Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Walk with Cheryl and the dogs in Iron. Bay East, starting from the brown house on Empire Blvd.

Trail run/walk at Mendon, with Anne, trying for a long trail run in preparation for the Finger Lakes Fifties 50K on July 5 in Finger Lakes National Forest. We did two large loops more or less around the perimeter trails of the park, not quite exactly the same each time but pretty close. Each loop was around 9 miles. We did a lot of walking, nearly always walking any significant uphills. After today, I'm pretty skeptical about my ability to do 50K on trails -- we'll see, I suppose. Can always bail out to the 25K.

Mid morning run with the dogs, on the Hojack trail, from Klem to Lake and back. Although it seemed like a cool, gray morning, the dogs were having trouble keeping the pace for the last mile.

Warmup for trail race.

Dirt Cheap Trail race, at Ellison Wetlands. Very hilly, nearly all single-track. Distance was stated to be 4.5 miles; Forerunner said it was about a mile short, continuing the trend of trail race distances being far shorter than advertised. Still, it was a very strenuous race.

I ran this one pretty hard, unlike the previous two races of the Dirt Cheap series. I felt recovered from the Buffalo Marathon, and I don't have any race this weekend to taper for, so I figured I might as well go hard in this one.

To motivate myself, I picked two people who I'm generally close to, with the goal to stay with or beat them. One was Wilt Alston, who I beat in the first race of this series, but he beat me in two subsequent trail races. The other was Patty Lyons, who I'm usually close to but she always beats me.

I was 50% successful -- I passed Wilt about halfway through the race, and it seemed clear that he wasn't going to pass me back, and he didn't. I beat him by just over a minute, I believe. Patty, on the other hand, I didn't even see after about 0.5 miles into the race, when she was around 15 people ahead of me. She beat me by around a minute, very decisively.

Finished 53rd out of 128 overall; 1st out of only 3 in my age group.

Congratulations to Patty -- she was 3rd female, 40th out of 128 overall, and easily won her age group.

Easy run on a cool morning with the dogs, on the Hojack trail. From Klem to Lake and back.

Semi-long run on the canal, mid-morning. Started at Shoen Place, ran east to just past Carol Moran's house, then back. First longish run since the marathon when I've felt pretty good the whole way. I've heard a rule of thumb that recovery from a race is one day per mile of race distance; today is 22 days after the Buffalo marathon, so that's pretty close to the rule of thumb. I steadily increased the pace as the run went on, from 9:19/mile for the first 1.5 miles, to 8:33/mile for the last 2.4 miles.

Very nice day, mid 60's, mix of sun and clouds, moderate wind from the west. Lots of people on the canal.