Category Archives: My Running

08112018 – Run

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Definitely not what I was expecting when I set out for a run this morning. I had no doubts it would be tough. 12 miles on the trails at Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park wouldn’t be easy. But I didn’t expect it to be this hard. 

The humidity was almost 100%, but it was in the mid-60’s at the start. I wore my vest to get used to it and had both bottles full of water and a random veggie protein gummies for some food. I hadn’t needed anything yet so I felt safe with that. 

I set my virtual pacer at 8:40 and set off from the Lawrence Ceeek trailhead and ran towards Delaware Lake. I stopped to take a rock out of my shoe and was able to hit goal pace for mile 1. 

That would be the last time I would see an 8 minute mile through out. I haven’t run in that part of the park in awhile but I got through the wooden steps and ran the Fall Creek trail to the Camp Creek trail and past the Duck Pond. Somewhere in here I took my first walk break. I felt tired. I came back down around Delaware Lake and onto the paved bike trail back towards my car and the Schoen Creek trail. 

The Schoen Creek trail is a tough trail that I ran a few times when we were here in January. I was glad to see afterwards that I got some segment PRs despite not running superfast today. My thought process had been to run the East side easier trails as a warmup, then Schoen as they are the hardest and end with the Lawrence Creek loop as it is easier than Schoen and I’ve run it a lot more. 

Schoen is hard with lots of ups and downs and it seems like it goes forever! Since I had just ridden it yesterday it didn’t seem as long, but I guess since I was running so slow it did take forever! Also running the trail doesn’t seem as dangerous as I thought it was riding it (some of the trail is on the edge of the hill). 

I knew the distance was going to be close at the end of the run. Seeing the road bikers do repeats up the hill I was inspired to run up the hill to the visitor center and get a sustained hill in the middle of the run. Getting up there I finished my gummies and wished I had more food. I ran around the flat area on top and did an extended walking break. Then back down the hill and onto Lawrence Creek trail. 

I figured the trail would be busier than the others so I took my headphones out so I could hear bikes approaching me. Turns out none passed me until the last half mile and then it was a bunch! I kept trying to set goals to keep myself running and not walking. Finally I was determined to go a whole mile without stopping and completed Mile 10 without stopping and ran a lot of it around my goal pace even if the overall mile time was still in the 10 minute range. I added the Camp Glenn loop to get some extra miles in and that was a nice easy trail. I passed a dad out with his kids and he said hello and his kids asked if we were friends! After completing that mile I walked for a few minutes and then set out running again. Somewhere in there I decided that I needed to run at a slower pace so that I could keep running. That worked fairly well, but I still walked a little at the end of mile 11. Next goal was to run all of the last mile. Which I did except to let the bikers go by. There was probably 8 that went by in a short period of time. After finishing the 12th mile I walked a little bit but when I came upon the exit trail I knew I could keep running it. 

So bam I finished. 12.34 miles in 2:18:56. 11:15 average pace. My virtual partner was set at 8:40. So I was pretty far off that. I think the travel and walking around at the Indiana State Fair caught up with me. 

I also need to make sure I take better nutrition and add a bottle of electrolytes to help get me over the hump. 

08062018 – Run

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Running around my hometown is relatively flat. The rail trail is a great place to run, but is flat and requires an out and back. So I went a little longer than I needed to get the big hill and make it more of a loop. It felt cool at 70f but quickly felt the humidity as I set out through town. 

It was about a mile and a half to the bottom of the big hill out of town heading West on County Road 550. There is a paved trail from town to the school and once I got there I switched to running the roads. 

The workout was 6×400 with 300m rest. It took two intervals to get over the hill before turning down Dexter Road and getting onto the Paint Creek Recreational Trail. I had never actually been this far West on the trail. It wasn’t really any different than the rest of the trail. It brought me to the end of my intervals and further from home than I had hoped. 

To run to the trailhead and home would have added way to much distance as would finishing out a loop. So I just ran home on a different street through town. 

All in all a good run, lots of sweaty goodness! 

My intervals looked good too. I don’t get many flat ones so here they are. The first two were uphill and the middle two were downhill or flat and the last ones were flat. 

1:50

1:44

1:32

1:36

1:33

1:30
Totals were 6 miles in 56:04.

08042018 – Run and CrossFit

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In the Hocking Hills for a wedding. I had done some research, but not enough on the specifics of where we actually were. And we had poor reception and no wifi!

I realized the Buckeye Trail went right by the property we were at and it appears that the trail might have connected into some of their private trails. At that point no one was around to ask and actually I would have missed some of the best parts of the trail. 

The Buckeye Trail goes around the entire state and uses a variety of hiking trails and walking along the road. So I left the lodge with the statement that the trail goes off into a meadow from the road. When I woke up it was just turning light and I had to use my phone’s flashlight to run by. Not ideal! I ran past a grassy road and turned up it. Didn’t see any blazes so when it intersected another grassy farm road I decided not to run up the hill and ran down into a little farmstead. Oops, retrace steps. Back on the road I ran until it ran into a farm road. A short bit down, there were a bunch of trees down. So I turned around again. This time I saw the small sign with the blue blaze! Success!

I turned into an overgrown meadow and followed the trail through a bunch of briar. Fortunately the wedding would be in pants as my legs got horribly scratched up! 

When the trail got into the woods it was a small path that was barely worn into the side of the hill. It was well marked for a little while and then joined or crossed another farm road and I lost it. I ran up the hill and noticed a sign, so I turned on it and that brought me back to the bottom of the hill. Oops. 

I went for awhile again staying on the trail as ot ran through the woods and crossing farm paths. I lost it a few other times for short periods of time. One time due to a fallen tree. At one point I ran through a bunch of mowed trails, which I assume were from our lodge. 

And then it popped out with a nice gate and trail register. The gate I ran through was well marked as being the trail, but I had no idea which way to go from there! Does the trail cut back down the hill on the gravel road or up the road or on some other trail? I didn’t see any blazes or signs. 

I opted for the road. And shortly saw a blue blaze. The rest of the run was on the Buckeye Trail and stayed on the roads. The trail would have turned left and stayed on the roads for a bit, when I was staying off to the right. I wasn’t sure how far I had to go to get back. 

The rest of the run was uphill and was uneventful. It was warming up with the sun. The Hocking River sure looked inviting! 

When I got back to the lodge I checked out some of their trails and from the map you can see I got really close to where the Buckeye Trail went by. I finished running up the hill from the creek to the lodges. 

The final totals were 8.5 miles in 1:33:35. I was supposed to get 10 in but didn’t see an easy way to get it done. 

After cooling off a little bit my brother-in-law came out and said let’s go workout. So we did an 11 minute workout that was 

3 Rounds for Time of

100 single unders

12 53# Russian swings

Run down the hill

12 slam balls

Run up the hill

And then 40 shoulder twists with the light band. 

08012018 – Run

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Vacation run #2 was 6×600 in Geneva State Park. The park has 6 miles of trails, that aren’t super well marked! Or at least the ones I was on weren’t. And the one trail appeared to have not been used much recently. 

So I ended up running on the road a couple of times, when I got back and looked at the map what happened made sense, but a couple of times the trail just ended without a clear direction to go.  The park is pretty much flat and sits next to Lake Erie, though I only got a few glimpses of the lake. 

Some of the intervals were slower due to getting lost. 

Here are the intervals:

3:04

2:54

3:22

3:12

3:10

2:31

Totals were 5.4 55:39. 

07292018 – Run

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A 15K run while on vacation. I did a fair amount of research to find somewhere to run besides the roads, but the best places were a good 30 minutes away. It seemed irresponsible to spend an hour driving for a 90 minute run. That seemed like a lot of time away from the family and cost in gas and entry fees. And I think I would have needed to run loops anyway. 
So I mapped out a rough course on the roads near our campsite. There was a pretty straightforward out and back, but that seemed a little boring so I figured out a way to make it more of a lollipop. 

I only made one mistake which added maybe a 1/4 mile to the route and I got to see these cows twice! 

Back on track I kept moving along. I was using the virtual training partner on my watch to help me keep pushing the pace. So it would beep every now and then. As I was going through the rolling hills there were lots of ATV/snowmobile trails but I opted to stay on the roads. 

I did come to a little park that looked like it had ATV trails but the sign said no ATVs. But it was a park so I turned in there a took a chance that it would work out. It was a nice little wooded and dirt loop to spice up the run. It gave me a short view of the Wisconsin River. It had a little picnic area that you could rent and a few more trails I didn’t take. 

I had set my virtual pace at 8:40 and tried to stay in front of it the whole time. I also didn’t do any warmup or cooldown. I definitely felt the camber of the road by the end as even the side roads were noticeably at an angle. The main county road had a little bit of a shoulder but not consistently wide enough to run on. 

All in all it was a good run. Oh and the temperature was perfect. Mid-50’s! The route was mostly shaded so the sun wasn’t ever a problem. I also took out my new birthday present, my hydration vest. It was probably a little much for this run, but I need to get used to wearing it. And I did drink a few times from it. 

Final details: 9.5 miles 1:21:52 8:36 pace