Next Up

With the arrival of training camp and the NFL season, my running is typically reduced from training to maintaining fitness. I have done a better job over the last couple of seasons of maintaining my fitness level to at least be able to race a few times between September and December. A lot of the races that I’ve have run have been a struggle, but I’ve at least lined up and been somewhat competitive, which is not something I could have said three years ago.

The last two years I’ve focused on running the XTERRA Georgia races in the fall. Those races have given me goals to shoot for, even if the goal has been to finish, and that’s helped me stay motivated to run five and/or six days a week. It’s funny looking back to when I first moved down to Georgia. That first fall, I probably ran two maybe three times a week and racing was the furthest thing from my mind. Now I’m writing a blog post about my race schedule for that same period. Live and learn I guess.

Goals are the key to getting me through this part of the calendar. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining because I know everyone deals with their own challenges when it comes to finding the time or motivation to train. Goals have been huge for me personally. It’s easy to chalk not training up to not having time, but I’ve found that if you set a goal and that goal is something that is important to you, then it’s easier to stay motivated. It’s not easy and there are still times that it’s a struggle, but at least the goal gives you a reason to push through that.

Okay, after that long winded intro here’s what I actually wanted to get into. What’s up next for me? Once again XTERRA is a goal of mine. I’ve won my age group for the last three years and that’s the goal for me again. The cool thing about the XTERRA series is that is stretches from September to August, so it’s a real test of being able to keep yourself in shape year long. Like I said above, I’m not always in race shape, see Ft. Yargo, Battle at Big Creek, or Thrill in the Hills last year, but it at least I kept myself in good enough shape to run.

XTERRA
The series starts in late September with the Harbins Park 10k and has one race per month (two in December before taking a break until February. This is a fun series, run on some of my favorite course in the area and it’s become something that I really look forward to. I’m hoping to be able to run a little bit faster this year, but I’ll get a little more into that in a bit.

Cross Country
I’ve been itching to run an XC race for the last couple of years. I really miss racing cross and I get super jealous whenever I see anything from the USATF New England XC series. Last year, my buddy Mitch Novy ran a race at a local college, so I looked into that, but none of the races matched up with home weekends for me. Fortunately, this season I’ve found one that doesn’t conflict with XTERRA or football at the University of North Georgia. It’s 20 minutes from my house so even though it’s a road weekend I can (hopefully) rip 8k and then make it down to the airport. The course is pretty familiar, utilizing some of the UNG Dirty Spokes course and I think it actually suits me pretty well so I am starting to get excited to go and rip it up with the college kids.

I’d love to run a few more XC meets, but the only one that would be realistic for me would potentially be the USATF Georgia championship race. Unfortunately, I haven’t been super impressed with them and in the past it’s been 1.5 hours away and only 5k while falling on the same weekend as a XTERRA race. If that trend continues, it probably won’t be worth it to go.

Georgia State Parks Trail Series
The Georgia State Parks series is put on by Dirty Spokes and two of the four races overlap with XTERRA races, so it’s a no brainer to do if I’m able to. I missed the first race due to training camp, but I should be able to make the rest of them, so I’m thinking ‘why not?’ Also, it’s sponsored by Barberitos and if free burritos are on the line then I’m in every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Georgia Cyclocross
I’ve really taken a liking to cyclocross over the last couple of years and I should be able to jump into a few races this fall on home weekends and the weekend after the Thursday Night game (mini bye!!!). My CX goals are really just to finish, not hurt myself, and not look like a total moron. That last one is going to be tricky. The one race I’ve done, I rocked it over the barriers and on the run up, but the whole riding the bike part needs some work. Secretly, I’m hoping to do well enough to justify buying a CX bike and trying a gravel race or two in the spring. We’ll see how that goes.

Atlanta Thanksgiving Half Marathon
It probably seems like I’ve buried the lead a little bit listing this last, but I’m still up in the air about this race. I said at the start of camp that I would see how the month of August went and then make decision about whether or not I’d run it. I feel like this is a race I could do well in. It’s a tougher course, but I’d like to at least test myself and see what I can do. Now that we’re nearly through August, I feel like my training has gone well. I’ve made it to all of the track workouts that we’ve had and they’ve been solid. I could use more long runs if I’m going to train to race a half, but I think that’s one of those things that falls under the whole ‘setting goals’ thing. If my goal is to race and do well, then hopefully I’ll make time.

Right now I’m still up in the air and I should probably just suck it up and register, but I want to give myself a little more time before I sink 100 bucks into it. Hell, I’m not even sure if I can get out of work in the morning to make it to the race. I would like to get a fall half in one way or another though. I’ve got a eye on a marathon in 2016, so I’d like to take real shot a half before I decide to take that leap.

Looking at that list, it sure seems like I have a lot of irons in the proverbial fire this fall. I don’t know what that means right now, but I do know that I am excited to see how it goes. Having all of these different dates circled on the calendar definitely makes it easier for me to get out of bed and get my runs in. It also gives me something to look forward to in my free time, and if you know me, you know I’m all about maximizing every minute of the free time that I have during the football season.

Video Race Recap: XTERRA Georgia Allatoona Creek 15k

This is how I look after running a 15k on 4 hours of sleep.

Catching Up

Time to catch up on the last few weeks of running and racing. If you actually read this regularly, then first of all thank you very much. You are awesome. Also you know that I was not too pumped about my performance at the Peachtree Road Race. In retrospect, I went out too fast and that's why things went "south". If I would have just run the splits that my workouts suggested, I probably would have been fine. Maybe I wouldn't have run as fast as I wanted to, but I would have easily finished inside the top 50, which was my goal at the beginning of the year. Instead of running smart, I decided to go for it and I paid dearly in miles 4 and 5, running nearly six-minute pace for the hilly section of the race. Oh well. It is what it is.

Fortunately, the weekend after the Peachtree debacle Amanda and I made our annual trip back home which meant that I got to spend a week road tripping around New England hitting up some of my favorite spots. We flew home on Saturday morning and Amanda jumped on the train to head down to Providence to spend some time with her dad and sister. I headed home and kicked off my vacation by jumping on my dad's bike for a 38 mile tour of the Tri-Town.

I rolled out on some Middleton back roads heading north into North Andover before hanging a right into Boxford. The virtually car-free roads were great and it was nice to be able to ride for miles without spending much time on main roads. Down in Georgia nearly every road is some kind of main thoroughfare unless you are really out in the country. I cut through Boxford and into Topsfield where I hit the rail trail. The rail trail made for some awesome riding, crushed gravel and dirt where super fun even on my dad's road bike. I let a pinch of air out of the tires and had a nice cushy ride. I followed the rail trail from downtown Topsfield to 97 in Wenham where I jumped back on the road and swung around into Danvers. I rode up to St. John's Prep where I got momentarily lost before getting back on track and heading back through Topsfield and into Middleton for the sprint finish behind Howe-Manning school.

This ride was a great way to kick of the vacation and really made we wish we had more non-paved greenway trail in Georgia. Don't get me wrong we have awesome greenways, but the dirt and gravel sections were a blast. After Saturday's ride, I ventured to York Beach with my parents for a family beach day. I ended up getting around eight miles in, running a loop from short sands beach up past the Nubble Light and along long sands then around and back to short sands. It was nice running along the water but warmed up quickly once I turned inland. I ended up cooling off in the water, which is a testament to how hot it was. The Atlantic in Maine is always frigid.

After knocking out Maine on my New England road trip, I headed up to the wilds of Vermont to meet up with  the 'last hero and only hope' Josh Ferenc. I got up to his version of the ATL (Athens Town Line) late Sunday night and we woke up early Sunday morning (thanks to his A-hole of a roster) to rendezvous with fellow Wild Endurance runner Greg Hammett and made our way to the White Mountains.

After driving to the bottom of Josh's driveway in his old Toyota Tercel, or whatever the hell it is, Greg and I both agreed it would be safer if we took my German engineered VW. Josh protested a little bit but I've hitchhiked twice in my life and both of those times I was with Josh. I don't view that as a coincidence. We drove up north towards St. Johnsbury then crossed over in to New Hampshire (state four if you are keeping track) and made our way to Franconia Notch near the base of Cannon Mountain.

I posted the video of our excursion, so I wont go to deep into it, but we started out at the Lafayette campground and run up the Falling Waters trail to where it meets with the Appalachian trail at the summit of Little Haystack. The way up was miserable. I was on the struggle bus early in the run since we went from the car to climbing nearly 3,000 feet in less than three miles. Despite my struggles on the ascent, I managed to claw my way up to the top using the cycling tactic of taking the lead when we stopped so I could drift back over time.

We took a short break at the top of Little Haystack, which was about an hour of running, all up hill I'll remind you, to refuel with some UnTapped and then continued on the AT along Franconia Ridge. We were treated to awesome views of the White Mountain National Forest and some really cool light clouds that rolled over the top of the ridge throughout the run. The views and terrain we awesome. Nothing but green mountains and rocky outcroppings as far as you could see.

We ran from Little Haystack up and over Mt. Lafayette (5,249 feet) and continued on along a spur trail before deciding to turn back and head down to the Green Leaf hut. We originally were hoping to continue on to Mount Garfield, but what appeared to be a short distance on the map, ended up being more like three miles, so we decided to make it a three hour run instead of a five hour one. After turning back we headed down to the AMC Green Leaf hut. For some reason the fact that these are called huts always made me thing they were small building that were kind of like a mountain side snack shack with a bunkhouse, but I was surprised at how big the hut was. It had a full kitchen and two bunkhouses with all kinds of cool stuff. I kind of wanted to just camp there for the rest of the day.

Free pancakes!

We stopped at the hut to refill our bottles for the final decent down the bridle path back to the car and I had to take advantage of the perfect mid run sack, free pancakes and UnTapped! After milling around for a bit and eating too many pancakes we got back on the trail to finish the run out. I was feeling pretty good when we stopped. My legs were obviously tired from the climbing, but I was running comfortably along the ridge and down to hut. That all changed after we started going again after our final stop. My quads were toast from descending and the last couple miles were a little rough. Fortunately, it wasn't long until we were off the mountain and I was able to keep it together until we got back to the car. After the run, we headed down to Lincoln to grab some pizza and swim in the Moosilauke Brook. The water was glorious and I could have hung out in the little spot we found all day, but after about an hour we decided to call it a day and head back to Vermont.

On the drive home I showed Josh how to view all the footage he got from the GoPro on my phone and he and Greg went through it all trying to figure out what was good and what was Josh's thumb covering the camera. When we got back to the house Josh broke out the vintage Cannondale that he had somehow picked up for 100 bucks. The thing is in great shape and probably actually worth 200-400 dollars. Since I was jealous I rode it every time that we hit out on the bikes for the rest of my stay.

The next couple days we got meh weather so that killed some of our plans to hit the local swimming holes, but we made up for it with a couple of really fun rides on some dirt roads around Vermont and a couple of nice and easy runs. We got to check out one of my favorite running spots in the area at Grafton Ponds, which is a biking, snowshoeing, and Nordic skiing spot in Grafton. I am planning on making a trip back up there in the winter and getting Amanda out on some of the snowshoe trails and hitting one of the local mountains for some downhill skiing as well. 

Last but not least, we made sure to stop by my absolute favorite VT spot to grab some ice cream. I went with maple walnut and maple cream because, Vermont. After three great days in the Green Mountain State, I made my way back home to Middleton to spend a little more time with my family before hitting the road again to spend a day on the beach in Narragansett, RI. After all of the driving around it was nice to park on the beach for a few hours. I ended up hitting five of the six New England state on the trip, all apologies to Connecticut, but I was happy with those five. It's kind of a weird way do a vacation when Amanda and I split up for most of the week, but we both had fun and got a chance to do some of the things we really like with some people that we rarely get to spend time with. 

Unfortunately, we had to cut our trip a little short again this year so I could make it back for a Dirty Spokes race, but as always it was great to be home. This trip always makes me miss New England big time. 

I almost forgot...here's what the Franconia Ridge run looked like.