The Need for Speed

Monday at Ramapo Reservation, first day of the week, getting out at lunchtime on a blustery spring day, I once again began by hiking casually, but when I got to the hill on the green trail, I felt strong and opened it up on the hill, power hiking the very steep stuff and running pretty well up the other hills. I always expect to start having runs like this where I want to go fast when my training starts to bear fruit. Wearing the lighter Saucony Peregrines was good on this day.

I hadn't taken the green trail as much because it adds quite a bit of climb to what is already a run going up the mountain. The green trail climbs up most of the hill then drops right back down to the stream valley, only to climb up a longer hill. Anyway, I realized I could make another local trail loop combination by just climbing the gas-line cut up the hill from the green trail to the white trail. Perfect! That takes out the extra climb and adds a little distance, instead of doing the whole green trail, which adds a lot more distance.

All this means nothing to you, but it says something about me: I seek out the single-track trails and completely ignore dirt roads, power line and gas line cuts. I've come to realize though that I can make many more local trail loops by utilizing short sections of those to connect up other trails. Duh! It's just a little funny to me how I get set in my ways. Thus utilizing bear swamp road as a mid-trail connector recently made a nice little 1:20 loop out of a 2 hour longer loop. Ain't that a great name for a road by the way?

This run felt good, and I poured out the power over long parts of the run. I guess you would call it a fartlek, which means speed-play, and generally, a medium-longish run that you run long sections of very hard. I give the run a 7 out of 10 for effort, meaning that I ran overall 70% as hard as I could all-out for a race of the same duration. But at times today I was significantly above 100%, or running at a harder effort level than I could sustain during a race of that same duration. Basically I rate each run from 1 to 10, 1 being the easiest jog possible for the duration and terrain, and 10 being a full race effort for the same time duration of the run being rate, race effort being what you could actually sustain at that point in your training season, not what it might be when months away you're in peak form. Runs like these where you feel good going very hard are satisfying.