Saturday Jan 12 |
 | Running (Trail) 33:04 [3]4.2 mi (7:53 / mi) | |
| slept:7.0 weight:177lbs |
| Rock Creek Park, Candyland parking. While Peggy watched Max play at the playground :), I went for a trail run. I did a sort of loop at the flat areas starting off but then did what I call the Boundary Lines loop. Even starting out on the flat areas, I felt slow and tired. I was much more so when I got to the hills. The trails were a bit muddy but not very slippery. I ran with the GPS again but forgot to put on the hear rate monitor. It's sort of fun to watch the GPS tracks on the watch but not useful for navigating until approaching places that I've already been. I had felt ankle pain in the morning but not during the afternoon run. |
Friday Jan 11 |
| Bicycling (Trainer) 30:00 [3] | |
| slept:5.0 weight:177.5lbs (injured) |
| Since my ankle had been hurting while walking, I decided that another late run on wet ground at night could wait. I think the ankle will be back to normal soon. |
Thursday Jan 10 |
| Running (Street & Trail) 40:05 [3]5.28 mi (7:35 / mi) | |
| ahr:147 max:164 slept:5.0 weight:178lbs (injured) |
| From Rosedale Ave., Battery Ln. to Keystone Rd. to... It was a rainy evening and I had brought home some Chipotle burritos. After eating one and getting Max to sleep I was tired so I took a semi-concious nap before running. It was misting, 40F, and I expected more rain so I wore my somewhat heavy rain suit. I started out feeling heavy from dinner and the clothes. It turned out that no more rain fell while I ran and I got a bit too hot.
I had also donned a heart rate monitor (part of my Garmin 305 Christmas present from Peggy) on this run for the first time ever. In the past I'd taken pulse checks off of a 10 second manual reading on occasion but never had this much detail. I don't yet plan to train by heart rate yet but I'll explore this more. There was a spike in the monitor registering a whopping 229 bpm but I think this must have been a mechanical anomaly. It ocurred in a relatively flat part of the run where I had a steady pace and didn't feel any different. I had also adjusted the GPS to take a reading every second. Though the roads I ran are easier to track than the trails, the distance accuracy seems much better this way when I compare it to other measures.
I twisted my right ankle on an uneven area of asphalt at a mile and a half through this run. I was moving to the side to get out of the way of an approaching car. This rarely happens when I run at night but it was painful and slowed me for a minute. It is sensitive now, after the run. |
Wednesday Jan 9 |
| Bicycling (Trainer) 20:00 [3] | |
| slept:6.0 weight:175.5lbs |
| I thought an easier day would be good. I started spinning and until mide-way through the ride, I forgot that the last time I rode, I had geared down a bit for an easy ride. The result was that today I kept the cadence mostly between 65 and 70 which is much better than other recent trainer rides. |
Tuesday Jan 8 |
| Running (Trail) 1:16:34 [3]9.25 mi (8:17 / mi) | |
| slept:6.6 weight:177lbs |
| Wakefield Park, Fairfax County, VA. I had the afternoon off to go to my friend's funeral. After that I took advantage of the sunlight and had a nice longish run in unusually warm weather (70F). I'm not sure how far I went. I stayed mostly on the many trails but did get some time west of Accotink Creek on parts without trails. To finish, I went out and back up the Long Branch Trail to Woodland Way. This trail has been extended since last I was on it and had I known that, I may have chosen to run out and back up it farther to begin with. Instead, I did get to parts of the park which have been turned over to the moutain bikers and that I hadn't fully explored. The trails on the big hill were really windy; orienteers might not use them a lot of the time, even though they are everywhere. I ran with my GPS and could tell from my own memory that it was missing parts of the many trail bends and switch-backs. The GPS registered 8.66 miles when I was done and tracked the whole time but I'm increasing the distance to better account for what I thought I was really doing. Whenever I watched the pace readings, they would jump around wildly even though I kept it steady. I got pretty tired on the run and was actually somewhat tired starting out. I still enjoyed it a lot.
Overall, Wakefield Park is very narrow but usable for orienteering; It's mostly flat. It has the usual dot knolls, ditches and a few reentrants. There are a few boulders too but the prime features are the many trails and open areas good for short courses or training. It has the added benefit of being connectable with Lake Accotink which we already use. |
Monday Jan 7 |
| Weights (Weights) 15:00 [3] | |
| weight:178lbs |
| I had a load of things to carry home from work including some heavy glass and crystal items. They all were in a friend's gym bag. While normally I wouldn't count such things this was actually heavy enough that I had to switch arms every 30 seconds or faster. With the warmer weather, I got home with a soaked shirt. |
| Running (Street & Trail) 13:46  2.0 mi (6:53 / mi) | |
| slept:4.5 weight:178lbs |
| From Rosedale Ave., I did the Two Mile route at around 9:30pm. I would have rather bicycled today but had a memorial service to go to earlier. It was warm out; it had cooled down to 58F from a record high of 71F earlier. I started modestly but as I turned downhill, I picked up the pace. The recent increases in running lately have me feeling slow. Severasl times on the run, I felt like I couldn't move my legs much faster but I didn't get real tired either. |
Sunday Jan 6 |
| Running (Terrain) 24:11 [3]2.34 mi (10:19 / mi) | |
| slept:7.0 weight:177lbs |
| Northwest Branch Park. From the Trolley Museum parking lot, I went on an exploratory run going basically counter clockwise, though I did a small loop at the extreme north end making it a figure eight. There are a lot of open fields in the park and very few trails. At one point, I popped out on the trolley tracks and found the quiet train coming at me. This area would be fun for a local meet because the woods along the perimeter are a nice mix of open and light green flood plain with some hills, boulders and ditches. However, one would have to watch out for thorns which are scattered in the fields and established at many forest edges. Alas, this is yet another park doomed to be disrupted by the new inter-county (ICC) connector road sometime in the next 2 years. The ICC will cut out a good portion of the nicer woods slicing-up the south of the park. Even the areas south of Bonifant Rd. will be disrupted. On the loop, I did go past the new trolley station and areas where a planned mock-up of Connecticut or Wisconsin Ave. is to be made.
I ran with my 2007 Christmas present from Peggy, a Garmin Forerunner 305. I like the way it worked and wished I'd used it the day before. It locked onto satellites much quicker and seemed to track at a much better level of granularity. This was a nice recovery run from the longer and hillier run yesterday. It was also rather warm out.
After the run, Peggy, Max and I rode the trolley over a 1.9 mile route. It never went very fast, didn't hold a lot of people and wasn't as smooth as our metro trains but it was relaxing. It's hard to imagine decades past when the trolleys went up and down the road and past horse drawn carriages only two blocks away from where we live. The ride did give a feel for it. After the ride, we went looking at open houses. |