Today I returned to the trails for the first time since running in southern Honduras on our mission trip. It was a nice change of pace from all of my recent road running and I hope to get back into a normal routine of incorporating trails at least once per week.
My schedule called for 50-minutes easy and 4 x 100m stride outs. Of the three main trails in Percy and Edwin Warner Parks, only the red is long enough to occupy 50 minutes since it is 4.5 miles. It would take two laps on either the white or the blue trails because they are only 2.5 miles each.
My legs were really sore heading into this run from doing P90X Legs and Back on Monday night for the first time in two weeks. Overall it didn’t have a big impact on the effort, but was something I could feel for the first half of the run. For the run I kept the pace very conservative with with a steady progression from a first mile of 12:23 to a final mile of 10:27. The red trail has a total elevation gain of almost 1,200 ft in only 4.5 miles, so needless to say this is a challenging route. However, I felt pretty good throughout, even on the tough climbs, and really enjoyed being back on the trails in the beautiful Percy Warner Park.
At the end I completed the 4 x 100m stride outs on the main drive near the trail head. It felt weird to run strides in trail shoes, but I was still able to crank them out at a 6:35 average pace.
Beast Mode…ON!