Where Did That come From?

Friday afternoon I had to go down to my son's in Boston to pick up some furniture and give him a ride to Maine. We decided to run the Winchester trails after loading up and heading home.

We actually got there quite late and it was raining pretty good. Of course the rain was actually welcome as we both prefer it to humidity. The 6.6 mile loop that we chose is fairly difficult, a little rockier than Bradbury east side, the hills a bit tougher but still very similar.

I am still not sure what happened, but I had a great run! I actually ran a faster pace than the Scuffle race a couple weeks ago and I was getting stronger as the run went on. I felt like I was on top of my game and even though I was running pretty much race pace, it didn't bother me that much.

You see part of the reason I ran so well is that I enjoy running with my son Kev and he seems to pull the best of of me, we had points during the run that I was more sprinting with long strides than running and it really felt great..............having said that lets move on to the Saturday run.

Perhaps it was the difficult climb of the Summit trail but I suspect it was just muscle fatigue. We went to Bradbury to show Kev the Breaker course (we ran the second loop because I love the Terrace trail down hill finish) The first mile was no problem partly because we started off quite easy.

Mile two was a total different story......my legs turned to jello and they just plain died. I mean they could not perform for me and even though my heart rate was normal, I couldn't seem to get in enough oxygen.

I was ok after the inclines and it seemed I could run fairly normal though slow. I sent kev ahead so he could experience running up these steep inclines and then I would catch up to him at the top. This is the first time that I ended up walking the whole summit trail to the top and actually my body was complaining even while walking.

I also found that I apparently was not lifting my feet high enough and tripped quite a few times. One time it caught me by surprise and I went down hard! Yeah I drew some blood by luckily no serious injuries other than a pretty sore toe.

I suspect I was just plain too fatigued from Fridays fantastic run to handle the hills of Bradbury mountain. Kev on the other hand ran it with ease and didn't seem to upset that I slowed him down so much.

Friday Winchester 6.6 miles @1:03:31 (9:38 pace)
Splits:
9:11
10:02
9:55
7:36 (this was a fun and fast mile)
9:32
9:56
7:28 (kick @6:58)

Saturday Bradbury (breaker 2nd loop)
4.8 miles@ 56:55 (11:52 pace)
Splits:
11:48
12:18
13:17
11:02
9:16