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Friends:Breakheart DanTrail Pixie Trespas Kevin kZ Trailgrrl Michelle RunninRob Cookie Monster Steve Latour Pictures:AlbumRunning Data:20102009 2008 |
Fri, 12 Jun 2009Having run 20.5 miles at an average 9:49/mile pace on May 31, I was feeling pretty self-congratulatory. I seemed to be staying on my possibly too ambitious plan to reach a 70 mile a week training load by October. I ran a couple of short runs later in the week with a 12 mile run between them on Wednesday for a total of nearly 49 miles in a 7 day period. All of this was on pavement. Unfortunately, I was developing some nagging pain. The road shoes I had bought in September now had 525 miles on them. I had run another 272 on trails (mostly Skyline) during the same time. The cushion was giving out on the road shoes, and I had metatarsal pain and heel pain for the first mile and a half of every run. Worse, my left knee was making a disturbing clicking sound fairly often. So it was with some trepidation that I set out to run 21 miles or 3:30 hours whichever came first at Willowdale starting at 4 am last Sunday. Fortunately I had Trail Pixie's Gator-Bait Gaiters to protect me. I brought a video camera in a misguided attempt to capture the beauty and solitude of running at night. Needless to say the result is largely black screen with occasional shots of me, a disembodied headlamp, talking to the camera. I set out slowly, tiredly trudging over the gravel. In time the cold creakiness wore off, but I continued to feel weak. After about 20 minutes, I stumbled but caught myself. Another 5 minutes later I stumbled again barely getting a leg under myself. At about three miles, I tripped on a root falling hard on my right shoulder and hip and sliding several feet through the dirt. My flashlight and headlamp flew down the trail. Fortunately they still gave off light and were easy to find. I had less luck with the camera. I crawled around for five minutes until I found it relatively unscathed. Gradually the sun came up, and I managed to get a good running trance going. In the section of single track South of trail intersection 40, the shadows closed in. It was still light enough to run without artificial light. Nevertheless, I hit another root and went down again. This time I slid harder onto my right shoulder, got a mouthful of dirt and pine needles, and rolled onto my back. Soon after this I realized I had lost my headlamp. It had been turned off but still on my head when I fell. Fortunately I took a wrong turn and found myself back where I fell about a half an hour later. View Willowdale Long Run, June 7, 2009 in a larger map The rest of the run for a total of 16 miles was relatively uneventful. I considered planning an early morning group run. I thought about planning a group Presidential Traverse, which turns out to be ironic. I ended up cutting the run short when I ran out of fluid. I appear to be drinking more from my hydration pack than from bottles. When I stepped off the trail, I was covered with dirt, but, thanks to Emily's gaiters, the inside of my shoes was pristine. I had just enough time once I returned home to shower and head to Connie's dance recital. the recital was spectacular, as always. Later in the week I bought a new pair of road shoes and decided to take extra rest days to give my legs a chance to recover. I'm a little concerned that instead of gradually increasing my training load, I may be following a cycle of attempting a cripplingly over-ambitious week followed by a week of forced rest. This in turn results, through guilt, in another outrageously ambitious week. I also found that Marc Chauvin had also been planning Presidential Trail runs in his May 27 post. Even more exciting, an email from Ryan Prentiss to a local group of trail runners resulted in an avalanche of planning. The upshot is that at least seven of us are planning to head up to run/walk the Presidentials in early August. |
