Monday 6/17 – Rest day

Tuesday 6/18 – 7.5 miles. Hill Repeats up Maryland Heights

3 repeats up and down the lower portion of the Maryland Heights trail. The turnaround point is the marker that’s exactly half a mile up the trail. So a repeat is 1/2 mile up, 1/2 mile down.

Felt pretty good tonight, definitely fitter than a few weeks ago. My breathing in general is miles better than earlier this year and orders of magnitude better than in Florida last year. So that’s good to see.

Good banter out on the trails with this group –>

Wednesday 6/19 – Rest day

Thursday 6/20 – 7.8 miles. Stone Fort loop

Connected with Josh from the HURT crew (Harpers Ferry Ultra Running Team) to run a loop around Stone Fort, including the lookout. Great run.

Feeling little fitter again, but legs are definitely feeling the strain of all the vert that’s been suddenly imposed upon them. The volume of my running has also increased, as my lower legs and knees are telling me.

Friday 6/21 – Rest day

Saturday 6/22 – 4.1 miles. Flat and Fast

Wow, shins and knees are a little sore, so no chance of Loudon Heights this weekend. Instead I ran out and back along the C & O canal. 1 mile from home to the canal, 1 mile out along the canal, and then same way home to make a 4 mile round trip.

I ended up running instead of jogging tonight, averaging around a 7min 30sec mile pace, which is about as fast as I can go at the moment. Wasn’t planning to do this, but legs felt good so I just smiled and enjoyed the moment. Felt exhilarating compared to my usual plodding.

Beautiful evening, as the following picture from the river’s edge shows:

Sunday 6/23 – Rest day

Sore shins and knees. I will have to go easy next week and be patient. My legs need time to transition from low volume, flat Florida runs to higher volume, trail runs with real vert!

Summary – 19.5 miles

Two long(ish) runs (at least by my standards) and one fast run (again, by my standards). Absolutely loving the trail running but my exuberance has gotten the better of me, and my knees and lower legs are aching. They’re simply not strong enough yet.

Looking forward, I’m going to need to rest for a bit, then scale back a little and just do easier runs on mostly flat terrain to build up to 20+ mile weeks and beyond. The goal is still to run Ultras of course, but that is a loooong way off at the moment 😉