Training Log - Monday, March 29, 2010

I met my usual running buddies at Richard's house at 5:40 AM this morning. I was late. Some say as usual, I say not true;-) The plan was to run about 11 miles with some major hills. The goal is to integrate as many hills as possible into our regular training to prepare for Laurel Valley. I say we need to add actual stair running to our regimen as well to get ready. Anyway, we took off at 5:40 AM and headed for the Rocket City Marathon route that would lead us from our starting point on Pratt Ave at the bottom of Monte Sano Mountain to the bottom of Drake Ave. The pace was rather fast and I started to break a sweat after just half a mile. At this rate, I would be soaked and finished before we ever got to the bottom of Drave Ave. From there it would be all uphill for a while. Once we arrived at the top of Drake, we waited to make sure the entire group continued together from there. The Drake climb feels like you are literally leaning forward into the road. We made our way to the dead end of a neighborhood and to a power line cut, which we ascended until we reached another one of our "posh" Huntsville neighborhoods. While the power line cut seemed to have been cleared at the start of our ascend, the brush got significantly thicker towards the top with lots of thorns to "decorate" our legs and arms. From there, we headed towards Monte Sano Boulevard and Bluffline Trail, which we would descend until we hit the top of Tollgate Trail. Once we reached the bottom of Tollgate Trail, we made our way down Bankhead Parkway until we got back to Richard's house. A quality 13 mile loop in about 2 hours and 20 minutes with lots of serious uphills and a nice trail section as well. Those are the types of training runs I want to do all the time. My legs haven't been sore like this after a training run in a long time.