Ragnar practice weekend

Hey! So, no races since the Ravenswood Run 5K, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been out there running. I’ve been really good about maintaining the minimum 20-miles/week so that I can get in my 1000-mile goal for the year. In the two weeks following the race I’ve logged 22 and 23 miles and this week I’ll hit a recent high of 29 miles. It hasn’t all been boring slogs either – I took a runcation with some of my Ragnar teammates up to Wisconsin to get in a day of multi-runs.

We arrived at the rental property in Albany, WI on Friday evening at about 8:45pm and by 9:15 we had our running clothes on, our headlamps strapped on and we were out on the trail. It sounds a little creepy, but I’ve been up here before plenty of times and I know the trail well – it’s the Sugar River State Trail – a nice rails-to-trails project that is flat, has few road crossings and cuts through mostly farmland so the chance of running into another human is pretty much nil at that time of night. Despite my assurances of safety we still managed to get freaked out by strange noises that in reality were probably just spring peepers (that’s frogs – not peeping Toms). We did our 5 miles and got back in time to make a quick pasta dinner, shower and then go to bed.  The next day brought the same times two about 2 hours apart to get the feeling of running on tired legs. Then we showered again and headed to the nearby New Glarus brewery for some yummy beers and a bag of cheese curds in their tap room. Only one beer for us on our nearly empty stomachs and then we headed into New Glarus proper to have ‘linner’ at the Glarner Stube. We split an order of delicious fried cheese curds and in a most uninspired manner we all had the wienerschnitzel and rosti potatoes– what can I say? It was fantastic!

After linner we walked around town a little bit but were pretty pooped so we headed back to the house for a nap. We all came to around 7pm and we sat around and drank wine until it was time to go to sleep again – sorry to bust the myth that runners are CRAZY PARTYERS. At least not my crew of runners.  The next day we woke up, made a big breakfast of eggs, chicken sausage, and leftover rosti potatoes and then cleared out and headed home. 15 miles broken into three segments isn’t really that much, but it does give you the feeling of hitting the road when you’re stiff and a little creaky and it’s good practice.

 

This weekend I’m heading up to Wisconsin again – Green Bay this time – for their half-marathon. This is the site of my half PR two years ago – 1:55 & change – but I don’t expect to beat that time or really even come particularly close. I’ll be the first to admit that during my injury I kept eating like I was running 20-30 miles/week and the resulting 10 # is definitely slowing me down. But, I love this race. For a smaller city race they have great crowd support , a fun expo, a lap around Lambeau Field, and a finishline beer & brat. I’ll be back next week with a race review.