3 blind moose

So much to say and so little time to say it... and I'm still very tired and need more sleep. This post will be mostly just the highlights and pictures.
The choice of wine was appropriate at many levels.
Marc's camp is, well a running camp to die for. Eat, sleep, drink, run, repeat.

The standard butt shot for the Pink Lady, pre run on Saturday morningIt was a little chilly but nothing we couldn't handle with the right gear. Andrew was showing his age a little too, don't you think?

After the run we scouted out the course for Sunday's long run. This is the view from the top of Tory Hill , which was the big climb we did. As you can see there are some big hills in this region of Maine. We're about 15-20 miles away from Sugarloaf Mountain which has an elevation of over 4000 ft.Here's the Garmin plot for Sunday's run with the elevation in green and my erratic heartrate in red. You can see our little rest breaks where the red line drops drastically, mostly for water and gear but also to avoid very large dogs. You'll have to check out Marc's blog for more pictures and the full story about those man eaters.

Between the beer, ice cream, bagels, coffee and naps we got two great runs in. We kept saying to Marc that he's so lucky to have all these great hills to work with but he just keep looking at us like we were nuts. There is only two directions around here, up or down, no flat and easy to be found anywhere.

Saturday morning was an easy 8 miles as an out and back or should I say down and up where I/we deliberately tried to run slow as we could. It was a cold morning -20C (-2F) but not a breathe of wind and we had a comfortable run with the right layering (once we got warmed up of course).

Sunday's run was another story. After taking our time getting ready with lots of coffee and food we were on our way into more hills. The final plan to park the car at a midpoint area of the run turned out to be a saving grace in this brutal 20 miler. The 1st mile was a gradual rise which then quickly turned into a really tough long climb with about a 900ft elevation change. The monster dogs were actually a nice rest break near the 1/2 way point up where we had a short flatish respite before an even more brutal downhill. My yaktraks were put to good use in maintaining myself upright with the light snowcover on the ground.

Of course going down only meant one thing and that was more uphills over even more treacherous backwoods logging roads. The lack of traffic made it a safe run from that point of view but the footing was tough for Marc and Andrew without cleats. But we soldiered on with no other options available to us, finally arriving at the car around the 14 mile mark. The final 6 miles got progressively more difficult and it was a great relief to finally be able to stop after doing an out and back to Marc's house. A run to remember guys! Thanks for a great weekend.

It's now more than 36 hrs since the run and I'm still tired and sore. Time to get some more sleep I think. Good running!