Sunday, January 19, 2014

emma carlin trail head and the ice age 50K

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”

- William Faulkner

yesterday i ran with a group of the LPTR.  while i am considered "one of them" i don't always feel like "one of them".  someday i hope that is no longer the case.  this is the group (minus angela who took the photo) i ran the whole way with.  i'm the one in the blue cap.  they were great fun and funny to boot!  lots of laughs and silly topics of conversation.  i really love running with these people.


anyway… we met at 8am at the emma carlin trail head in palmyra, wisconsin for a 15ish mile out and back.
it was really quite cold not hitting more than maybe 5 degrees when we started out.  we showed up in numbers totaling near 15-20 people.  we all take off together but as the group spreads out we ended up in 3 groups.  the 3rd group wasn't running as far as the rest of us so they ended up turning back about 1/2 way through.  this is single track trail for most of the way and we took it to the IAT (or maybe it's the nordic trail? or maybe the whole thing we ran is the ice age trail?) which is also single track.  i had no idea where we were so don't ask me… lol!  we crossed over some horse trails which are wider as well as some trails that the snowmobiles had packed down quite nicely.  the trail was mostly 3-4 inches of fresh snowsand as well as about a foot deep on the bluffs from drifting.  underneath the snowsand was quite a bit of ice especially on the stairs.  this trail (the one i'm not sure of being nordic or ice age) had stone stairs that were covered in ice and it was so slow going!  we walked up and down all of those…
snowsand (my own definition) - snow that is loose like sand. challenging to run in and hard on the body.  often called "powder" - powder is freshly fallen snow that is very light.  formed by tiny snow flakes, it is extremely soft.  many skiers love powder but runners… not so much.  
the run was so challenging but i didn't realize that it was ALL HILLS until i got home and checked the info on my garmin.

about 8-10 miles in my hip flexors were hurting something fierce and the last 6 miles of the run it was almost all i could think about.  i think this was caused because i had to lift my legs higher than normal in the stride i use for the snowsand running.  i will be so happy when the snow is gone and i don't have to run in it anymore.  the best (and maybe only good thing) about running in the snow is that my legs are getting stronger each time i do it.  that will make for easy running once the obstruction of the snow is gone.  yay for that!  it took us just under 4 (yes.. FOUR - yikes!) hours to complete that 16 mile run.


i'm hoping that my speed will increase and therefore my time will decrease once the snow isn't a factor.  i am perpetually surprised at how humbling it is to run the trails.  they certainly can knock a person down a peg or two.  probably a good thing… especially given my perchance for hubris and egocentricity.

the trail is really breathtakingly beautiful and we ran over part of the trail that i'll be running my 50K on so that was cool.  it made me rethink my lofty under 5 hour goal but whateves… i will be happy if i finish the IAT50K i think.  this is the course:

i'm rethinking it because it was ALL HILLS and they were STEEP at that.  i'm not going to tell anyone that i'm reassessing my goal (so shhhhhh) but that will be in the back of my head.  my first goal is to finish in under 5 hours.  my final goal is to finish with a smile on my face.  if i miss the first goal then i have the second one to keep my going.  its a win win.

i'm going to have to go out there a couple of more times before the race so that i have those legs under me when i finally run it.  i want to feel confident about my race and the only way for me to do that i think is to get out there and run the course ahead of time.  it looks like a pretty fun course.  a 13 mile single track (uphill probably both ways) out and back followed by two 9 mile loops of rolling horse trail groomed trails.  i'm glad the hard stuff is at the beginning when i'm fresh.  i keep thinking that the two 9 mile loops should be a piece of cake.  broken up in those three parts it doesn't seem like a lot of mileage.  maybe i'm just fooling myself tho'… hey, whatever works right?


10 comments:

Sree Surendran said...

I really wanted to join you guys for that run. Just one more week before the IceBreaker Marathon is behind me, after that I'll be hitting the trails as often as I can. I'm also doing the IAT50K, and I want to run that course as much as possible. Let me know when you head out that way, I would love to join in. I don't have any lofty goals in the IAT50K, I just want to finish within the cutoff time, and with a smile on my face :)
-Sree

nikki said...

sounds good Sree!

nwgdc said...

Are you planning on running a couple 10k loops at John Dick in a couple weeks? Come on down and join the fun!

nikki said...

nope... someone mentioned it on Saturday but I have no intention of running outside for racing purposes in this awful weather!

nwgdc said...

Smart woman. I'm not sure how many loops I have in me, either, but I'm gonna give it a shot. Just got back from a run. This is not fun anymore.

nikki said...

good luck! most importantly have a great time!

Sun said...

Yikes, that sounds like a tough run! But I bet running on those trails is helping you build strength and that's sure to come in handy this spring, summer and fall :)

nikki said...

i hope so!

Tracey Gessner said...

Oh I love that Faulkner quote!

nikki said...

me too!