Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Back to Back Long Run

Today was part two of back to back long runs. I stuck to dirt roads, muddy logging roads and hilly trails. The trails are still snow covered, but melting fast. In the beginning miles my quads were a little tired on the uphills from yesterday's run, but other than that I felt pretty good!

Running down a muddy logging road, I came to a clearing where they were still working. When I have to pass by logging operations, I slow down to a walk and try to make the loggers notice I am passing through. All that heavy machinery scares me. Today one of the younger guys said, "go right through that way, Mrs. V" pointing out a path through the mess. He must have been a friend of my son, Dan to know that I was Mrs. V. I'll hear about it from Dan later. His friends like to tease him that his mother runs around town in skimpy outfits. Today I was wearing long sleeves and long pants, no scandal there.

About 2 hours into the run I suddenly felt tired and wished I was done. Luckily, I had a very pleasant stretch of trail ahead of me at this point and then only a few miles on the road to get back home. I made it through the trail stretch, but was fading fast. I came to a junction where I had the choice of continuing down the trail to the road, which would make it about 2 more miles to go or getting to the road by cutting through a farmer's muddy field full of cows, which would give me only about a mile left to run. Cows make me nervous. They are so big and clumsy looking. But I was so tired I chose the cows. I tried to blend in, making a few mooing sounds as I passed through. I don't think anyone was fooled.

When I got home and checked my watch, it said 2:42:24. Only about 10 seconds difference from the time I spent running yesterday! The pace was a lot slower today, though! I fit in 18.5 miles in that amount of time yesterday, and only 15.5 today. The terrain was a lot tougher today.

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