Thursday, November 7, 2013

Wed November 6th - 7.1mi

Time of day 4:00 PM
Distance 7.10 mi
Comments Treadmill run at the Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. Down here for some work meetings. Played 18 holes on a beautiful course this morning and didn't do too badly, although I did hit one utility truck... Ran once I got back from golfing. Started out at 7:30 pace then gradually ratcheted down to 6:53 pace by the end of the run.
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Sun November 3rd - 4mi

Time of day 9:00 AM
Distance 4.00 mi
Comments Ran from the house down 8th to East Capitol, around the Capitol, then back to 8th via Maryland Ave. good little 4-mile loop that I'll have to add to my RP routes when I'm not logging via phone.
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Sat October 5th - 4mi

Time of day 11:00 AM
Distance 4.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments Joe's last run as a free man. We drove out to Plum Island to run at the (closed) national park up there. Chebot stepped in human shit as soon as we arrived - possibly the toilets were also shut down? We made our way over the barrier keeping the park closed to rabble rousers like us, then down along trails, boardwalks, and the beach for about 4 miles. We ran into the law as we were finishing. The federal park policeman, who was working without pay during the government shutdown, was pretty decent, although we were prepared to run if he pulled out his ticket pad.
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Sat August 24th - 13mi

Time of day 12:00 PM
Distance 13.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments The end of a journey, five years later. Very glad to have finished this with the same guys we started with, no matter the amount of pain that had to be endured to finish.

As for the run, I can't say it any better than Joe, so here's his log:

This was the main point of the trip, to complete the 93mi greenway run that we started in the spring of 2008. I recall that we stopped on Hughes St in Belfast many years ago. Today we picked up from that location to complete the journey.

I still don't know how my Achilles went from feeling terrible on Thursday to awesome yesterday. My only guess is that Mueller drugged me that night and they popped a cortisone injection into it Thursday night.

Papa Mueller (Rudy) came down from Jamestown with the family motorhome. This made logistics easier and we all piled in. 45min drive to Belfast. I dropped a duce and we prepared to head into the bush. The trail in this area still looked like a well kept lawn, but I wore my running backpack anyway so I could tuck in the machetes. Given the issues with my Achilles, gents rode along on the bike, doing 1mi each, since no one was fond of it.

The trail was in such great condition that I feared this "epic 12mi run" would wind up a 80min easy run. These fears were soon assuaged when there was a barrier indicating the trail was closed ahead. We diverted right into the remains of the canal prism and clawed along, using the machete to cut back up to the grade 50m later. We continued but within 200m we found the reason for the closure; the creek next to the path had eroded out completely a 30m section.

Out again with the machete and I took point. We descended a steep bramble covered slope 10m to the creek, leaped across, and then headed up stream 50m and crossed back. Now it was chest high switchgrass and mud. I chopped what I could, but out legs were still quite lacerated. There should have been plenty of snakes, but we saw none. Luckily Mueller was not stung by the myriad swarming bees. Now we clawed back up the very steep, near vertical dirt bank. I got to the top first, using the machete as a piton, and then a human chain, like a barrel of monkeys got everyone to the top. Rusty barbwire greeted anyone at the top that was not careful.

At this point the bike was not such fun any more. Much effort had been extent getting it up and down the banks and we were only 2K into this 20K run.

We headed onward on the good footing and made good time to 4mi. Here we lost the path again and had to bushwhack a little bit, but nothing was much trouble. Some of us, like myself that had not run much in 3 weeks, started to feel a tad tired, but we kept the dialogue within our own heads. Patrick was trailing badly, but we swore that neither he nor I nor Mueller would touch the bike, since we were the three man to have completed all sections to date.

Around 5.5mi we found Rudy with the motorhome. We dumped the bike on him, got some water and blocked up. Out we went. Here the path took on an unpleasant feature of 2" hunks of gravel as the footing. Clearly this was the historic rail bed ballast. It was very uncomfortable to run on, but we pushed on and after 2K of it, we were back to solid footing.

From this point forward, the was the end of the nice grass trail. It was overgrown more by the mile. Tim and I had pressed on and were leading the expedition. The undergrowth projected into the trali from the left and right such that we soon seemed like football players at practice juking to and fro. Perhaps a mile from Rudy we hit our first solid wall of overgrowth. I hacked at it with the machete and pulled back other areas and we continued.

There were many pointy and sharp examples of vegetation on the trail now. Some would wrap around your leg and has you continued your stride cut into you like a chainsaw chain pulling free. Ouch. Others were fun, like the green pinecones covered with sharp spurs. Of course you dare not touch your aching legs however as we were knee high in poison ivy at many points.

The apex of the run now arrived where we found ourselves on an old causeway of sorts where the rail bed had 50m wide open bodies of water on both sides, only divided by the 5m wide gravel ribbon the separated the water for a mile. Clearly we could not go left or right, and certainly not backward.

The vegetation was literally a hedgerow of very thick brambles fed by the great ample water source. You could not see more than two feet into it, the stems were so thick. I hacked away and made little progress. Tyle came up and helped, using the saw side of the machete to cut the bushes at the base. We were making about 8" a minute progress and still had miles to go. From our perspective, this thicket continued perhaps 800m. We started taking turns, men coming to the front to hack away, then getting bloodies and cut and trading to the next man.

This was the best part of the run. You're tired, having been out for 90min already and it is high noon. Though a cool day, you're sweating and it's running into the dozens of cuts on your legs and burning terribly. You clearly have an interminable amount of shit left to go through, but you continue on because you must, because it is what you came here to do and you must not be defeated. The only way is forward. The ode of the distance runner.

We shortly discovered that with enough force, we could carefully bend back the bushes as a whole. After about five minutes of this effort, we progressed the 30m past this section and were to open trail again. By open trail, I mean chest high sharp weeds that we plowed through. Two more we were stopped by similar thickets, but again we chopped and plowed our way through.

About 10mi, we came upon Rudy and the motorhome again. We implored why he was cutting the route short and he said it was "pretty bad" and "impassible" ahead. We told him to meet us at the end and headed back into the brush. The next mile was similar high overgrowth, but we were able to make good time through it.

We finally popped out into a field where the path was no longer evident at all as a highway berm cut across it. We headed left (south) and were not literally in brush and sharpies at head height. After struggling through 200m of this, we clawed the 15m up to the road and along the edge of it 800m to the motorhome and victory
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Fri August 23rd - 5mi

Time of day 1:00 PM
Distance 5.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments Made it to Ellicottville late last night. Today we drove down the road a bit to run on trails. Joe's Achilles was acting up, so he started on the bike. I was also a hurting swamp dog, although just due to being out of shape, not necessarily injured, so I hung with Joe. He ditched the bike after a bit (the trails were too narrow to bike easily) and we finished on foot.
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Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Mon August 5th - 4mi

Time of day 6:30 PM
Distance 4.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments went out thinking i was going for an easy run, but about .5 miles in this guy came up on me at a stoplight, so of course i had to race him. i put the hammer down for about a mile until i couldn't see him behind me anymore, then i veered off of mass ave onto a trail. then a little while later another guy came up on my at a stoplight, but thankfully i lost him after just a block. the uptempo running felt good, although i'm still a little sore.
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Sunday, August 4, 2013

Sun August 4th - 4mi

Time of day 8:30 AM
Distance 4.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments A little sore from yesterday, and that didn't really go away on the run. Ran the same loop as yesterday, except that I turned around after running by Ol' Joe's house where Mass Ave. bends around the Observatory. Found an old jar of Accelerade for after the run.
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Saturday, August 3, 2013

Sat August 3rd - 5.41mi

Time of day 12:45 PM
Distance 5.41 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Route Cathedral - St. Albans Loop
Comments First run in a while. Felt good, and felt better as I kept running.
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Sat June 8th - 4mi

Time of day 8:45 AM
Distance 4.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments ran to the morgan street house in the morning to check out the house and the neighborhood.
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Thursday, February 7, 2013

Thu February 7th - 6mi

Time of day 5:30 PM
Distance 6.00 mi
Comments easy run after work with pmurph from rosslyn, into the city, through georgetown, and back to virginia over the key bridge.
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