Boyden Lake Fog Bowl Run

Another sunrise shot but this is not how it looked out there today. We made a little detour around midrun on the new extension of the Sipayik trail which now intersects with Route 1. This flat/soft paved asphalt walking trail goes for about 1.8 miles along the shoreline of Gleason Cove and is part of the Pleasant Point Passamaquoddy reservation. It made a nice detour to get a few extra miles in but the fog was so thick we couldn't see more than a few hundred yards. We did see lots of waterfowl including ducks, Canada geese, and some neat little plovers or sandpipers.
So, another early Sunday morning run, this time meeting Andrew alone, for who knows what kind of workout (he likes to keep me guessing). The conditions were great today with no wind, temperatue about 55F (13C) and a light mist from the fog. My hopes of just doing just 17 were soon dashed as we sped along at a good pace from the get go and threw in the above mentioned out & back just for fun. I had a bit of a hard time keeping up with Andrew's fresh legs today while maintaining the required continual conversation but made him promise not to take any more days off before long runs. We'll see how that works out, as the game can work both ways and I reserve the right to thow in an unannounced marathon pace workout at any time!

We had a great run even if my gasping for air was more pronounced than usual and on reflection it was me setting the pace as much as A. In fact, we somehow pushed the last several 6-7 miles with splits working down from 7:52 to a 7:31 final mile despite the little hills along the way. Thank God for the visions of filet mignon and chocolate cake that kept me going and of course my little emergency pack of Powergel. Final numbers were 21.1 miles in 2:48 for 7:59 average pace and avg. heartrate of 136 (80% of my max).
Here's the loop with heartrate and the elevation profile. And just in time, for as soon as we drew to a stop it started to pour rain. Whew, glad that's over! Yet another super training run to put into the running bank. Thanks Andrew ;-)

Oh yeah, my training plan is still no plan and the total for last week was 50 miles with an average pace of 8:03. This seems a bit fast but I'm just going by feel right now. When I start real 'training' I'll need to pay attention to the hard/easy days but that's still a few weeks away. Until then the plan is to just run. Have a good week!