What a weekend!

Made it through another week of good training!  Earlier in the week I was afraid I wouldn't hit 200K, but with three huge days to finish it off, I did it! 

Started off Friday dropping off the car and walking home through the hills.  Dave joined me part way and I did 30K while he did 20K.  Wasn't super fast with all the hills, but was really pleasant.  Got home and started packing for our camping trip!  First camping of the season, we were so excited.  Got everything ready, took off, and made it just before dark to set up camp.  They were unfortunately out of camp fire wood, so no marshmallows the first night :(   As we were pitching the tent we realized there were tons of mosquitos!!!!!!  Ugh!  All the rain we've been getting has been great for the mosquito population.   We went to bed early as we were both tired and had no fire to enjoy.

Here's the view I woke up to:

Dave had a speed session scheduled Saturday so we headed off to find a track.  After a little difficulty we found what was probably the roundest track we've ever been on...

Happily, after a little bit of a rocky start, Dave had a great speed session.  His psoas is super duper tight, but we talked about just doing the best he could do and working through it, and I tried to stretch it out a bit, and he went way better than we thought he would.  Especially since it was pretty hot!  I did distance while he was going and gave him his drinks.  Once he was done I did 10x30/30.  This is a great workout Ian introduced me to.  You sprint holy guns for 30 seconds, then have 30 seconds recovery.  I did it 10 times, just to see if I had any speed.  I haven't done any speed work since the week before outdoor nats, so I was just going to have fun and not really expect anything.  However, I flew!  In those ten minutes I went almost 2.1K!  I hit 2K around 9:25, and with the recovery times in there I'm very, very happy with that.  Maybe I do still have some speed in my legs after all! 

We went from the workout to Fort Stanwix, which was fun.  It was still hot and sunny, so walking around was tiring.  But we got to follow the park ranger for her tour and see them fire off a 6 pound cannon!  I mentioned to Dave at one point, if we were normal people this is the kind of stuff we'd do most weekends, instead of training all the time :) 

We went back to the park and hiked another 9K.  So by the time all was said and done we'd done 25K for the day!  Managed to get the fire going, had a few marshmallows and off to bed, the next day would really test us.

Sunday we got up early and headed out to a portion of the Erie Canal.  Our goal was to hike 60K or 12 hours, whichever came first.   We loaded up on food, GU, water, and everything else and took off.  What a beautiful trail!  Only problem, since the canal isn't used in places it's basically stagnant water, which means breeding ground for mosquitos.  We went through a 4 mile stretch of mosquito swarm.  I am not exaggerating when I say that Dave killed about 200 on me.  My back and legs are literally covered with mosquito bites!  At one cross road there was a guy sitting on his porch.  We said hi and asked him if he had any repellant.  He had some sitting right there with him!  And he was nice enough to give us some! 

At one point we realized we'd need to leave the canal trail and go along the road to get to a town to get more water and food.  After restocking and getting some ice cream, we were headed back.  We hit 30K in 5:15, so well under the pace we were thinking about.

Probably should've had this picture earlier, but here's us getting ready for our hike. 

As we were coming back Dave started to not feel so good.  It was warm, luckily the sun was behind some clouds, but it was very humid and sticky.   Dave sweats way more than I do, and needs a lot more water.  We decided that Dave would finish at one of the locks and I would continue back to the car and come back and get him.  We decided this with about 20K to go.  I decided at that point that I'd try a modified race walk, instead of hiking.   Our mile pace had been between 16:30 and 18:30 on the way out.  I was able to pick it up to between 11:30 and 13:15 for the last 12 miles!  That made me very happy and very hopeful for success at the Isle of Man 100 miler!  Even though Dave didn't do exactly what he was hoping, we both learned a lot and he still had a great day.  It's one of the first times he's gotten through a long/hot walk without cramping, so I count that as a huge success!  Because I did the modified RW on the way back I was actually able to negative split the halves of the 60K, so another reason to be happy.

After I collected Dave we grabbed some food and headed back to camp for a nice shower.  One thing I noticed has happened the last few long walks I've been on is that my legs have gotten a very strange rash.  It doesn't really itch, but some of it gets very puffy and swollen and it feels like my skin is stretching more than it should.  I've tried various google searches and can't really find what it is.  Anyone have any ideas?

Not a great picture.  I didn't get it anywhere else, just my legs/feet.  Dave says it might be golfer's vasculitis, ideas?

After the shower we looked at all the mosquitos at camp and how warm and sticky it was and decided that a movie in an air conditioned theater sounded very nice.  We went and saw Self/Less, and we liked it.  We really liked sitting and being cool with no mosquitos too. 

So with those three big days at the end of the week I hit 200K!!!  That's two weeks in a row.  One more week of 200K + and then I'll start tapering and working on speed for World Masters in Lyon.  I know at that point I'll be the strongest I've ever been, I'll just have to sharpen up. 

And today I'm happy to say that I've recovered really well.  I did a solid hour on the elliptical and worked outside on the facility.  We have beams in the ground!!! 

So here's to working hard, staying as focused as I can, and having fun doing it.