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.