A hill is a hill.

Rather than bitch about the constant rain (it's April you know, this is normal), last night I took the opportunity to strap on (huh-huh), the running shoes and go out after work to test the feet. I'd taken a week off, in fact only running five times in the past month. My bike got nicely cleaned after Sunday's NH sandfest, but I don't think it's had a chance to dry out yet, and it wasn't lubed either. Tuesday morning the forecast was dismal enough that I didn't even bother to pack the bike for Wompatuck. Sure enough, the race was called off. Hard rain keeps the fields away, and the backstretch may be under water.

Around quitting time at the cube farm, the weather was pretty dismal, but only light rain was falling. I ran right from work. I did not have GPS, HRM, or WTF, or anything else other than my watch, so this would be by feel. It's only about a mile to get to Houghton's Pond, and there I turned into the woods, but was quickly met by a flooded section of the road where a spillway had been overwhelmed by the rising swamp. Treading the concrete bulkhead of the spillway like an ironworker, I managed dry passage without falling into the pond. I hit the hill on the paved loop in the woods and felt pretty good. Down the other side, I was nearly trampled by two startled whitetails (no, not that kind Heywood).

Crossing into the other side of the reservation near the State Police stable, I still felt good going up the long grind on the fire road. Most of the trail was puddled, but the woods seem to be soaking up the deluge quite well. Only a few mushy steps needed to be taken near the end of the fire road. This led me out to the famed Big Blue access road. The trailhead intersects the road at about the one minute point of a trip up by bike. I wanted to compare my running time with my recent cycling attempts, but I wasn't about to run to the bottom. I hit the split button and proceeded up.

My lungs felt good, even if my legs are a bit cobwebbed from not running. Not having HR data, I pushed but not too hard, as I didn't want to blow on the steeps near the top. At the summit I clicked the split again and later found only 7:12 had passed. Since my recent bike times have been an unimpressive six minutes, subtracting the one minute for the skipped section means it took me 7:12 to run something that has been taking me around five minutes to do on the bike. Wow. Just goes to show you what 22 pounds of bike does to you on a climb like this.

Running down sucked. It was getting dark and I headed back through the woods. My intensity wained near the end, but I ended up out there for 1:12 total, easily my longest run since the half marathon. This felt like a real workout. Driving home I was cooked and starving. Excellent. It may not have been Wompatuck, but it was pretty good for a work day. Thanks for reading.