I didn't have time or cooperative weather to run again until Friday when I got in a short hilly run at William O'Brien State Park. It took me almost 50 minutes to get warm and loosen up. I can tell I haven't been stretching nearly enough when it takes that long.
Saturday was National Trails Day and the Ice Age Trail Foundation was looking for people to do every section of the trail at some point during the day. I volunteered to participate and was assigned a 5 mile section of trail between County Road E and County Road O in Polk County. Fortunately it's only a few miles down the road from my house but I still had to be out of the house by 6:00am so I could do the trail as an out and back run and still make it to work on time. It's been raining consistently for the past few weeks so nobody has had a chance to do any trail maintenance yet this year. Given the lack of trail work and the recent logging of some of the county land the trail crosses through I had a rough morning. There were places where I lost the trail completely and wandered around being attacked by mosquitoes until I found a yellow blaze on a tree. Some of the trail markings were on trees that had been cut down so I had to be careful about blindly following arrows or I'd end up taking a left when I should be going forward.
The mud was so thick I nearly had my shoes sucked off my feet seven times in 10 miles.
Even with the poor trail conditions, the mud, getting lost and losing so much blood to the mosquitoes it was still a beautiful morning to be out on the trail.
Monday, 7:30am - First hill run of the season at Afton. Ugly.
15.04 miles in 2:38:01 = 10:30/mile
Avg. HR - 149
Friday, 6:00pm - Willy 'O ski trails.
7.59 miles in 1:09:45 = 9:11/mile
Avg. HR - 156
Saturday, 6:30am - IAT swamp "run"/blood drive.
10.6 miles in 2:18:19 = 13.03/mile
Avg. HR - 140
Weekly total: 33.23
5 comments:
Oooo, I like that last shot of the clouds.
What were you doing on your section of the trail? Five miles seems like a big chunk to clean up.
David,
Fortunately no clean-up require by me. It was National Trails Day so the IAT Foundation had a goal of having every mile of the trail hiked/run in a single day. Given that yesterday was also the Kettle Moraine 100 I think they should have just counted those miles for the entire trail...that should have been well over 1,000 total miles. Did you see the weather over there at KM100? They had severe storms for a good portion of the day. 100 miles and you get major storms. Not a fun combo.
Once I heal, I'll have to join you and Joel for your hill runs.
Make that IF I heal.
Instead of me cleaning up the IA trail on Saturday, it cleaned me up.
I was watching the weather down there. You all must have been pummeled! Can't wait to read the reports!
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