Mohonk 'Marathon'

Today I ended up running a marathon distance in my long run. I always pay much more attention to hours than miles because of the types of trails I normally run, but since I was on smoother stuff today I wanted to keep track of miles also. The Pineland Farms 50k in 4 weeks will be on smooth dirt roads, so that's why I headed up to Mohonk today.

I decided to do laps at the incredibly scenic overcliff-undercliff loop starting at the west Trapps parking area. I wasn't sure exactly how far it was, between 4 and 5 miles around the loop, so I would run and see how many I would do, probably 5 laps, over 3:50 for sure because that was my plan for the long run this week, and maybe hike the last part of it.

I loved the long slightly down overcliff trail running north, with the Catskill skyline 20 miles to the west resplendent. These are Mohonk carriage roads, which are very smooth crushed stone or cinder, not the fastest footing, but not slow.

As I was in the third lap I could see the way the main loop plus the side trip each time to the parking area to refuel would add up to over a marathon if I did 5 loops, so I decided to run all of it. Overall 26.51 GPS miles, 4:29:27 5.9mph 1620 feet of climb and descent, per garmin connect. Fun training run, but I was pretty stiff that 5th loop.

Considering it was a training run at heart rate 142 (74%max), and that I'm still at least 15 lbs over my race weight, I'm happy with that kind of time, and my legs are still slow from running tons of slow technical trails over the winter. I'll know if I overdid it by Friday or Saturday, when I plan to do some ~mile repeats.

The Catskill skyline

 

Overcliff carriage road

The head of the Overcliff-Undercliff loop

Across the valley nearby