As I suspected, all running activities did not come to an end upon completion of the Eugene Curnow trail marathon. While I did take some time off to give my knees a break, during that time I was further inspired by Steve, Jeff, and Bob as they all finished the Voyageur 50-miler on July 26th. Knowing that they completed basically double what I did in temperatures that reached 85 degrees makes me even more determined to stretch myself beyond the marathon distance. I was able to sneak away from a baseball tournament and meet them at an aid station or two and all I wanted to do was take off with them and join them out on the trail. Next year boys, next year!
Since then, despite being told that the only way to fix my knees was to take a 6-week break, I've started running again as the Sorenson Stampeders have the Ragnar Great River Relay coming up August 15 and 16. Twelve of us will be covering 200 or so miles from Winona, MN to St. Paul, MN - each runner completing three of 36 total legs. My three legs cover about 17 miles. The whole reason I trained for the Curnow was to make sure I would be in some kind of shape for the Ragnar as I don't want to let eleven other team members down.
Since then, despite being told that the only way to fix my knees was to take a 6-week break, I've started running again as the Sorenson Stampeders have the Ragnar Great River Relay coming up August 15 and 16. Twelve of us will be covering 200 or so miles from Winona, MN to St. Paul, MN - each runner completing three of 36 total legs. My three legs cover about 17 miles. The whole reason I trained for the Curnow was to make sure I would be in some kind of shape for the Ragnar as I don't want to let eleven other team members down.
Part of the Ragnar training included the annual Carlton Daze 5K. This 5K is sort of special to me for two reasons. First, it was the first official 5K I ran after Lindsey started making us all run 5K's back in 2010 and I've run it every year since. Second, I was joined by Jordyn last year and any time I can run with my kids is golden. This year, I wasn't going to run it, as the night before Wenday invited Jordyn to run with her and I figured that was good enough. Then I woke up Friday morning feeling a bit guilty that I wasn't going to run so that afternoon, Jordyn and I registered and were joined by Wenday and - at literally the last minute - Lindsey. It was great running with family and Jordyn did awesome setting a personal record of around 33 minutes. I'm so glad we did it and can't wait for our next race together.
Anyways, a cool side effect of completing the Curnow and all this running is passing
a bit of the trail running bug on to other family and friends. I knew I needed to do another trail race this year and - as mentioned previously -I came across the Superior Hiking Trail Grand Traverse through Duluth on September 27th where runners can choose from distances of 10, 16, 21 or 27 miles. Since people saw my big butt complete a marathon, several have started thinking they can at least knock off ten miles. (Which they can - and more!) Therefore, I've been having some more varied company with me on some of my runs. What's even cooler to me than finding something I love to do is getting others out there and seeing them discover what I and all other trail runners have and listening to them say things like, "I love this trail!" or "It's beautiful out here!" or "This hill SUCKS!!!" (Even more of a bonus is to see Jack catching the trail running bug. He's a lot like me as he basically refuses to run roads, but once I got him out in the woods, he's started coming with us on a regular basis and even went with me on a 3.25 mile loop last night!) As far as my knees go, I'll use the phrase "cautiously optimistic." In the past week or so I've completed trail runs of 3.25 miles twice, 4 miles, 4.5 miles, 6 miles and a road run of 4.6 miles and so far haven't felt any pain. Throughout most of June, 4 miles was the magic threshold where discomfort would begin. Going slightly beyond that with no pain has made me happy, but I know I'll need to stretch it out to around 8-10 miles to really give them a good test. However, as much as I want to do that now, two things need to happen first. I need to get back into a little better shape through completion of my shorter 4-6 mile runs and I need to get through Ragnar. After that, I can start thinking about heading out for a 2-3 hour run and really giving them a test. If all goes well, some of ya'll might be getting a call for an invitation to join me on some longer training runs! At the very least, Becky mentioned that she wants to start covering the Grand Traverse route in Duluth, so if you want to join us, I'll keep you posted!
Until then, go here and sign up: http://www.grandtraverseduluth.com/Grand_Traverse/Welcome.html
That's it for now. See you on the trails!
Until then, go here and sign up: http://www.grandtraverseduluth.com/Grand_Traverse/Welcome.html
That's it for now. See you on the trails!