Sunday, May 19, 2024

10 Weeks til Utah

Monday
2.7 mi run with pup
Early miles after dropping off D at school. Went for a section a bit farther north just to change things up a bit. Ivy did so great!
There was another dog wayyyyyy across the park.

2.5 mi 20# ruck with pup
Lunchtime ruck in the neighborhood, took the pup out again. Gotta get her (and myself) accustomed to the summer heat, but trying to do it gently! She gets tired quickly when it's warm out. 
Love this patch 😁

Tuesday
6.47 mi @ 8:21/mi #10kTuesday
Ran with the early downtown crew and did a few speedy pushes on a loop around Unity Park towards the end. More of a fartlek style, just faster than normal pace for some arbitrary distance. Felt great!

1 mi Wellness Walk
Event at work with the Wellness Network group, walked about a mile around the ponds on campus. Temperatures starting to climb!

25 min strength
Hit the gym at the end of the day, not as long as I'd hoped to work out but better than nothing.

Wednesday
4.3 mi with 10x River Bend hill repeats
Intentionally waited until the late afternoon hottest part of the day to suffer through these. Trying to force myself to adapt to the heat AND get some elevation. Trotted easy out to the back of the neighborhood then did 10 repeats of the hill up River Bend Rd. 
Each repeat was about 0.15 miles and climbed 60ft. 
I managed to do them all at about 65 seconds +/- 2-3 seconds, pushed hard for the 9th repeat and got it at 58 seconds, then kinda phoned it in on the very last one and ended at 72 seconds.
Overall felt really good about this one, and man it was tough!

6.6 mi bike ride to ice cream
To celebrate the last day of school, we took a family bike ride up the swamp rabbit trail after dinner to get ice cream. Fun way to spend the long evening daylight hours!



Thursday
7.14 mi @ 8:24/mi 
Steady 7-miler with the downtown crew this morning. Definitely getting to where the early hours aren't even comfortable temps anymore! Whew. Good start to the day though. 

Friday
2.1 mi @ 8:44/mi run 
While finishing up a workday and packing for the weekend camping trip, got in a couple miles for heat adaptation training.

1 mi ruck (20#) hike on the AT with pup
En route to camping, stopped where the AT crosses Hwy 74 at Dick's Creek Gap to do a quick 30 minutes with the pup on trail. It was quite a little climb from the highway, so the return trip was nicely downhill. 









Saturday
6.04 mi trail run
Ran the Purple Trail at Jackrabbit campground (the hard trail!). Was hoping for a lot longer & doing more trails than this, but rapidly-approaching thunderstorms pushed me off the trail after about an hour. Only got sprinkled on a bit right as I made it back to the campsite, then the bottom let out and boy was it a wild storm for quite some time!

3 mi hike
Once the rain finally cleared, we took a big group hike on the Jackrabbit Mountain trail. Had 3 kids, 5 dogs, and 2 adults along for the trek. A relaxing afternoon in the woods!


Sunday
3.5 mi trail run
Ran the same loop that we hiked the day before, but with a small additional side trail. 



Trillium! :)



11.4 mi mountain bike ride
At last, got to get out on the bikes! Took a big group ride with kiddos and had a great time. 
Jason giving the youngsters some life lessons


"Grown-ups" ?

Thistles!


Overall a pretty great and active week!

11 Weeks til Utah

Monday
2 mi recovery run with pup
Morning miles in TR with Ivy, lots of starts & stops for sniffing and peeing (her, not me) but it helped the legs loosen up a bit. Sore quads, calves, and particularly left heel/Achilles after yesterday's miles on trail. 

60 min Vinyasa hot yoga
Been a while since I'd gotten to a yoga session, this was a nice easy Vinyasa flow and had lots of good stretchy moves for hips which was good for the lingering soreness.

Tuesday
7.03 mi @ 8:21/mi run
Ran in the rain downtown and managed a pretty decent run! Added distance to the route and ended up with right at 7 miles total, so some bonus miles beyond #10kTuesday. 

Wednesday
3.1 mi @ 9:46/mi pup run 🐾
Took Ivy out for some miles on the trail and got our longest distance together - full 5k! She did great, a little bit of pulling but not too many stops for sniffing. 

Thursday
7.0 mi @ 8:36/mi avg with 6x hill repeats
Met the early downtown crew for a nice downtown loop, finished with 6 hill repeats on the Governor's School hill. Felt good and strong!

2.5 mi 20# ruck
Got out at lunch for a little ruck loop, haven't done much rucking in a while but was a nice day to get out for a couple miles. 

Friday
4.4 mi @ 9:21/mi XC run
Got in some miles on the XC course at work with the Hot Fish Run Club (inside joke 😂). 

Saturday
3.5 mi @ 8:39/mi
Volunteered in the morning with the Upstate Run Club at one of the water stops on the Mountains to Mainstreet half & 5k. Afterwards took a small loop run before heading home. Thought I'd do more but ran short on time and also got hungry lol.
Volunteers!

Sunday
10.13 mi @ 9:02/mi
Was still drizzling a bit in the morning so took the opportunity to get some long miles in the hilly Green Valley loop. Mostly ran the race course with a few edits, climbed over 800 ft. Need to be pursuing those hills on purpose for the next couple of months!


Feeling pretty solid after a nearly 40-mile week! Didn't get trail miles like last week but overall some good runs. 

Monday, May 13, 2024

Looking ahead: Summer of Trail

Been a while since I had any big races on the calendar, so here's how the summer event season is shaping up... 

6/8 - Cottonmouth Beerlay 8-mile (this is a fun one... 4x2 laps, 1 beer per lap)
7/13 - Carolina Reaper 50k (solo version... same course/format as Snowbird)
9/7-9/8 - Blue Ridge Relay

Basically lots of long, slow, off-road stuff!

Two of the races are in Utah and are scheduled around our planned family vacation in Salt Lake City & Park City, Utah at the end of July. I'm most nervous about the Tushars Mountain half, because it starts above 10,000 ft altitude, climbs to a peak above 12,000 ft, and the elevation gain of the half marathon is about 4,000ft of climbing! 😱 That one is going to be a doozy. I'm not anticipating any kind of speed, just doing it for the challenge and the experience!

So yeah, going to be a summer of trail and elevation for me. 🌄


Kicked off the training with a long run (little over 11 miles) at Paris Mountain on Sunday (yesterday) afternoon. I had a route in mind and knew the approximate distance but didn't really worry about it... was quite freeing to just take off on a run and not really know the exact time or distance. Just ran what I felt like running, walked when I needed to, stopped for breaks and lots of pretty photos. Felt great, although the legs felt the 5k race effort from the day before and the calves took a while to loosen up.

New trail shoes!






Only 1,400 feet of climbing though... gonna  have to find some bigger hills around here somewhere. 😁

Race Report: ZF Get In Gear 5k

This past Saturday was the 3rd race (of 8) in the Corporate Shield series, the ZF (pronounced "Zed Eff" like a proper European) Get In Gear 5k, hosted by ZF Transmissions in Gray Court, SC. This is the newest race in the Corporate Shield series, and only my second time running it (last year was the first). 

I volunteered to help with race setup, so got there quite early (6:15am). It was actually chilly (mid-50s) while setting up before the sun was up! After getting the tables and tents and post-race food/water set up, I was able to get in about a mile of a warm-up jog around the parking lot. This helped with feeling chilly so I could shed my sleeves before the race. 

Pre-race team pic!

We had a small group signed up for the Milliken team this year, but 8 of the 10 registrants showed up and showed out with strong performances all around!

This lollipop course is sneaky... the first mile is basically flat/slightly downhill straightaway, then at mile 1 you turn, find some small hills, go to gravel, then off-road into grass, over curbs in a parking lot, back through grass/trail, and pop back onto a road with a little climb back to the initial straightaway for the third mile but you realize it's slightly uphill for just about all but the last 10th of a mile to the finish. It feels like forever!

Splits reflect perception

Finish time was solidly under 22 mins, which I was really surprised/pleased with!

22nd of 271 finishers
3rd overall female (of 105)

Managed to snag 1st female team with the corporate shield points as well - woohoo!