Monday; Jan. 7: Opps....day off from running and the gym. Sometimes you just need it.
Tuesday; Jan. 8: To the gym early for abs, back, and triceps. Then, Traysen and I were out the door for an easy 7 miler. We found a new trail! Peachtree City is loaded with spurs that branch off of the paved paths. The particular trail we found was loaded with rocks, tree roots, a hill or two and popped out at the track where we do speed work! Who Knew? One great find on this trail was a very steep hill (short but very steep) that will be great for practicing some of the climbs in the Georgia Death Race.
Wednesday; Jan 9: Well, I have finally join the 21st century! Not only have I slowly moved away from running in cotton t shirts (to the moisture wicking techy types), I now have a Garmin. Yep, a forerunner 110 that will do just enough to know the mileage, the time, and the pace. After loading the require data to Garmin Connect, it was kinda neat to see the elevation gain/loss and the actual course on a map. Today, the first outing with the Garmin, was a good 12 miler. Traysen the doberman skewed the stats a bit with a few tree waterings, one lengthy pit stop, a few "wanna chase the squirrel" slowings, and then several "Hey MOM,, let's see how fast we can make the Garmin go!!!!"
Thursday; Jan 10: Hill repeats were the order of the day! Traysen and I took off with some barely daylight to wind our way along Hip Pocket, aka: Hill Pocket. After ducking under Hwy 74 and wandering through Planterra, we ended up on our favorite hill in the Line Creek Nature Area for 6 grueling hill repeats. The hill of moment was a 100 foot climb in a quarter of a mile. (These details are easy to see once the run is loaded into Garmin Connect!) Although sluggish on my part, it was a good overall effort for 10 miles total and Traysen once again thought his Mom had lost her marbles with all the repeats on the same piece of ground!
Friday; Jan. 11: Lazy girl here finally got out the door at 8am! Some days we just need to sleep in and take our time in getting out there and in the run itself. It's outings like these where confidence your overall running plan/commitment are key, knowing you will continue in the big picture of running.
Since the race in March will most definitely have some walking sections (given the vertical profile), I decided to practice that technique. Many folks call it "power" walking. Traysen and I call it an easy day that is a test in walking fast ability and a test in patience since it takes quite a bit longer to cover the distance. Today was a good 5.6 miles (we can now be that accurate with the Garmin!!!) and then boredom took over and we called it a day!
Saturday; Jan 12: A busy day ahead, Traysen and I were out the door for a nice 12.4 miles in Peachtree City. He has gotten used to Mom venturing through the woods, off the path and hopping over tree roots...which is good because now that the leaves are off the trees, I am finding new trails all over the place! Some are rather short lived, but I can usually link these to other sections of trail and spend quite a bit of time off pavement.
Sunday; Jan. 13: Driving 2 hours to Vogel State Park at 330am provides some serious quiet time. No traffic, no radio, no dogs....just ole Sarah and her thoughts to ponder. Once at Vogel, I met up with good running pals Katie and Angela for an awesome 22 miler along the Coosa and Duncan Ridge Trail. This was a run on one of the hardest sections of the GA Death Race course. As an out n back, we had over 10,000 feet of elevation change during the 22 miles! Some of those climbs rival anything Colorado can dish out! A great outing to say the least and the weather was perfect! Cloudy, misty, and cool the entire day! This area reminds me of a warmer Mt. Washington! It is always raining!
Coosa Backcountry Trail: running in this mist is perfect! Running in the GA mountains is always a muddy adventure!!!
Summary: A great week of running. The training for the 60 mile race in March is going well and it is full steam ahead. No aches or pains, the head is in the right place and the miles are of good quality.
As a side note: I had intentions of going to run in the mountains both Sat and Sun. With some "life" Saturday did not happen; it was a local run in Peachtree City. Luckily, the schedule was easily adjusted and more miles were actually run over the weekend than originally planned. And that is how it goes for the those of us with real lives. We can't always get the exercise/running completed as we plan or as we desire. But most of the time with a few adjustments, we can still "git 'er done." So, even when "life" gets in the way of running/exercising, make some adjustments and do what you can. Something is always better than nothing.
Total for the week: 70.0 miles
Total for 2013: 130.0. ..which is 37.0 miles more than this time in 2012. Oh well...so much for cutting back on the running!!!
"GA Death Race" sounds like your kind of run!!
ReplyDeleteCooper doesn't understand hill repeats, either.
For us in CO, temps got in the way of our running this week-- MINUS 9 on Monday's drive to work! The Incline Club went out on Sunday with -2 showing at my house--the air was filled with pixie dust of light twinkling on the frozen moisture in the air. Beautiful!