Tuesday, April 6, 2010

I went out with Tony and Jim yesterday for a tour of the 6.5 mile loop which will be the home of the new half-marathon in the Boston Hill area just south of downtown Silver City this year. It's a great area for trail running. It's a small area, but is packed with an intricate trail system. Boston Hill is an old mining area that was purchased by the city and is being turned into a great open space area. As the name indicates, it's up on a hill, with great views of the city and surrounding desert, forest, and mountains. It's got some really nice technical single track and plenty of hills to climb and bomb down. I've been running much more consistently lately, but my mileage is still pretty low so I was hoping that Tony and Jim would take it easy...No chance. I got worked hard. I was sucking wind after the first mile. and that was the easy part. They were keeping a really nice pace. I was able to keep up on the flats and down hills but they would pull away on the ups. Whenever I got to far back they would stop and wait for me so I didn't miss any key turns. We were bombing down the rocky hills at break-neck pace. It was a great run, and a lot of fun to be out on the trails with some other good runners. Also a good indicator of how out of shape I am :) We finished the 6.5 mile loop in 1:05 Which is only 10 minute pace, but there was a lot of hill climbing in there. I look forward to running in Boston Hill a lot this spring and in to the summer and Hopefully I'll be ready to run a good race for the 1/2 in July. There were to many turns for me to remember them all, but Jim (the rd) is working on a map of the course. The trail head is only 1/2 mile from our place, so it's a really convenient place to train. and with technical trails, and plentiful hills, what more do you need?

I've put in a good amount of miles this past 5 or so days, not because I was trying to, but because it just sort of happend. Thursday was an 18.3 mile hike with full pack with Jill, Friday was a 2 mile run on trails, then 8 or so miles with tony on trails, followed by us getting lost for 4 hours and bushwacking up and down a mountain. Sunday was a 9 mile hike with Gary. Yesterday was 3 miles running on trails, then 3 miles walking, then the 6.5 mile run. Today was 2 miles running on trails, which 2 or more to go later on today with Jill. That's 51 miles in 5 days. More miles than I've put done in that short of a time in more than a year. But my body feels really good and I'm looking forward to getting back to some more consistent training...and blogging.

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