Saturday, August 30, 2008
This was one of those days where I slept late and then waffled around about going out to run... I finally convinced myself to get my backside in gear early in the evening by deciding to go a bit shorter than the 9 miles I had originally planned to do.
As I was riding the Blueberry Hills section (also sometimes referred to as the Columbia Circle section) of the Pine Bush yesterday I was thinking that the trails were unusually clear and I should go running there today. Often the brambles take over the Kaikout Kill Barrens and make the trails literally a pain to run throughout the latter parts of the summer, until the Pine Bush folks clear them... which apparently happened sometime earlier this month. This section can be one of the more challenging to run because it is very hilly... I avoided a lot of the worst hills while riding, but planned to tackle them during my run today.
Another thing I decided to do was test out my Vasque Blur trail shoes that I bought almost on clearance about a month ago... the Saucony's are definitely getting worn and will probably be relegated to the "hiking shoe" pile in another month or so, and I haven't invested in another pair of Adidas Supernova Trails yet. I'd read good things about Vasque shoes, so when I came across these at a nice clearance price I bit the bullet and bought them, and today's run would be short enough that if they were uncomfortable it wouldn't be a problem.
Hitting the trails felt good, even though this is the 6th day in a row that I've been either running or riding... maybe there's something to what Murakami says in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, when he gives his opinion that muscles are like work animals - if you work them consistently day after day and slowly increase what you want them to do, they'll respond and get stronger, but if you give them a couple of days off they relax and lower their limits. (Of course, a few sentences later he mentions that it's important to work them sensibly and not so hard that you burn out.) After two runs and two rides in four days, I expected my legs to spend tonight's run grumbling and complaining... instead they felt pretty good until the last hill or two.
The shoes felt a bit stiff and clunky at first, but by the end of the run were feeling pretty decent... it'll take a few more runs to be sure, and I definitely want to try them on some different types of terrain (the Pine Bush trails tend to be pretty tame compared to some places I've run!)
Along the way I saw several turkey vultures (or at least, the same two turkey vultures several times) and a couple of deer, including a doe and youngster off in the distance (it was fun watching him bounce around.) But the critter I was probably happiest to see was a bat, fluttering around just over my head as I stood on a hilltop and looked out over the fields of Blueberry Hill East - between the fact that they eat tons of bugs and have been dying off for no known reason, I'm always happy to see bats at dusk.
I also managed to catch Jupiter in a photo - I was surprised that it showed up in the shot I took!
click to enlarge - Jupiter is on the right, just about level with the top of the tree
JMH
