Long Run, Maine & Moose on the Loose 10 Miler
The past week has been brutal payback for the cool and rainy summer we experienced here in New Hampshire from late June into early August. I'm a terrible hot weather runner so 4 out of 5 days this past week I (reluctantly) crawled out of bed early, put on my running gear and headed down to Nashua and the Mine Falls trails near where I work to get my run out of the way before the day's heat and humidity set in. Since we were planning to head to Portland, Maine from Friday afternoon until late Saturday and had a New Hampshire Grand Prix Race Sunday, I had to do my weekly long run--this week a 22 miler at 6:00 A.M. Friday.
For this summer's training cycle leading into my fall marathon I'm doing just four 20+ mile runs (vs. 8 for Boston) with shorter 16-18 mile "progression" runs in the alternate weeks. I felt I was flat at Boston and the extra 20 milers didn't help. This past Friday was my 2nd 20 miler in the cycle and quite ugly. When I began at Nashua South High School at 6:00 A.M. Friday the humidity was in excess of 70 degrees and the air temps. close to 80. When I finished more than three hours later the sun had broken through the overcast skies and heat index was in excess of 100. My pace was very slow--about 8:50/mile yet I was working harder each mile than the previous week when my pace was closer to 8 minutes a mile on a much hillier course. To make matters worse at about the 15 mile mark I experienced every runner's nightmare--in an instant I was pinned for close to 5 minutes against a car by a growling 8 month old pit bull (teeth fully bared...inches from my ankles) in a neighborhood near Nashua North High School. He had apparently jumped over the back yard fence when he heard my footsteps. Although the owner was (mildly) apologetic, even he couldn't get control of his dog. Only when a neighbor came over and threatened the pooch with a large tree branch did he run off. As one respected lawyer told me many years ago...forgive and remember.
On Saturday things turned more positive and we had a great 9 mile run along the ocean in Portland harbor and Sunday we returned to New Hampshire and ran the annual Moose on the Loose 10 miler in Mine Falls. Despite being quite sore from Friday's long run I couldn't race but ran a comfortable 7:19 training pace for 10 miles. The course was actually short .25 miles according to my Garmin as the official results had me at 7:11 pace although I did run the 2nd half of the course about three minutes faster than the first half (37:08 vs. 34:11). Cathy's marathon is one week later than mine so she was able to race this week and ran a solid 1:06 to finish 3rd
overall. I've posted some great pictures of Sunday's race taken by Ethan Platt. Here is a link to the whole album: http://plattracingphotography.shutterfly.com/2009mooseontheloose10m/4
Here are the results: http://www.coolrunning.com/results/09/nh/Aug23_MooseO_set1.shtml
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