Back on track

Can you spot the gardener in this picture? She's never happier then when her hands are in the dirt. It's a lot of work but the results make it worthwhile.

The past week went quite well on the running front for a change now that my work schedule has slowed down a bit. All I have left is some report writing and one more meeting in mid-June to explain the results to my 'clients'. I'm already looking forward my my vacation for the month of July!! Anyway here's the weeks recap:

Sun- 10 quick miles before church
Mon - off as per usual
Tues - 6.5 mi easy cruise around town
Weds- 10 miles with killer 'Bunny Hill' x 4
Thus - 5 mi. easy, feeling it from Weds
Fri - still feeling sore and tired but managed 8 mi in 59:10 (7:22 pace) in the cold pouring rain. Picked up the pace trying to keep warm and then picked it up some more in the 2nd half where I was almost 'pushing it'. Nice run with bucket brigade to enter the homestead once again.
Sat - easy 10.2 miles to get the weekly total up to 50 for the 1st time since before Boston.

Total of 50.1 miles, 6hr 34min running and avg pace of 7:52 for the week (according to Garmin) and without any clock watching along the way. I'm feeling ready to start some serious training soon for my set of goal races this summer. The idea from RunNB is to Run for the Cycle where you do a 5k, 8k, 10k, 1/2 and full marathon and they take your total times for the overall score. So far I've got zero races entered because they only count events from RunNB. I guess I'd better get entered in a couple of races soon!

On Sunday I had a great run with Andrew today. He was car-less and so we met in his hometown of Eastport, Maine which is the eastern-most 'city' in the US. We did a few of his standard loops with comfort stops at his house on each pass. You can see from the track plot that we were all over the map and that there are more than a couple of hills on this seaside town (not city). The only flat stretch was the airstrip which is 3/4 mile long and but we only did 2 loops of that, despite my protests/pleas to do more loops. "Nooo, I have more hills for you to do" Andrew would say! One of the streets was even named 'Redoubt Hill' ;-)
Total of 17.4 miles in 2:21 with avg hr of 132 (70% effort) and while comparing notes after the run it was interesting to note that I was working at a higher effort level compared to Andrew despite having a lower HR. Sometimes life just isn't fair is it A? Oh, and we never saw the scenic ocean views with the thick fog the enveloped us for the entire run. The air temp of 50F (10C), lack of wind and natural air conditioning made for perfect running conditions today, unlike what poor 'Mad Dog' Phil suffered through down in Phoenix today. He's just going to have to come visit us some time to see the benefits of the northern climes ;-)

That's all for now. Have a great week!