Training recap week #31

This was not a good training week for me. I had a lot of work and stuff to get done befor summer vacation. I still managed to get in a couple of good quality runs though.

On Tuesday, I did my Q2 training which was a 2-mile warm up followed by intervals of 5 minutes Hard with 3 minutes recoveries in between for a total of 10km. It was tough!

On Sunday morning, I was in Smugglers' Notch Vermont and enjoyed my run on the mountain. I ran for 45 minutes exploring the trails and basically did a recconaissance of the resort and surrounding trails. I was ascending one trail when I came across a sign warning of Black Bear presence and their habits. It said they liked to eat wild berries and stick to wooded areas. I looked around and saw plenty of berry bushes around me...that and the fact that it was sunrise and I was the only soul on the trail made me decide to turn around and head back toward civilization. I didn't see a bear, but I didn't want to either!

On the way back to our condo, I ducked into a more dense trail that skirted around the golf driving range. I saw plenty of stray balls and remnants of teen drinking parties in those woods. I plodded on but the forest got denser and denser and the trail eventually fizzled out to nothing. I had my bearings so I continued on cross-country through the brush (I was less than half a mile from the condo) and blazed my own way. It was a blast! Keep in mind that we were staying in a mountainside condo so there was a very steep slope on my left that I would eventually have to negotiate to get to it but the brush was so dense and full of thistles that I tried to put this off as long as I could as I ascended gradually through the dense trees. I crossed creeks and streams, heard the birds singing their morning songs, felt the sun on my face through clearings every now and then and smelled the dampness and freshness of the natural beauty of northeastern forests. Finally, I decided to bite the bullet and grabbed and climbed my way out not 30 feet from our unit - not bad. But boy was I dirty! I felt like a kid again. I was all giddy and in a great mood. What a way to start a vacation!

Total weekly mileage : 17 km (but they were really fun!)