Two Days of Doubles

Wednesday night at work, we ended up with a Maine Med transfer. It wasn't too late, but we still didn't get to bed until 2am. No middle of the night 911s this week, thank goodness, but I was still up at 6am and then out of there by 7am. After I got home, I was in no hurry to get going on my run. Thursday is usually my long run day, but I was going to break it up into two runs instead. It was close to 11am by the time I actually got to Potter Rd off of 153. I had planned out a loop with the hope of it being 13-14 miles, since I knew the evening pub run would be 5 miles. I headed down Potter Rd, which I love because it's just a quiet dirt road this time of year. In fact, most of this loop is on quiet dirt roads; I prefer this over pavement most of the time. From Potter Rd, I ran down Brownfield Rd to Old Mill St and up Davis Hill Rd for the only stretch of pavement on the loop. A lot of hills on this route, and that just continued onto Gulf Rd which climbs for quite a long time. It was nice to have a good solid road for this run, now that the roads are clear and drying out. A turn onto Leavitt, then Greeley and back to Potter Rd. I got to my car with 13.85 on the watch, so I ran up to 153 and back to make it an even 14 miles. Once again, I was happy that my lack of sleep didn't seem to hurt my effort at all. 7:23/mi pace with 1,136ft of elevation gain.

I finally had a Thursday night free from sleeping on the couch in the fire station in Bartlett, so I decided to have a little fun and hit up the Six03 Pub Run in Rochester. I was expecting to know no one there, but that ended up not being the case. Ryan Welts and Kristina Folcik were there, as well as James and Christina Downey. I was happy to see some familiar faces since I was a little nervous walking into a group of new people. Believe it or not, I'm actually pretty shy... until you get to know me. Ha ha. I jumped in the 5-mile group, along with Kristina. No surprise there, we ran together. Very different run than I'm used to since it was so flat. We ran a pretty decent pace talking the whole time without even getting out of breath. We ran a loop back to the Revolution Taproom where we started and realized we were short by about a half mile, so Kristina and I did a short out and back to make it 5 even. 7:43/mi pace. 98ft of gain. ha ha ha. (I had to throw that in there.) I was starving by this point and ready for beer. The Revolution gave us an upstairs private room that was really nice. About 25 people were there for the pub run, which was a mix of the Rochester Road Runners and Six03 Endurance. It was a good time. I got a burger and a beer since I was really hungry, but throughout the evening, as delirium kicked in, I ended up spilling my french fries on the floor, followed shortly thereafter with knocking my beer over and then almost kicking my bar stool on floor while trying to clean up the beer. (The only reason the stool didn't hit the floor was because James Downey caught it.) At this point, everyone was just laughing at me. I wasn't even drunk! But the fatigue of no sleep and 19 miles had hit me all of a sudden. I didn't stay long after that, and almost everyone else was gone, too. It wasn't a bad drive home, and I ended up in bed around 11pm.

Getting up this morning was the hard part. I had planned to go to EMS for the Club Day trail run since they have a huge raffle after, but I couldn't get myself out of bed until 8:30am. It was even a struggle then. I took my time again today, then drove down to White Ledge Campground for a run on the Carter Ledge Trail up to Carter Ledge. I love this run, and it felt great to be back on it for the first time since the Fall. This has been one of my go-to trail runs when I want something short that gets me up high quickly. The trail was in pretty decent shape, and before I knew it, I was up on Carter Ledge. So quiet and beautiful; it felt so nice to be up there again.

Selfie on Carter Ledge with Chocorua in the background.

I didn't stay long since I was starting to get cold in just a t-shirt and shorts. The run down was quick. 5.3 miles total with 1,673ft of gain. I wanted a few more miles than that, but not anymore climbing, so I stopped over near Coleman's for an out-and-back, mostly flat, trail run to the Madison Boulder and back. 3.5 miles 7:58/mi pace to make 8.8 miles for the day. 

John came home after that, and I decided to take him to see the new Avenger's movie. That's been it for the day, and I'm planning to go to bed early tonight. Up early for the drive to Dover for the Children's Museum of NH 5K. I have no idea who will be there to race against, and I'm not really concerned about it either. I know it's a bigger race, so anybody could show up. I signed John up for the kids' race after, but I'm thinking he might bail on it unless I can change it to the dash from the half mile. He's not really into running, except for the 100 Acre Challenge kids' race he did in September. He loved that since it had fun obstacles. Inflatable Fun 5K here we come! :) (Not that there's anything wrong with those races, and it probably is really fun, but the stigma... I would never hear the end of it if I did one of those. haha). I'm still unsure about our local Spring into Spring 5k on Sunday. I probably will run it since it's basically right down the street. I last ran it in 2011 in 19:28 and was first woman. I should be able to kill that time, but maybe not. I'll decide for sure on Sunday morning whether I'm up for it or not. 

I made the move today and registered for the Whiteface SkyMarathon in New York on June 28th. (Whiteface SkyMarathon) I hit up a really good friend who lives in NY to see if she could help me out with John while I race. She didn't hesitate to say yes. She has a daughter John's age, and we're planning to camp somewhere up there on Saturday (maybe Friday, too). It will be good to see her again, since the last time we saw each other was in 2010 when I flew up from NC to run the Adirondack Marathon Relay together. It will be a good reunion plus an ass-kicker of a race. I'm really excited this one is going to work out. It will kill me for a good race at Loon Mountain, but that's ok. This one is a lot more important to me than Loon. I've put together an insane race schedule through July, so let's just hope I can get through it stronger and unscathed. 

Whiteface course map