Although I enjoyed taking pictures yesterday at the Bedford 12k, I really wished I could have been out there with my friends and team mates. Looking at the pictures, you'd have to wonder why actually...not a lot of smiling faces out there. Oh well, I'll be out there eventually.
After the race yesterday I headed over to Mt Uncanoonuc in Goffstown. I needed to get my heart rate up so I decided to speed hike to the summit and back. Most of it was just that: speed hiking, but occassionally I threw in some running. Oh the horror! Not really. Running up hill doesn't seem to affect me much (from an injury point of view). I went up, over and around the backside before coming back down again. Roundtrip of 1hr. It was the closest I've come to running in weeks.
Today I woke up and nothing hurt more than usual. Usual is me spending between 30 min and and hour each night doing various core exercises. To me this was a good sign. Whatever I managed to do yesterday didn't seem to have a serious affect on my phantom injury. So with that I figured I'd try my luck again.
Off I went to Temple, NH and Pack Monadnock. I parked on one of the side roads near Pack and headed up Raymond Trail, 1.6m to the summit. On the way up I did a combo of speed hiking and slow running. Since it took me less than 30 minutes to reach the summit I decided to go down the other side to the main parking lot on RT101 (Marion Davis Trail, 1.4m,), running nearly the entire way down. Feeling inspired now, I headed back up Pack Monadnock for the second time, this time taking the Wapack Trail to the summit, another 1.4m trip. I ran the sections that were runnable. When I say I was running, think more along the lines of slow shuffle and not some guy doing a trail race. After a brief stop at the summit for the second time, I headed back down Raymond Trail to my car for an additional 1.6m. Total round trip, 6 miles and 1hr and 35 minutes of hiking/running.
All in all I felt pretty good. No real pain, a little sore once in a while but that's about it. Not quite ready to hit the roads yet but I am enjoying getting out on the trails. I probably did more than I should have today but it was worth it. Beats hanging around doing nothing!
