This week’s mileage was pretty stiff & clunky. Last week’s race did a number of my body, primarily in my right ankle, but other random foot-parts were sore as well. I did one longish run on Wednesday down to the Boston Landmark Orchestra, but other than that I was mostly spending time on the treadmill, running gingerly.
On Friday I remembered that forever ago I had signed up for a trail race, the Beverly Commons Trail Run. I did this race last year, and had a good time, so ok, I’m game to try again.
The course was two loops through the Beverly Commons, a fairly wooded area with a mix of steep single track and some logging type roads. The last mile of the loops is gradual downhill and fairly stable footing (you can see my pace pick up on the last mile in the green line plot at the bottom of the map above). I was trying to catch this guy ahead of me but despite closing on him, couldn’t, quite. The first lap was rather crowded but it seemed like much of the field disappeared on the second loop, leaving me to run alone at whatever pace I could manage. My final time was 1:08:39, 41 seconds slower than last year. This was good for 34th of 107 runners, and 12th of 21 in my division. It’s worth noting here than the winner (a 43yo dude) ran the 7.3 miles in a 6:30 split, which is faster than I can run pretty much any distance on a nice flat road.
My next registered race is a 5 mile trail race on 9/21, in which (in theory) I’ll be running in a wolf costume. And although I haven’t registered yet, I’m also aware the Around Cape Ann 25K is a week from Monday (woo Labor Day). That’s another I did last year, and am considering giving it another shot.
Song of the week from today’s long slow recovery run, Out on the Wing by Superchunk.