Tamworth/Sandwich Roads

Yesterday, I woke up 2 minutes before my 4:40am alarm that I had set to get up for a run on the treadmill before work, but I decided to bag it. I thought about how much more useful an extra hour of sleep would be if I was up all night during my 24 at the ambulance. I had a long run planned for Thursday, so I decided on a zero and went back to sleep. It was a good bet, since we ended up getting called out 3 times overnight for the SAME PATIENT, about every 2-3 hours. The first call, she was fine; the second, she agreed to go to the hospital then changed her mind. Finally, on the third call, we pulled the stretcher right up to the door; when she opened the door, I said, "Are you ready to go?" and patted my hand right on the stretcher. She complied this time, thank goodness. We were not leaving without a patient this time. Ha ha. So, I got about maybe 4 hours of sleep total, all broken up between the 3 calls.

"Everything is Awesome!" as I take in some sun during the slow morning.

WTF look, after two transfers and the 3 overnight calls. LOL.

Fortunately I wasn't extremely tired for my long run. After driving down some of the roads in Tamworth on Monday after a fire call, I decided I had to venture over this way for a run. So after getting home from work, I sat down and made out a plan for a loop starting at Remick Farm. I wanted to run 18, so I made up a route that would probably come out to that. I wasn't exactly sure, since the Strava route creator made one of the roads "impassable", even though I had just driven the whole thing on Monday. Plus, I had a feeling at least one of the roads would turn out to be nonexistent.

I waited until it warmed up some around 10am and headed out running at a decent pace on the route I had planned out. As I figured, "River Rd" didn't exist. Well, I can't say it didn't exist, but it wasn't a road. I passed by it thinking it was an overgrown snowmobile trail. When I got to where I was supposed to be coming back from the left, I knew I had lost almost 2 miles of my "plan", but I wasn't bothered by it. I just knew I would have to add on at the end to make it 18. My loop continued on some dirt/paved mix back roads with fantastic views of the Ossipee's. I couldn't believe I had never explored over here, even by car. Very quiet and peaceful with decent hills. I even ran through a covered bridge. 

Durgin Covered Bridge

 And the weather was perfect. I felt great and just kept plugging away. When I got to the turn off for the Great Hill Fire Tower, I decided to take a quick detour up. It's only about .4 miles, so I ran on up. Most of the trail was snow-free, but it was really soft and squishy. I got up to the tower quickly, took in the quick view, snapped some photos and ran back down to the road. 

Great Hill Fire Tower

Great Hill Rd climbed a bit and then hit a huge downhill that took me back into Tamworth Village. As I guessed, I was about 1.5 miles short, so I turned left with a plan just to go out enough to come back for 18, but as I started up Page Hill Rd, I changed my mind and decided to run all the way to the top. The climb wasn't as steep as it seems in the car, but my legs were starting to the feel the miles. I took it easy on the run back down because I was done with the pavement pounding. Just as I got back into Tamworth Village, I hit 20.2 miles and was done. 7:30/mi pace which surprised me with the 1749 ft of elevation gain, so I was really happy with the run.

From there, I made a stop in Ossipee to do some White Mountain Milers business and then grabbed a huge post-run cupcake. I couldn't eat anything else for 6 hours after eating this thing.

Chocolate ganache cupcake

I spent the next 3 hours laying in the sun working on my tan. Yes, seriously. It felt so good to lay there in the warmth of the sun relaxing until I had to head to the other ambulance job in Bartlett.

Tomorrow's run plan: TRAILS! Finally!