Training Log Archive: Fanatic

Drove to Reservoir Road in Lenox and hiked north on the bike trails until I reached the communications tower on Lenox Mountain. The trails were mostly clear of snow, but there were a few patches that were still quite deep, 4-5"; fortunately those stretches were still easy to hike on and not that frequent.

Once I got the tower, the views were great with good visibility. Met one guy who had hiked up from Pleasant Valley, otherwise I saw no one else on the trails.

Originally, I thought that I'd hike out to the tower and run back on the same route, but due to the snow and a few patches of ice, I decided to forego that option and chose to run back on the dirt road and trails back to Reservoir Road. Good choice, imo, although the road was a bit wet and muddy, so no way to avoid wet socks and muddy shoes. Oh well, that's springtime in New England--not complaining, very glad to be back on the trails.

On our way to an open house at Unity Homes in Walpole, New Hampshire, Colette and I stopped at the Chesterfield Conservation Area just off of Route 9 in Chesterfield. There was a small trail network there with about five or six geocaches and Colette wanted to try for them before we went to the open house.

But the trails still had some snow and lots of water, not to mention a bunch of little steep hills; combine those with a few non-existant caches and we managed to find only one and by that time, we needed to get on our way to Walpole.

The open house was interesting--Unity Homes is leading the way of factory- made house components with high precision which allows for a complete house shell to be erected on site in one to two weeks. They are employing CNC woodworking equipment and training their employees to very high standards, much more so that one would find an on-site construction jobs, which rely a lot on cheap, unskilled labor. A Unity Home is extremely weather-tight and can be heated 99% of the time using an air-sourced heat pump, avoiding costly furnaces and duct work.

Warm-up walk out toward Woods Pond. Decided to shorten the distance to 1.5 miles instead of two.

And then a run over the bridge at Woods Pond and out to the Lenox WTF and back along Crystal Street. Felt a little difficult to keep a good pace, probably because I haven't been running much recently. I hope to change that soon.

And a slow, cool-down walk; mainly because the run tired me out. ;-)

After-dinner walk around the condo grounds. The rain had finally stopped, so it was rather pleasant out, although the roads were a little slick.

After-dinner walk with Colette out to the black cows and back. Nice to not need heavy winter clothing for these walks now.