Friday Night Vertical 2021

Friday Night Vertical 2021

Friday, June 26, 2015

6/21/15-6/25/15

Sunday- As promised, it was mostly a John day. We both slept in. I went for a run around the neighborhood while John had his breakfast. I had woken up super sore after Mt Washington, but I hardly felt it on my run. The loops are boring, but it's an option I'm lucky to have. I ran 8 loops which made 7.5 miles at a 7:33/mi pace. I've run it much faster, but on fresh legs, so I was happy with it. Always decent hills, too, so it was a good run to loosen up the legs.

I showered, then John, the three dogs and I drove over to Freedom to walk up Mary's Mountain and around Trout Pond. It was raining a bit, so I knew we wouldn't see any people. That's one thing I love about hiking in the rain; you usually have places all to yourselves. I also appreciated the lack of bugs; that place is normally swarming with deer flies and mosquitos, but there were no deer flies and only a few mosquitos by the pond outlet. Somehow my memory failed me on the distance, and I told John we were only walking about a mile. Oops. It ended up being 3.4, but he still had fun.
John and Chill on Mary's Mtn


John and Chill

Ossipee Lake from Mary's Mtn

John trying to avoid the camera

Trout Pond
After our walk, we rushed home to drop the dogs off so we could get to the movies in time. John LOVES going to the movies, and I'll admit that I do, too. I always have. I took him to see Jurassic World, and the theater was completely full. I have never seen that little North Conway theater so full since I've been going there (1998, but then again, there were 3 movie theaters in the Valley in 1998). John absolutely loved the movie. I thought it was silly, but he's a 9 year old boy. That stuff is awesome to him. And it's so cute to watch how excited he gets. I have to quiet him the entire movie because he wants to talk to the whole time. LOL. I hate quieting him, though, so I just try to make sure he whispers and doesn't talk when the movie is on a quiet scene. So John had a good day, which is the usual most of the time anyway. :)

Monday- I worked a 10 hour shift in Tamworth. We had one call with a cool injury (can't write what it was; HIPPA violation) and a fire alarm. We got called to a car accident, too, but were cancelled en route. Not a super busy day, but busy enough for it to fly by.

After work, I finally ventured back to Green Mountain in Effingham, where John and I hiked on my birthday. There are 3 trails that go up Green Mountain, and I wanted to hit all of them, so I parked at the Dearborn Trail, ran up to the top, then ran down the Libby Trail, back up, then down the High Watch Trail, back up, then back down the Dearborn. It was a much more brutal run than I thought it would be. The Dearborn and High Watch Trails were super steep, while the Libby Trail was an old jeep road that the caretaker used to drive up; it was a nice break in the middle of the other two. I loved checking out all 3 trails, though. Each one was completely different. The Dearborn was your typical single track type trail. Libby was the graded jeep trail, and the High Watch was a wide path covered in pine needles and a lot of rock slabs. Very interesting run. Plus, it was a lot of elevation gain over 8.4 miles at just over 3600 ft. I definitely felt Mt Washington in legs, for sure.

Evening on Green Mtn

Almost 8pm, and this is how light it is. Love it.
Tuesday- Slept in a bit until 7:30am. Had a cup of coffee, then slowly motivated myself to get dressed for another run. It was raining, but not too hard. I figured it would be at least be cool, but I have to admit that I was sick of it raining on Tuesdays, since this was the 4th in a row. But whatever. For some reason, I started craving the road runs again, so I decided to do a Potter Road Loop over near Conway Lake in Center/South Conway. As soon as I stepped out of my car and started running, the rain got heavier and heavier. AND.IT.DID.NOT.STOP.THE.ENTIRE.RUN. No lie. And it wasn't just heavy. It was a torrential downpour. Just unbelievable. The rain was so heavy, it was getting in my eyes blinding me. I remember looking up, holding my arms and yelling, "This is insane!!" I was laughing as I said because I was just amazed. 11 miles, still at a good pace 7:34/mi. Around 900 ft of elevation gain. I got back to my car SOAKED to the bone. I took off my shirt and wrung it out; water came pouring out of it. Just unreal, but funny.

Needless to say, I was done being out in the rain for the day. John and I ran a few errands, then I took him to his ninja class. It was the end of the session class/pizza party, so I skipped Whitaker Woods in order to make sure he was there on time. It had started pouring rain just as they were finishing up the class before the pizza, so John went out to cool off and run around. Soon enough, all of the kids were out there in the pouring rain playing in the puddles. It was awesome.
John cooling off in the pouring rain after ninja class
I kept seeing posts on FB about a tornado watch. OMG! Ha ha. I'm from the South. Those are common occurrences there. No big deal, but people up here were freaking out. It was kind of funny.

Wednesday- Up at 4:30am for a 5 mile treadmill run. Felt great. 35:56. 7:11/mi pace. Off to work and then off to Boston for our all day cluster of a transfer to Mass General. I thought Memorial Hospital was bad (I joke about someone dragging me over the State Line before they call 911, so I can be taken to Bridgton Hospital instead. LOL), but Mass General dropped the ball somehow. We ended up there for an HOUR just trying to get our patient somewhere. It was insane. The place was like a freaking airport; we couldn't even get into the elevators with the stretcher because they were all packed with people. Just a crazy experience there. We had planned to drive around the city hitting landmarks to take pictures of the ambulance in front of, but we ended up have to bolt right back to North Conway. We did stop to grab lunch at Kelly's in Saugus, though, so I got at least one ambulance photo. ha ha.
I was so hungry I ate my entire roast beef sandwich in less than 5 minutes.
The evening was quiet, and then we only had one 911 call in the middle of the night. Simple enough, so I got a decent night's sleep.

Thursday- Up, showered at the base, drove to Tamworth for another 10 hour shift. We were actually pretty busy with calls, so the day went by quickly. After 34 hours, I am super antsy to get out for my run at 5pm, but as luck would have it, at 4:18pm, a tone dropped. The other crew was already on a call, so we were up. It was a pretty quick call, but we still ended up getting out after 6pm. The run I had planned was aborted, and I opted for a shorter one in Madison, close to work. I ran out East Shore Drive to Lead Mine Rd to East Madison Rd and then back. Faster than I felt like it would be. 9.1 miles. 7:12/mi pace. 729ft of elevation gain. Good run.

I ended up home after 8pm, so my plans to set up my fire pit were out the window. It was nice to have some quiet time tonight after being surrounded by people the last two days. And it was nice not to have the dogs. They've been going nuts lately when I let them out. This orange cat (looks like my first cat "Butterscotch") started hanging around the house, so they keep catching his/her scent and driving me crazy. I needed a break from that tonight.

Tomorrow, I'll do a short run, then I have to pack up the car for our trip to Wilmington, NY for the Whiteface SkyMarathon. We're going to camp at a campground right near the race site. I'm hoping to watch the Vertical K race on Saturday morning then do some nice hikes in the area. It will be a good weekend with John. My race is on Sunday morning. It's set at 19 miles over 9000ft of elevation gain. It's going to hurt, but I love this kind of stuff. And with this kind of race, I go out just to finish the damn thing. I don't care what my place or time is. I'll be too busy in my own head to worry about what other people are doing.

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