October 1, 2012

2 miles, 19:46 Jensen Lake 6:30am
October temperatures began wonderful this morning at 58 degrees. After leaping out of my car and stashing the keys I was bounding down from the trail head in a less than a minute. Great thing about warmer days with high dew points are the lack of fog on my glasses that obscure my view of the trail. At 0-dark thirty that is a double impairment.  By the time I got back to the car it was 7:05 leaving me 25 minutes to drive to work, change and open the store.  Quite often I overestimate my pace and think I'll be back at the car in 15 minutes like I was some kind of pro trail runner, and then end up late to whatever appointment I have. 

4.2 miles, 38 minutes 6:00pm Lebanon Hills west and Jensen Lake (backwards)
Really had a hankering for some pain this afternoon. I still love attacking that steep Horse trail at about the half way point on LH west, despite my tightening knee and occasional foot stings. When I got back to the trail head I walked across the parking lot to Jensen lake TH and decided to take an easy run the reverse direction I have always gone. More slow inclines or possibly the steep horse trails made the legs drag on the last two miles. The final mile my knee really stiffened up and I was dreading the walk back and rethinking the extra 2 miles I added on until I noticed my left leg was bowing out. Simply trying to straighten the outward flex helped mitigate the discomfort and I employed my new "hurry up strategy" to increase my pace and in turn decrease the time weight sits on my joints. My split times aren't accurate due to the lack of landmarks for me to gauge the miles but I am fairly certain the final mile ticked off ~7:30.

When I use MapMyRun on the two separate trails they both show about ~287ft of ascent but together it barely has 516ft. Many blogs I've read say the same thing; elevation gains on MMR under value the ascents. Anton has a watch with a barometer to track changes very accurately, something that would benefit a high altitude runner but with only rolling hills in Minnesota I could never justify the purchase.