Almost Head of Tides

Another early morning run. Up and out at 4:55 am into the fog. Boy, the woods are dark at 5:00 am on an overcast, foggy morning. I headed up and over Mt. Ararat and then out onto the Heath trail. It's a good thing I know a lot of these trails almost by heart as the roots were slick and it was difficult to navigate in the semi-darkness. I ran through the dank, saturated woods out to the field, where I stopped to pick a few raspberries - yum! Then over the new bridge and out onto the extended Cathance trails toward Head of Tides. I got just about to Cathance Road before turning around and taking the "quick" way back. Definitely not a fast run on these twisty turny trails today, but a fun one! Surprisingly, no animal sightings today. Perhaps it was because I had to focus too much to keep upright :-) 8.75 miles to finish out the week at 30.4 miles. Not planning on any running happening tomorrow through Sunday, although I'm bringing my running gear just in case I'm needed for pacing. Looking forward to the VT adventure!

Foggy, Soggy 12

Boy, this humidity, sheesh. This morning, the weather app said 100% humidity, and while it wasn't truly raining like it was on Tuesday, I'd still say100% was completely accurate. It didn't help that I was up at o-dark thirty so I could get in my miles before work, and when I left the house at 4:55 am there was a dense, low fog to run though. Or was it a cloud? Or mist? Who knows. Regardless, I was soaked fairly early on and remained that way for the entirety of the run. The one good thing was that due to the early hour, the fog and a bit of a breeze, there were no deer flies to bother me. I ran two loops of the cart paths and then a short out and back on the powerlines to get in 12 miles. I didn't feel bad, but i certainly wasn't super energetic - felt sort of tired (duh, it was early) and hungry by the end (again, duh, even with a few gels to chomp on, it really wasn't enough). In any event, glad to have had the chance to get some miles in, as this weekend is going to be taken up with the excitement and sleeplessness of crewing John at the VT 100! Really looking forward to it!

Seen: One fox bounding across the cart path; one deer, gazing silently at me through the mist as I ran past; one red newt; one snail with a really big shell; one turkey running across the cart path in that crazy way turkeys run; one catbird; two beautiful orange Wood Lilies.

Is That A Fish In My Shoe?!

I have gotten out of the habit of looking at the weather forecast. So this morning, I got up a little after 5:00 and went through my normal routine of getting ready for an early morning run. As I picked up my Garmin from the windowsill, I looked out and noticed it had just started to rain. I shrugged my shoulders. Oh well, I guess I was going to get wet. With the rain and the fact that it was still before 6:00 am, the woods were dark, and the roots, rocks and bog bridges were slick. It was raining pretty good, and if I wasn't getting wet from above, I was getting wet from the car wash that is the overgrown grass and ferns along the trailside.

As I climbed back up from the river onto the old road that runs by the Ecology Center, the rain stopped, and the deer flies came out. "Oh darn," I said to myself," The rain stopped. The bugs are out!" Well, apparently that thought was all it took ;) The heavens opened up, and this time it was serious. Buckets of rain! I was definitely drenched now! The trail, and then the cart paths, turned to small streams as the water rushed down the inclines. There was no avoiding the puddles. I got back home after 5 miles and 50 minutes, water-logged, and of course, once I got in the shower, the rain stopped. Guess the weather gods are telling me I should look at the weather a bit more closely from now on ;)

Mt. A. Hills

Hills on a Monday morning. Not sure if it's a good or bad way to start out the week, but it did confirm that I am tired! Whew. Not a lot of pep this morning, but that's OK. I got out there and did it, that's what counts. Repeat of last week's 'workout', with 6 loops up and down the hill, for a total of 4.25 miles. Very humid out. Saw three wood lilies blooming among the grasses along the powerlines - so pretty.

In other news, Sam and I had a lot of fun yesterday morning volunteering at the Scuffle race. It was a bit odd, but rather freeing, to not be racing. We had fun catching up with everyone before, during and the after the race, and Sam had a good time helping me set up the "aid station" at the start/finish area, filling cups of water, etc. She is also quite a good bell ringer, ringing the cow bell as runners came into the finish, and helped Ryan during the awards. Although my main goal in skipping the series this year was to relieve myself of the "pressure" I have felt the past few years running the races, I also think it is going to be good to bring Sam to the races, to show her why we do what we do and to let her know that volunteering is important. We have tended to leave her with the grandparents during a lot of our races, but we really do want her to understanding the trail running community that we love so much, so this is the perfect opportunity for it! Plus, she looks darn cute in her Trail Monster "dress" ;)

 Sam, waiting for the next runner to come through. Photo courtesy of Tamarella's Photographs.

After a yummy lunch at Edna & Lucy's, we went down to Mindy and Pete's for the afternoon. It was great to hang out with the Trail Monsters, and Sam had a blast playing with Hawkeye and the other kids. A busy, fun-filled day, for sure!

Sam hanging out with Hawkeye

Slow Afternoon Run in the Cathance

This morning while Ryan was at the Brad marking the Scuffle course and getting his run in, Sam and I headed to Portland to hang out with Kristen, Morgan and Rob for one last time before they set off to Rob's new station in Staten Island, NY. We have been very lucky the past 5 years to have them here in Maine so close to us, and it has been really fun watching Sam grow up with Morgan. She sure does love her cousin, and we will miss them all for sure.

I had had grand plans to get up early and be running by 5:30 am, so that I could get in my run before Ryan left for course marking, but considering I first woke up at 5:30, that means I probably missed the alarm go off about 8 times! Guess that wasn't happening! So, around 3:00 pm, I finally headed out for my run. Although the run was slow, my legs felt pretty good, and I'd honestly say I felt stronger than during yesterday's run. The thing that slowed me down the most was all the overgrown portions of the trails. Wow, things have grown even more since I was out there last Sunday! I had to pick my way through, and although the compression calf sleeves helped, I still came home covered in grass-induced hives on all unprotected portions of my legs. Guess I'm going to have to give these trails a rest for a while. It was warm, but nice and shaded in the woods, and fairly cool down by the river. I ran around the Vernal Pool on the return, and was treated to a few ripe raspberries. Yum! Also saw some Horned Bladderwort in the bog - what a name, eh? - which I've never seen before. Very neat. Got in 8 miles to finish off the week at 30.6 miles.

Beautiful Day

Billowing clouds, no humidity, bright sunshine, the sweet smell of milkweed in the air, field of grasses and wildflowers blowing in the warm breeze, tree swallows flitting about, the call of the red-winged blackbird, the sun sparkling off the ocean.

Got in a nice 12 miles through the Commons and out to Simpson's Point. The legs didn't feel quite as light and spry as I would have liked, but it is hard to beat this as a backdrop for a Friday afternoon run, so it certainly a bad way to spend a few hours. I really do love it out there.

Training?

Last night, I did some push-ups and lifted some of my dinky little 5 lb. weights with my wimpy little arms :) It was nothing major, but you've got to start somewhere when you haven't done any upper body workouts since the year 1997! And this morning, I got up and was out the door at 6:00 am for some hill repeats. Mt. Ararat, although small, packs a decent punch, and I managed 6 loops up and down the hill today - 4x going up the road and 2x going up the trail. My intent was to just try to stay steady on the uphill and work to pushing on the downhill and flats. I sure did feel like I got in a good workout, although I certainly wasn't fast! I ended up with 4.25 miles total.

Before you go all crazy, don't worry, I can promise you I won't be turning into one of those runners who loves track workouts and all that jazz. That is really not me. I've never been a true fan of "training" as what I really want to do is just go for a trail run and listen for birds and look at flowers and pick blueberries. But, Dr. Jamie keeps telling me that some of the weakness in my back is because my upper body is well, for lack of a better word, kind of puny ;), and I know that if I want to run well at Pisgah, I need to build up some strength on the hills (both up and down). So, I have penciled one hill workout a week into my planner, and am planning to do push-ups and weights 2x a week. Hopefully I can stick to it, and it will do me some good!

Saw a fox on the first climb up the road. It raced across the pavement, and stood on the embankment next to the tower, looking back at me for a bit before running off into the grasses at the top of the hill and disappearing. Beautiful animal.

Cart Path Run

The next few weeks are going to be interesting, running-wise, simply because of scheduling. I'm not running the Bradbury trail series this summer, so I have conceded Sunday morning to Ryan for running/directing and the afternoon to hanging out with the Trail Monsters. I didn't run yesterday, because, well, I just didn't get up in time :) And since I don't want to be running 5 days in a row right now, I chose to combine two of my 3-mile runs into one 6-mile run this morning. I think at this point, four days of running vs. five is fine, and that is likely how it is going to play out for the next few weeks too. Sometimes that is just how it goes.

I was up and out before 6:00 am this morning, and although the breeze was lovely and it was "only" 70 degrees, boy, was the air heavy! I was soaked in minutes. I ran the cart paths, which is always a nice run in the early morning hours. Saw a pair of Common Yellowthroats, an unidentified hawk and a catbird. Rescued a little eastern newt from the sidewalk, and heard the call of my friend the towhee. Didn't stop to pick any blueberries this morning, as I had already made a bathroom stop and the stop to move the newt, and thought that three stops in a 6 mile run seemed a little much :-) Legs felt good, so I'll continue to keep on chuggin'.

Just Another Day at the Beach

I'd never call us beach people, but look at us! We took Sam to the beach three out of the last four days!

After we both got our runs in this morning, we met up with Kristen and Morgan at Bow Street Market to get sandwiches and made our way over to Wolfe's Neck State Park. Our favorite ranger, Tammi, was manning the gate, so we stopped to chat for a bit until another car pulled up behind us. Then we headed to the picnic area and ate our delicious sandwiches, local strawberries and mini 4th of July cupcakes before heading out for a walk on the trails.

Our leaders

Bluebead lilies (photo by Sam)

Bog bridge

Partridge berries

We took the long way around, and so, went down to the shore at the opposite end of the park where we would normally go. After a short rock scramble, we were treated to a nice sandy beach with no one else on it. The water was quite choppy and churned up from the hurricane, but the girls had a blast sitting right at the edge, letting the waves rush up around them. We probably spent about 2 hours on the beach, enjoying the nice afternoon, the sunshine and the breeze. It was the perfect end to a really fun long weekend!

Fun in the waves

Sam, holding on, so she doesn't get knocked over by the waves

Whee!

Cousins

Beautiful day to walk along the beach

Snowplug Loop

Everyone was still sleeping when I left the house at 8:15. It's been a busy weekend, I guess! I headed out onto the Snowplug Loop for an hour long run. I was trying out my new CEP calf sleeve, figuring they'd also help keep my legs from itching due to the overgrowth that I was bound to find out on the trails. Saw a little gopher in the long grass along the playing field before I climbed the steep hill up the side of Mt. A. and found a big wild turkey feather (cool feather ID site, by the way!), which I stopped to pick up for Sam. I tucked it into the back of my hat, thinking it would do double duty there as a deer fly detractor, but luckily, it was windy and cool enough that not many of them appeared during the run.

The woods and trails were soft, squishy and muddy, with some seriously deep puddles along the way. The river was roaring, the iced coffee colored water flowing up and over the banks and onto the trail in a few spots. The calf sleeves did a pretty good job of keeping my lower legs protected from all the long grasses, and felt good too. It's always amazing to me how lush and green and crazy the woods and trails get at this time of year.

Back at the powerlines, I stopped to pick my first trailside blueberries of the season. They seem to always be ripe early in one particular spot - must be the perfect sunny location. Yum!

Stonecat Wander

This morning brought with it bright blue skies, cooler temps and a nice breeze. Ryan and I left Sam happily playing with Grammie and Grampie and headed over to Willowdale to run (most of) the Stonecat course. Things were pretty squishy, muddy, puddly out there after the rains from yesterday, that's for sure! It was a lovely morning for a run in the woods, and fun to have the chance to run with Ryan. We saw six snakes sunning themselves out along the trail - 4 garter and 2 black racer snakes - and one little toad hopping up the trail too.

Despite having, as Ryan noted, run over 100 miles on this particular loop, there are still stretches that manage to confuse me out there, but luckily we had a map with us just in case :-) We cut off a little bit of the course but not as much as we had originally intended and ended up with a little over 11 miles. Well, actually, my Garmin read only 10.79, which is just plain odd, as I have the newer watch, but apparently I had it set on "smart record," meaning it was recording less data points, so it appears to have cut off a few of the zigs and zags along the way. I've changed it to record every second, which I suppose will lessen how much data the watch can hold, but we'll see.

While we were running, Sam dragged Grammie and Grampie out onto the back lawn and they played ball and ran around for 2 hours. Looks like fun to me!

Kick!

Fun with Grammie

Good throw!

Oh, and a few donuts were eaten too :-)

Yum!

Beach x 2

Daycare was closed yesterday but Ryan had to work, so Sam and I made plans to meet up with Amy and Will in the morning and go to the beach. We headed down to Kettle Cove, and got there early enough that the parking lot was almost empty. It was warm and muggy, but a low fog had settled over the cove, so it was totally manageable to be out on the beach for 3 hours. Otherwise, I'm not sure how long I would have lasted! Sam and Will had a lot of fun digging in the sand and playing at the edge of the water. Amy and I searched the tide pools for periwinkles, hermit crabs and little crabs. We probably could have wandered around the rocks and pools all day except that, well, you know, we had the kids with us ;) Ha! A fun way to spend the morning, and good to catch up a bit with Amy, even if it was the sort of rather disjointed catch-up that happens when you are trying to wrangle the kids at the same time :)

Digging

The kids

Hermit crab!

Strong girl!

Always running :-)

After lunch, Sam and I headed to Freeport to do a bit of shopping. It actually wasn't as crazy in town as I would have thought, and Carter's and LL Bean kept us occupied for the afternoon before we picked up Ryan and drove down to MA for a visit with Irene and Dana.

Although the hurricane was headed up the coast, I really wanted us to get out of the house this morning. When we got up, it was sunny and bright, but by the time we finally got into the car around 9:00 am, it had started to rain. Oh well, we were prepared with extra clothes and shoes and raincoats. A little rain wasn't going to stop us :-) We went to Plum Island and out into the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, a really neat 6-mile peninsula of land extending out into the salt marshes and along the ocean. The vast majority of the beach was closed for plover nesting, but the one parking lot available was almost empty when we got out and headed up over the dunes. The heavy rain had stopped, and after a bit of digging in the sand, Sam wanted to go into the water. She and I spent a good long time running in and out of the waves before it started pouring in earnest and we ran back to the car. Sam and I were already soaked, but the rest of the crew didn't have change of clothes, so off we went. It was a lot of fun!

Raincoat on, digging in the sand

Wave running

Fun in the water

Soaked!

This is fun!

After changing, we drove down the 6-mile road to the end of the Refuge, stopping at a few of the roadside areas to get out and walk around. It was really neat. We saw a ton of birds - a number of Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets, Great Blue Heron, two Yellow Warblers, five swans, catbirds, a few Brown Thrashers, swallows, two turkeys out in the marsh grasses, terns, a lot of Red-Winged Blackbirds, and a tree full of Cedar Waxwing, along with a lot of ducks and Canada Geese - and I would love to go back in the spring or fall when more birds are migrating through and explore a bit more. The marshes were really beautiful too. It was a wonderful place to spend an on-and-off rainy morning exploring.

Great Egret

Walking along the road at Hellcat Observation Area

Observation tower

Marsh vista

Family Selfie :-)

Swans

Greens and blues

Aside from all the birds, this was only other creature we saw - a little snake sitting at the edge of the trail

2 x HG

The plan for the next few weeks is to keep the mid-week runs short and sweet, with the intent of ramping up the weekend mileage. So, to that end, yesterday and today were both fairly mundane 3 milers around the short Highland Green loop. Very muggy and humid both mornings. Certainly feels like summer!

Mellow

After a busy, but very fun, weekend, yesterday morning's run was intentionally mellow. I ran three miles out and back on the powerlines to Topsham Crossing. The sweet smell of ferns filled my nose, and I saw four towhees in a 100 yard stretch - cool! Not much else to report.

Southwest Harbor Weekend, Part II

I got up this morning bright and early and headed out for my run. My plan was to run the same route that Ryan had run, which was about 3 miles of road followed by a loop up and over Beech Mountain and back. It was sunny and humid, even at 6:15 in the morning. I took the roads easy, and then enjoyed running the nice mellow start of the West Ridge Trail as it wandered along the lake. Once the trail hit the rock ledges and began to climb in earnest, I hiked. There was no running to be done.

Summit selfie. A little sweaty :-)

Beech Mountain firetower

Summit vista

After a short stop at the summit, I headed down. The trail down was pretty runnable and I felt good, until I hit a trail junction and against my first reaction, followed the sign that read to Beech Mountain Parking. Seemed logical, as I hadn't noticed another other marked parking area on the map. It was a pretty trail, winding through deep woods and bit fern-covered boulders, but it put me out in a parking lot that well, wasn't the one I wanted. I pulled out the map at that point, and realized, oh shit, I've totally gone the wrong way. I confirmed with a couple who had just pulled up to walk their dog, and then called Ryan to tell him I was going to be a while... He immediately said he'd pick me up. I felt badly and told him I could just do the extra miles, but he insisted, so I ran back the way I came, and headed down the trail the correct way, until I hit the road and they found me there. Oops. So, word to the wise (or unwise), despite all my years of hiking and trail running, I have a horrible sense of direction. Never follow me on a trail I don't know expecting me to go the right way ;) Ha. Well, got in a good 7.5 miles/1:30 of running/hiking at least to start the day!

After a yummy breakfast, we packed up and then headed out. Ryan ran the roads, while Sam and I drove to our destination for the day - Ships Harbor Nature Trail, a nice flat 1.5 mile figure-eight through the forest and along the water. Very pretty. But damn! It was hot! Especially in the sun when there wasn't a breeze. Phew! Still, we had a good walk, and Sam did great, especially given that she was very tired from all the activity yesterday!  

Ship Harbor Nature Trail

Sam loves her Camelbak :-)

Another sip (and another potty break coming up too ;0 )

Beautiful view

Snack time in the shade

We stopped for lunch at a yummy sandwich spot in town before heading back home. A fun weekend away for sure! And Sam was good and tired out :-)

Lunchtime!