Exploring

18 miles in 2:37 (8:43 min/mile pace)

So today I had wanted to do about 18 miles. I'm getting pretty bored with my around home route and the waterfront route is getting a tad repetitive as well. I started driving downtown a few years ago for some of my long runs because i was training for the waterfront marathon. It is a bit of a hassle to drive down but I enjoy it. With a 10 mile race downtown today, i knew getting down there to my normal starting location was going to be a bit of a chore so I decided to try out the local trail system. I did some planning and my intent was to try and get down to Edwards Gardens which Google Earth says is about 9.5 miles from my home. I figured I could run down there and refuel and then head back.

With the relatively cool weather of late, I wanted to see if there were any water fountains on the route and if not, I wouldn't risk dehydrating since I'd still be able to survive with only one refill. I ended up losing my sense of direction and didn't quite get down to my final destination. I took a wrong turn and ended up running through an industrial park and stopping at a convenience store to buy a bottle of water. Route can be seen here.

Ran into the HR spiking problem again. It started right after i came to a fork in the trail and i stopped trying to figure out which way to turn (BTW, I turned the wrong way). When I started back up again, HR spiked which continued on till i stopped at the convenience store to buy water. I didn't really realize the HR spiking at the time, since the HR was at about 170 which isn't out of the ordinary for me. When it spikes, it's usually in the 180's or higher on a long run. On the way back, the HR was no longer spiking and i gradually increased the pace. Looking at the chart, I didn't realize the huge elevation gain and loss on this route. No wonder, it felt like I was working so much harder on the way back even considering the slight increase in pace.

So this was definitely something I think I could do again. The tree cover keeps the sun off and there's enough traffic on the trail to keep things interesting. There was only one fountain on the route that I could see at the 5 mile mark which I think is about perfect since if I had actually gotten down to Edward's Garden at around the 10 mile mark, it would mean that I could refill the water bottle every 5 miles or so. I was also thinking that I could drive to Edward's Garden and run from there to the south. Hopefully the elevation loss and gain wouldn't be too bad from there.

So I signed up for a 5k race this Friday. This week is supposed to be a cutback week for marathon training so it fits into the training well as I can treat it as a bit of a taper week. I plan to do about 10 miles on Tuesday, 7 miles or so on Wednesday with some 800m repeats and then the race on Friday. I'll figure out what to do next weekend depending on how the race goes.

Have a good running week all!