Happy trails

Lauren often organizes good expeditions, and this one was no exception. We went with my college acquaintance/Lauren's friend S. and his lovely (and well-trained) black dog; we missed the exit that would have taken us to the park we really intended to run in, but we realized this just as we were just coming up to the exit for another state park and decided we might as well try that one instead.

(I think it was this one, but cannot say that I am 100% sure!)

I think we had vaguely pictured well-trampled trails and steady-effort trail running on the order of 5.5mph, but in fact nobody really had been out there at all, it was beautiful but arduous - so we did a sort of a loop that involved c. 15 minutes trudging through snow that must have been something like fifteen inches deep and then reaching the road and running back a quarter of a mile or so along the road back to where we started. It was quite lovely out there (picture below); we covered an implausibly low number of miles, but I feel it was just the sort of winter cross-training that triathlon coaches advise their athletes to do in the winter months - very good for the spirits to spend time somewhere so bucolic! My HR was about 50% in zone 2 with the other half of the time split between zone 1 and zone 3, so it is aerobically much what you'd get from a run of the same duration, with less knee pounding.

(I have to start doing a weekly 90-120 min. run again, though - it's one of my favorite things.)

1:21:41, 4.71mi., avg. HR 146, max. HR 159