Notes
great workout. usual loop x 2. tried to start out easier and finish strong. going to guess it's about 1000' or more elevation gain (double last week's 500'). first loop (49:55 ~ 6:53/mi) was running about a minute behind last week's, mostly in the first two warm-up miles. second loop (46:56 ~ 6:28/mi) may have been my best time ever for the course... 7:03 (2nd mile) was the only one over 7 on that loop, and the slowest by nearly 30 seconds. definitely a good indicator of fitness at this point in the year. just need to get the weight under control (no more donuts...) and a couple of decent treadmill hill workouts (one more tempo and the final time trial), then i'm ready to take a stab at my mount washington PR...
sidenote: saw two rare animals during the run (1) looked up early in mile one, on the road between the upper and middle reservoirs, and saw a very large woodpecker. i've never seen one like this. usually they're smaller, about 6-10 inches at most. this was well over a foot tall (16-18 inches i'd guess), with a bright red "plume" on top of his head. it looked like "woody the woodpecker" from the cartoons. looked him up afterwards: the pileated woodpecker or "dryocopus pileatus". neat. (2) i saw an actual woman back behind the sheepsfold... the area along the old railroad tressel where you always see nervous looking dudes, so obviously trying to not look like they're cruising for other gay dudes (not that there's anything wrong with that). i seriously don't think i've ever seen a woman back there before... in roughly 5 years of running these trails.