Becoming a Morning Person

My peak time of day for physical activity is between 10AM and 6PM. This is when I have the most energy. But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I decided to start a new running routine with the start of my new job. I decided to become one of those dedicated early morning runners.

 I haven't owned an alarm clock in a very long time and it was a big deal for me to purchase one. I felt like it was a sign that I was giving up my happy-go-lucky lifestyle. But the alternative was to use my loud, annoying and obnoxious cell phone alarm, which launches me into a cardiac arrhythmia when it goes off. So I bought an alarm clock.

I get out of bed at 5 and dress in my running clothes as quietly as possible so as not to set the cats and dog into making premature morning demands. Coffee goes into a travel mug, I grab my gym bag full of work clothes, lap top, lunch bag and cheap imitation over sized hand bag. (I already conformed with the alarm clock thing, I'm not about to give in to hand bag pressure!) In that hand bag is everything I might need for my day in the office... coffee creamers, mints, glasses, used tissues, chewing gum, lip stick, crossword puzzles, dental floss and  a spoon. Like a good Boy Scout, I am prepared.

I'm out of the driveway by 5:15. I am the picture of efficiency! I drink coffe and sing at the top of my lungs all the way to Portland.

I pull into the parking lot at the Planet Filth-ness and take off for my run. I run between 4 and 7 miles depending on how much wine I had with dinner the night before. I vary my route from day to day to prove that I am still a free spirit at heart. I usually meet up with the two homeless men and their homeless dog at some point and often the double amputee in his wheelchair who likes to play chicken with me on the exercise path.

Back at the gym I check my watch to determine how much attention I can put into shower, hair, and makeup that morning. I refuse to touch anything in the locker room except for the shower control and I refuse to talk to anyone because the last thing I need is a gym buddy.

Between 10 and 20 minutes later I am pulling into the parking garage at work with dirty wet running clothes draped to dry all around the interior of the car. I sprint down the street with my giant hand bag, laptop, and lunch bag and always make it to my desk before 8:00.

This routine requires preparation. I spend about a half hour after work each day getting things set up for the next morning.  In return for this small sacrifice I have lost about 5 pounds, I feel energetic all day, I sleep great, and I have time and energy to take a brisk evening walk with kevin and Scout most nights. Also I am getting good mileage in and regaining my fitness.

Loving Pre-Dawn Urban Running

Starting my fantastic new job two weeks ago has inspired me to get back into a routine with my day to day life, something that just hasn't been possible in recent years due to relentless and unpredictable work days. The last time I was able to have any sort of routine with running, fitness, diet, household responsibilities,  and maintaining my personal relationships with family and Friends was about 7 years ago when I stopped working regular hours in a hospital setting. I am very happy to be working a regular schedule again with a real start and finish to each day's work!

I thought it might be difficult adjusting to early morning runs through the streets of Portland. I imagined I would have to gradually ease into the routine, getting used to earlier awakenings, adjusting my meal times accordingly, adjusting to the bitter early morning cold and darkness, re-learning to navigate the streets of Portland, and slowly building my mileage back up from the pathetic level it had slipped to. But instead it has been incredible easy. I haven't missed a single morning yet! The only glitch was that my workplace has no shower facilities. I must have asked the building administrator six times, "are you sure there isn't a shower somewhere in this building?"  I ended up joining the closest cheapest dirtiest smelliest gym around and can now shower before work for only ten bucks a month. I guess I can live with that.

I don't run the same route each morning because I like variety. I've been parking in the gym's lot and running 40-50 minutes each morning on roads, sidewalks, and paved and dirt exercise paths. I often run right through what are normally the busiest streets of the Old Port, but I am early enough that I see very little traffic. I often run the paved path from the ferry terminal, timing it so I can watch the sunrise over Portland Harbor. I've also hit the Deering neighborhoods, Back Bay, Stroudwater, Eastern and Western Proms ...there is so much to see. Once the ice melts I will get out onto  dirt single track trails. There isn't much of that in Portland, but enough to get me off the streets a little.

There will come a point in the future when I will be able to work from home (but its going to take a while before I'm confident enough in my new role to fly solo) and when that time comes I will be very happy to get back to my country roads and trails. For now, urban road running is fine. I still get my woods runs in on the weekends, often in Vermont. I feel very fortunate to have so much control over my day to day life. I can plan ahead and commit. Holy Hell, I even have a few dates set to meet friends for runs before and after work next week! Life is good.

East Haven Mountain

From our East Burke camp on any cold morning, a large frost covered mountain occupies the landscape off to the northeast. Before finding its official name on the topo map, Kevin and I referred to it as Frost Mountain. It is actually 3031 foot East Haven Mountain. It lies in the middle of heavily wooded hilly  terrain and there are no maintained trails to its summit.

Kevin and I have been exploring the woods between our camp and this mountain for some time now. Last Sunday, Scout and I left camp early to get some running miles in on the hard packed snow. We ran old logging roads, a short bushwhack, and snowmobile trails. It was hillier than I remembered so I was worried we wouldn't make it back to our rendezvous point in time to meet Kevin, who was doing a more direct bushwhack hike in. So I pushed the pace and enjoyed hearing my heart thumping in my chest for a change (I don't usually push very hard out on the trails). Scout and I made it to the meet up spot but saw no sign of Kevin so we started slowly back along the tote road, listening for tell-tale crunching off in the woods. And there it was, almost immediately, crunching of snow and snapping of twigs. These woods are so still and quiet we could hear him from a long way off. We kept moving slowly along the road in hopes of intercepting him as he stepped out onto the road. We only missed him by about 15 feet!

From there we set off for East Haven Mountain. The temperature was a mild 20 degrees, the sky was clear and blue, and the woods were beautiful. Scout scampered about with energy to spare. There had been a dusting of snow the night before so we saw a million snowshoe hare tracks, fox tracks, deer and moose tracks, and ground bird tracks. We followed the snowmobile trail in a direction we hadn't been before and then branched off onto an old tote road which seemed to head in the right direction. We were gaining altitude steadily and definitely moving closer and closer to the mountain!

Then we started noticing a few drops of blood in Scout's paw prints. We are having trouble finding booties that will stay on his feet. His feet are too big for the extra large size! So this day he was out without booties. He would have been fine if he stayed on the hard packed snow, but he likes to go crashing around on the brambles and brush where the crusty snow beaks away under his feet. Soon we noticed BIG drops of blood and called him back to us. He was happy as ever and not limping at all, but he had torn a nail off one of his paws and it was oozing blood pretty badly. I took off my hat and used it to hold pressure until the bleeding slowed down. Kevin checked our altitude and saw it was 2200 feet. We took one last look up at the summit, sighed, and  started back.

And that's the way it is with these hikes off the beaten trail. But at least we know how to get there now. The topo map shows the tote road not going all the way to the summit, but it will get us pretty darned close. Next time Scout will have something on his feet, even if its only duct tape!

Run-joring

I have avoided taking Scout running on the roads with me. While I love running the trails with him, I didn't want to run with him on a leash.  Scout tends to think of leash walking as an opporunity to sniff around and see what all the other neighborhood dogs and cats have been up to, causing multiple unplanned and sudden stops. Unpleasant while walking, but dangerous on the run. I am not a particularly graceful runner so it doesn't take much to trip me up.  Another concern I had was that Scout is an overly-enthusiastic runner. For him, running involves sprints, jumping jacks, tail chasing, and hurdling over large obstacles. Since he and I weigh roughly the same, I pictured myself being dragged along through those various antics.

Tonight I decided to bite the bullet and try a road run with him. As soon as he saw that I had changed into running clothes, the above mentioned antics began. He jumped over Kitty twice and chased his tail for three full rotations before we even left the house. I snapped the leash onto his collar and hung on.

We headed down the sidewalk at about 5 minute mile pace. He was pulling for all he was worth and I was just along for the ride. I wasn't even breathing hard, he was doing all the work. I felt like Sandy Pittman being short-roped up Everest by Lopsang. There was a lot of flooding along the sides of the roads but Scout didn't care. He dragged me right through the deepest parts. Just as I decided we needed to stop and re-group he came upon a pile of horse crap and stopped dead in his tracks and dropped to the ground to roll in it. I jumped over him and came to an abrupt stop when the leash ran out of slack.

Once I got him away from the horse crap we had a heart to heart talk. "Go ahead and pull," I told him, "but not hard enough to injure me, please." He seemed to understand because he calmed down. We started up again and he was still pulling but not as hard as before. Now, it was fun because I could move faster than usual while putting in the same effort as I usually do. Now instead of feeling like Sandy Pittman, I felt like a skijorer. While being short-roped up Everest may not be good sportsmanship, Skijoring is perfectly legitimate. We did four very fast miles. Boy, did we fly around the neighborhoods!

Brownfield Bog

I was ready for some different scenary on Friday, so I decided to drive over to Bridgton and run the snowmobile trails. I showed Kevin where I was going on the map, because he likes to know where to look for me if I don't come back when I'm supposed to. I loaded Scout into the car and drove off toward Bridgton. But as we were passing through Brownfield I veered off onto Bog Road and drove to Brownfield Bog instead.

The gate was closed for the winter, but a nice little parking area had been plowed out by the gate. The dirt road from there was packed hard snow. It looks like a snowmobiler went through at some point, and then lots of skiers and snow shoers had been over that. The resulting surface was perefect for screw shoes.

It's only about 2 miles from the gate until you hit water (or ice this time of year), but with a side trip here and there we were able to get about 5 or 6 miles in on our out and back run. The scenary there is very different than the rest of the region. It is flat and open with nice views of the surrounding hills. Pleasant Mountain could be seen very clearly from several points. I really enjoyed myself!

When I got home and told Kevin I hadn't gone to Bridgton after all, he said he knew I wouldn't make it that far without seeing somewhere else where I just had to stop and run. So true.

Little Mac Attack...and Retreat

With another disappointing snow year here in Maine, I feel lucky to have our little camp up in Vermont. There isn't a huge amount of snow up there, but definitely enough to get out on the snowshoes without feeling like its a fake. I really have an issue about using snowshoes on a surface that could be run or walked on without even sinking in a centimeter!

Sunday, Kevin, Scout, and I set out into the woods at the Victory/Burke town line. We were heading for a little mountain our map called "Little Mac." Temperatures were comfortable in the low twenties, but intermittent gusty winds and frequent snow squalls made things interesting. About an hour and a half into our hike, Kevin and I both stopped and looked at each other. It had been getting darker and darker, and now we could hear what sounded like a freight train coming over the ridge line. We were suddenly hit with blinding snow and winds that were strong enough to whip the big trees around above us. Scout, only a short distance ahead, disappeared from view as a gray curtain of snow dropped between us. When we called him he came bounding into view looking thrilled about the exciting weather.

We went on until the next intersection where we decided to turn back due to the unpredictable weather. I wanted to go on, but agreed to turn back after realizing that the area we were in wasn't like the well traveled and packed trails in the Whites. If we got off trail or stranded out in these woods, it would be a while before anyone found us, like maybe next hunting season. Instead of going back the same way we had gone in, we took a little cut off trail that was a screeching steep fast and fun downhill that took us to the North Pasture Ski Trail. The ski trail was packed well enough for me to do some running. I tried to run all the ups, which was exhausting because there were a lot of them and because I haven't been running much lately! As we headed back, the sun came out brightly and the winds died down...until about the last 100 yards which felt like we were in a wind tunnel. When we got close to the truck we saw where a big moose had been walking around just a short time earlier. We were sorry to have missed seeing him.

We sure enjoyed the crazy weather we experienced even if we didn't get to the top of Little Mac. We'll get it next time.

Humility

The trails have become mush due to the warm temperatures over the past week. I ran on the wet slush on Saturday until my legs ached, but I've stuck mostly to the roads since then. I don't take Scout on my road runs and this disappoints him when he sees me head out the door in running clothes. So yesterday, I parked the car before I got home and ran from the rescue complex. I dressed in whatever stray items of clothing I could find in my car and a pair of running shoes that Scout had chewed up when he was a puppy. During the run I took a brief side trip onto the snowmobile trail, but it was wet, slippery, and not much fun so I returned to the pavement.

I stepped out of the woods just in time to see a local runner who passes my house quite frequently. The notable thing about her is how composed she always looks while running. Her outfit is always stylish and well matched, every hair on her head is in place, her running shoes are always spotless and bright and in a complimentary color to the rest of her outfit, and her running form is perfect.  She should do television commercials for running products.

Without her noticing, I fell in behind her and tried to keep up. I made up some distance when she stopped to take a brief walk break (Galloway method?) but the rest of the time I could only hold the same gap between us. Not only does she look good running, she moves pretty fast, too. I could imagine the drivers coming at us from ahead  saying, "look, there's the flawless runner... and today she has a poor tag-along homeless woman chasing her."  They didn't need to worry, I never caught her.

After the run it was time for my Insanity workout. This week Insanity moved up to the next level. So not only was I demoralized on my run, I was also humiliated by Insanity. The workout actually brought me to my hands and knees a few times. My fitness is improving, but I still have a way to go!