Notes
Cloudy, and cool. Runaways Club hosted a course preview of the Pineland Trail Races. Altra had a table set up and they had demo shoes to try. There was maybe 50 people there. The plan was to run the long course, skipping the fields, for about 9 miles, then do the short course on the Oak Hill side, for about 4 miles. I thought it would be good to check out the course, although a lot of it was the same as LMS. Took off with the lead group, but it was a little faster than I wanted to go so I dropped back some. My lower back was sore/stiff right from the start, but after 3 miles or so it came around. Ran by myself mostly, but did run with a few guys here and there and chatted a bit. After about 3 miles we stopped to let everyone catch up. When we got going again I was running with Tanya Holbrook, so we chatted for a bit about Riverlands and other upcoming races. Her friend Lisa caught up with us and they were discussing Riverlands and the VT100, which they are both doing. In the field they stopped for a bit so I kept going following the LMS course back to the start. I had been walking a lot of the steeper hills, but then I started to run most of them for training. I will walk these during the actual race. Got back to the start and had a bottle of water and half of a PB&J. My back was still a little sore, but not bad. We stood around for a long time before heading to Oak Hill. I stopped to talk to a couple guys from NH, one who had a Ragnar Relay t-shirt on. He gave me some good info on the race. They were both doing VT100. After about a half hour or so, we finally took off. It took a bit to get loosened up. Ran at a pretty good pace, again running most of the hills, but marching some. There was a Barred Owl in a tree just off the trail that people stopped to take pictures of. When I got back to the Y, I was just short of 13, so I looped around the lawn to get there. This was a good hilly training run, not to hard for the Riverlands next weekend. Hopefully it won't be too hot for the race. Everything felt ok, except for a blister on my left little toe. Headed over to the market for lunch before driving home.
Gear: shorts, short tech T, headband, water pack full with 3 scoops of Tailwind