring a lawn chair and a dish or goodies to share.
  

Hell Repeats

As Mindy and Jeff are preparing for the Mt Washington Road Race in a few weeks, and now that Pineland is over, they decided a good hill workout was in order. Since Jim and I are now training for the Escarpment Trail Race, James for Hardrock, and Don... not sure what Don's plan is other than maintaining his status as fast and strong, but anyway, we all met at the Blackstrap Hill Preserve in Falmouth for hill repeats. The mile long hill Jeff planned for us to run on was part of the Blackstrap Hell Trail Challenge last fall so the workout quickly became tagged Hell Repeats.

I had the idea of doing a ladder workout so on our way down to the bottom the first time we defined spots that roughly broke the hill up into thirds. The plan was to run 1/3 of the hill up, back down, 2/3 up, down, all the way up, down, 2/3 up, down, 1/3 up, down, 2/3 up, down and finish with a full ascent back up to the top. Apart from a wrong turn on one of the descents I managed to stick to the plan. Everyone else pretty much went at their own pace which meant even though we weren't all running together we saw a lot of each other going back and forth.


Hopefully we'll make these hill workouts, or some variation, a regular feature. It was fun in that painfully rewarding kind of way. This hill isn't too steep, but it's long and has some technical sections which make it great training both up and down.

time: 1:23:47
distance: 9.04 miles
pace: 9:16

weather: high 60's, clear sky

conditions: mix of wet, muddy, dry, rocky, grassy. Always hilly

gear: Inov-8 Mudroc 280, Wright Socks, shorts, t-shirt, hat