This run has become my go-to,
pre-work run. It starts out a little rough on Falcon Parkway as there isn’t a
lot of room to run on the side of the road and there is still a fair amount of
traffic with people driving to work and/or school. Once I get through about a
mile and half its nice quiet back roads for most of the rest of the run. It
also has a couple of good little hills in it and I feel like I run a much more
honest pace on the road.
Tuesday, October 2: Flowery Branch Roads – 7 miles – My car tire
blew out yesterday, so I had to drop the car off to get it replaced in the
morning, which meant no run until after work. Fortunately, I got done with
everything early enough to get out for seven miles before the sun set. I hit my
FB loop and planned to make the decision on five or seven once I got to the old
burnt out factory that I can either turn left and run five or stay straight and
run seven. I elected for the seven mile route, but my stomach was killing me.
There was a point when I didn’t think I’d make it back to the office. I had to
stop in an abandoned lot and take care of it. After that things smoothed out a
little bit but my stomach was still off the rest of the night. Just one of
those days I guess.
Wednesday, October 3: Flowery Branch Roads – 7 miles – Same old
today. Nothing special, but I did feel much, much better than I did yesterday.
Thursday, October 4: Flowery Branch Roads – 7 miles - Up early
again to get in my standard morning seven. Felt okay, but I need to hydrate
better. Drove downtown after work for face to face then raced back up to Suwanee
for trivia. It did not go well. We got smoked. Oh well, fight on.
Friday, October 5: Little Mulberry Park – 8 miles – Ran from the
Hog Mountain entrance out to the carriage trail, up to the west meadow trail,
around the ravine loop, down around the pond loop trail, up to east meadow then
back down carriage road and around Miller lake back to the car. It’s a solid
eight mile run (officially 8 according to my garmin) with some decent climbs,
especially the carriage and ravine trails. They use park of this park as a
local cross country course and Dirty Spokes is hosting an XTERRA race there in
November.
Saturday, October 6: GEHC Trails – 8 miles – It was good to get
back out on the GEHC trails for a run. With the sunrise coming around 7:30 I haven’t
spent much time out on those trails lately as I’ve been doing most of my runs
from the office. I’ve gotten in a few three/five mile runs out there but I
haven’t done the full eight since the first weekend of the Strava 100 mile
challenge. This was a decent run, nothing too crazy, I didn’t wear a watch and
just cruised through it. Amanda hasn’t been out on her bike in a about week and
it’s probably a good thing because a lot of the greenway trail was washed out
by the heavy rain earlier in the week. It’s also becoming increasingly clear
each time I run on the GEHC trails that the back section of the sweetgum trail
is going to be unusable pretty soon due to construction.
The construction has actually
caused Tim to reroute the XTERRA course next weekend. I kicked around the idea
of running a race at the GEHC today, but I decided to save the 35 bucks and
wait till next week. I’m fully on board with paying 25-35 bucks for XTERRA and
Dirty Spokes because I know what kind of race they put on and where that money
is going but it’s tough for me to plunk down 35-40 bucks for a random race. If I
had paid for that Kaiser Permanente race I would have been pissed. I got second
and they don’t even have results posted anywhere. Weak sauce.
Sunday, October 7: Monument Run in Washington DC – 8.5 miles – Awesome
run! We flew into DC for the game and after doing a little exploring on Saturday
night, I woke up Sunday morning and ran from Pentagon City into DC. I headed
out to the Pentagon from our hotel in Pentagon City and ran up to the Arlington
Memorial Bridge, across the bridge to the Lincoln Memorial. From Lincoln, I ran
down to the Vietnam memorial then along Constitution Ave. and up to the south
lawn of the White House. I stopped at the fence and looked around for a little
while, the security guards perked up a little bit since it was early and I was
the only person out there. After the White House I ran back down past the
Washington monument, around the WWII memorial then back along the reflecting
pool past Lincoln, across the bridge and back to Pentagon City. This was a
really, really cool run. The WWII memorial was awesome to see. It wasn’t there
the last time I was in DC and it was impressive to see both at night and during
the day. I found the Massachusetts section and paused for a minute to pay
homage to both of my grand fathers who served in WWII then headed back to the
hotel to get ready for the game.
Weekly Totals: 53 miles on seven runs – This was a really solid
week for me. I always have a lot of difficulty staying consistent during the
football season with work but I’ve been able to say within the 40-45 MPW range
every week this season, except for last week after the west coast trip. This
week was a big positive that makes me feel like I really have a good shot of
training with some consistency through the season before I ramp things up in
the late winter/early spring in preparation for the marathon.
