Blue Line Run and Being Chased by a Bear

Well, not in that order.

And not together either.

And it wasn't a bear, per se.

Nor, a wild animal at all really.

And calling it being chased is sort of misleading as well.

But in my mind I was being chased by a big ole hungry bear. Or maybe a wolf. Or something else with big nasty teeth. What I'm referring to is my solo trail run in Reagan Park last Wednesday evening. The running club was meeting for a group trail run Thursday that Mrs. P was interested in attending, so I decided to head out on my own a day earlier so she could run with the group. The weather was great and everyone was out that night. Especially the mountain bikers. There were a few groups out as well as solo riders. The largest group numbered 8 to 10 riders. It was that group I was running from, or racing against, should you choose to look at it that way.

The trail loops in the park are narrow and for the most part, one way. So I can hear when a rider is approaching from behind. They tend to make a lot of noise. Some of the trails even switch back on themselves so you can see who's coming up on you. I was on one of those trails when I heard and then saw the riders coming. I didn't know exactly how far I had to go to reach the end of the trail, but I knew I wasn't more than a mile. So I picked up the pace. I was running that trail as hard as I could. My ears would hear guys yelling to each other, but my mind translated that into animal snarls that wouldn't let me ease up. By the time I reached the end of the trail I was completely out of breath and drenched in sweat. But I reached the end ahead of them!

I continued running that night, logging 10 miles of trails and averaging 9:34 per mile. That's amazing for me considering the technical difficulty of those trails.

Saturday morning brought with it the annual Blue Line run on the Akron Marathon course, sponsored by Vertical Runner. I did this run last year where I met some runners I've been training with since. It's a great run on a great course with a great turnout. We probably had about a hundred or so runners starting out in pre-dawn downtown Akron. The weather was just about perfect too. Just a little chilly at the start, but warming very fast once the sun was up.

Dan H. and I ran together for the entire 20 miles, seeing others occasionally from time to time. We averaged just over 9 minute miles and maintained a nice comfortable chat-friendly pace throughout. I like the hills on this course and I'm a bit sad that I won't be able to run Akron this year. Maybe next year? We finished in just under 3 hours and I was back home by 11:00. After a little time to rest, we were off to Oktoberfest for the rest of the day. But that's an entirely different story...

The Erie Marathon is Sunday which will affect my training this week. As this isn't an "A" race, and just a long training run, I'm not going with a full 3 week taper leading up to race day. I'm just going to scale things back a little instead: Speed work tonight, not full blast, but not sandbagging it either, and another middle distance run on Wednesday or Thursday. And that will be all till Sunday. On Sunday, the Gauntlet begins.