Monday March 18 AM 9.2 Miles, 1400′ 1:10 Columbia Trail>Schooleys Mountain>Columbia Trail. Lollipop loop with the mountain as the candy, I haven’t really run this route in the past 6 months or so, so I figured I should get back at it, primarily for the juxtaposition of self-imposed speed on the flats followed by nose-on-ground steepness up and down the mountain (assuming you’re moving at speed)
PM 1 Mile, 8:00 Treadmill shakeout before weights.

Tuesday March 19 AM 9.2 Miles, 1400′ 1:14 Same lollipop route as the day before, this time in ~3 inches of snow with a combination of rain followed by snow for the entire duration. Effort-wise, this should have been a faster loop, but the loss of traction as well as hesitation on the most technical sections cost me some serious time.

Wed March 20 AM 9.2 Miles, 1400′ 1:10 Wonderful day to be on trail. I thought I was on pace for a quicker loop, but it seems that I’ve got it dialed in pretty well in the 70-minute zone.
PM 1 Mile, 8:15 Shakeout after dinner in an attempt to knock some soreness out of my legs

Thursday March 21 AM 9.2 Miles, 1400′ 1:10 Hitting the splits pretty consistently, and really feeling like this route is getting dialed in well, which means it’s time to start pushing the envelope in the upcoming weeks.
PM 8 Miles, 1020′  1:02 Broken shin loop preceded by an easy 3 mile loop on the same roads. Feeling unusually spry at the tail end of a seventeen mile day.

Friday March 22 AM 7 Miles, 940′ :47 Local road loop, surprisingly on pace. I was planning to run a lot more on Friday (mentally) but my body isn’t recovering at quite the rate I was optimistically planning for. I seem to be ignorant of the fact that the last time I was running this much, it was on-the-whole a lot slower.

Saturday March 23, 20 Miles, 6780′ 3:39 High Point>Sunrise Mountain>High Point Via AT. Dave and Gene have been ranting and raving about this run for longer than I can remember (although, they usually do it in the summer, in the reverse order). I decided to run it backwards primarily because the Sunrise Mountain parking lot was closed due to snow, little did I know that the whole trail would be ~4 inches deep in slush. I probably could have paced myself much better, as the first half was ~13 mins faster than the second half.

73.8 Miles, 13,080′ 10h28m

Overall A lot less mileage than I expected to crank out during a week “off” (from class) but most of the mileage was hard-won, especially yesterdays 20 miler. I’d go out again today, but a little niggle in my right hip/the lateral side of my thigh combined with some rough blistering on my feet is enough to encourage me to take a recovery day, and pick myself up by my bootstraps tomorrow. Yesterdays run was by far the hardest I’ve worked on a solo outing, period, so if I can maintain this sort of gumption in the next few weeks, I think it’ll pay off.

Overlook on the Kittatinny Ridge

Wed Morning on Schooleys

Sometimes standing on a rock is hard

Another view from the ridge

No fires in NJ….