A good 31 miler weekend to close out the third training week. And with that I’ve met Miss Me’s mandated clause of sticking to the training plan at least till the end of January (I’ve never really trained for any of my long runs this far!)  and bought myself an entry to the Wapack and Back 50 miler this May. Psyched!

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With a family event planned for this weekend, I had to fit in my 20mile saturday run early in the day. Given my last weekends pace at Middlesex fells, I wanted to bucket at least 5 hours for the run. Got to bed at around 08:30pm on Friday night, was up by about 03:00am on Saturday and started the run by 03:30am. Mild showers and pretty comfortable temperatures (20-30F) had me going pretty good and I covered the first loop (8 miles) in about 01:40mins. Miss Me was already up and had an Orange shot (Orange juice with some chat masala!) and PBJs ready for me. A quick pit-stop at home and I head back towards Brookline to cover the rest of the miles. I knew the Brookline loop would give me an easy 10 miles, so decided to run further on to Fenway to get the extra 2 miles. Even before I knew, I was on my way back and was home by 07:30am. This was probably my fastest 20 miler so far. Also a great morale boost after my deplorable 17 miles last weekend.

 

Miss Me managed to go for a Yoga class while I was running and once she was back, we hit the road to Southborough and then towards NJ. 40mins into the drive, the left rear tire blew up and with that our plans to head to NJ went kaput. We eventually make our way back home by noon. A lazy rest of the day gives me enough rest for the 11 miler next day.

All of us head to Callahan State park and as I rake in the miles, the rest of the folks head back home after an hour. I weave into trails I’ve been on before and spruce it up with sections that I’ve not explored so far. The sheer number of trails out here so close to the city limits blows my mind every single time I chance upon uncharted sections. As I’m just about to finish my run in about 2.5 hours, I have a scooping fall. A good one at that. Talk about being ‘down to earth’!

Today is a stark reminder that I’m much, much slower on the trails and should be using this pace as benchmark to push and improve. As I build my miles, hopefully the pace improves. My Garmin clocked 116 miles totally this month. 2017 is off to a phenomenal start!