For convenience, I do a lot of my running at a County Park, that is about five miles from our house. That park is North Park, and it offers both safe street running and some fantastic trail run options. There are miles and miles of trails, and over the years, I have run on most of them. Each trail is given a unique color and is blazed with that color, so route finding is easy.
In running the various colored trails, I have often thought that it would be great to combine a number of them together, to create a route that looped around the perimeter of the park. Last week, I had a few spare minutes, so I sat down at my computer and opened the Garmin course planning page. In no time at all, I had a route planned, that did what I always wanted to try; a route that did a complete loop around the park. It was 12.5 miles long.
I ran that loop yesterday and it turned out really well. My watch kept me on track and I successfully completed the loop without getting lost. The conditions underfoot were not great. It was quite a warm day, and the trails had turned very wet and muddy. I was sliding all over the place at times, but that only added to the fun.
Yes… the trails were very muddy !!
Aside from my fantastic trail run, I also had a great week of training. As I had planned, I introduced some harder effort runs and they went very well. Here are the workouts I completed last week:
- Monday – 75 Minute Sweet Spot Ride On The Bike Trainer
- Tuesday – 50 Minute Run with 30 Minutes at Tempo Effort
- Wednesday – 35 Minute Aerobic Treadmill Run followed by 45 Minute Ride with 4 x 4 Minutes at Threshold
- Thursday – 50 Minute Run with 5 x 3 Minutes at Threshold
- Friday – 75 Minute Endurance Ride on Trainer
- Saturday – 55 Minute Aerobic Run
- Sunday – 2 Hour and 45 Minute Endurance Trail Run
The week felt really good after my recovery week last week. I got back up to almost six hours of running, and that included some solid work at higher effort. I also felt strong on the bike.
The other new thing this past week was trying a different pair of run shoes. I love running in Asics Gel Kayano, but wanted to find something with more cushion, to help as I run more miles. To that end, I bought a pair of Asics Novablast 3 shoes. I have run in them twice so far, and they are everything I hoped for so far. They feel comfortable on my feet, more cushioned than the Kayano and still quite responsive.
This upcoming week, is more of the same. I plan to increase run volume slightly and also spend a few extra minutes at high effort. I am starting to feel strong while running and I love that.
Loving these Asics Novablast 3 shoes so far…..
