Training Log Archive: TomN

I hadn't been on the Goddard perimeter road since midsummer, and it's a mess. It looks like someone tried to patch it, but screwed it up. They dumped chunks of rock and what looks like construction debris on whole sections of the road. It makes for bad running and terrible bicycling, and I can't imagine driving on it is any fun either.

Rode to work. Used the sidewalk on Greenbelt Road to get from the end of the Indian Creek trail to the traffic light at Cherrywood Rd. It's not very far, but busy, with cars turning in and out in a couple of places. It was 50 degrees when I started and probably 60 when I finished.

82nd running of the NASA Intracenter 10k. The usual course around Greenbelt Lake was unusable this year because of construction. There was a last minute scramble to find and measure an alternate route, which appears to have been a success. The course had a cross-country flavor -- most of the way around the lake on a wide natural surface trail, around the edge of a sports field on grass, through the St. Hugh's parking lot onto the bike lane on Crescent Road, then back onto the lake trail, 2.06 miles. Repeat twice more. The start was adjusted a couple hundred feet back to bring the length up to spec.

Tom W. told me it was 2.02 miles by Google Maps, 2.06 by the wheel. I don't know enough about course measuring to know whether that's expected. John Sissala, who is a USATF-certified course measurer, has certified all our courses, but there wasn't time for him to get out there and anyway he told me recently he was retiring.

I started out a little too fast but corrected in the first few minutes. My split times were 15:50 and 31:30, but it's hard to tell much since the first one was long. 2-2 breathing on the first 2 laps, then 2-1 on the third until about 2/3 of the way around shifted to 1-1. More than a minute slower than the last one, on June 9.

I had to go to Mt. Airy this morning, so I stopped in at Little Bennett on the way back for a trail run. Browning Run trail down to the Kingsley trail and back up the other side of Clarksburg Rd.
There were loads of butterflies in the meadow at the Browning Run parking area. A monarch, 3 variegated fritillaries, a buckeye, a few pearl crescents, a few cabbage whites, and a large pale sulphur, maybe a cloudless, chased away by one of the frits too fast for me to get an ID.

Pushups, planks, squats, figure-8s.

A trail loop, with some fairly physical sections. I got onto the NW Branch trail from Dennis Ave, crossed Colesville Road (something should be done about this -- there's not even an island in the middle of the road and no traffic light that can be walked to). Carried the bike about a mile through the rocky section, went under the Beltway, on and off the bike, then finally picked up the paved trail. Another 5 miles or so down to the Sligo Creek junction, then up the creek back home. The NW Branch trail was deserted, but the Sligo Creek trail had a lot of pedestrian and some bike traffic.

In the neighborhood at mid-morning. I added a little extra bit to the normal route, mostly because I wasn't paying attention.