Sat August 2nd - 8.1mi

Time of day 5:00 PM
Distance 8.10 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments Ran a little further down 8th Street than normal. Ran to M Street SE, then over to NJ Ave, up to the Capitol, then around the Washington Monument and back via East Capitol.
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Fri August 1st - 4mi

Time of day 6:15 PM
Distance 4.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments around the capitol and home. cool-ish outside (76 degrees). feels like it's about to rain.
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Sun July 13th - 10.821mi

Time of day 6:00 PM
Distance 9.32 mi
Shoe Gel-ds Racer 8 (1)
WUCD Shoe Gel-ds Racer 8 (1)
Distance WU/CD 1.50 mi
Comments 2014 Utica Boilermaker

Drove up to Utica for the Boilermaker. I haven't run it in a couple of years, and it was good to be back. Ran with Chebot's number, since he was stuck in Israel.

The race went pretty well, especially considering that I I'm not in great shape. Maintaining a sub-7 pace was pretty easy. I wore my new Garmin, so I have my splits:

6:23 (+68 feet)
6:36 (+67 feet)
6:45 (+78, -12 feet)
7:13 (+100 feet)
6:19 (-191 feet)
6:36 (-64 feet)
7:09 (+82, -24 feet)
6:47 (+15, -108 feet)
7:11 (+31, -28 feet)
2:13 (final 0.3 miles)
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Sat July 12th - 3.5mi

Time of day 5:45 PM
Distance 3.50 mi
Shoe Gel-ds Racer 8 (1)
Comments pre-boilermaker easy run around utica with the guys
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Sat June 28th - 8mi

Time of day 12:45 PM
Distance 8.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Temperature 81°F
Wind Light
Conditions Sunny and Dry
Intensity Easy
Overall Feeling Average
Comments First run with a GPS watch. I decided on the Garmin Forerunner 10. It seems to have better accuracy than the Timex and Nike+ models that are comparatively priced, but fewer features than the Forerunner 305 or the 310xt. The only feature I was really looking for was distance, so this bare-bones model seemed to be the best deal for me. It also has a face not much bigger than a regular stopwatch, which I appreciate.

Home for the weekend, so we went to pick strawberries. I ran home from the field down Rt. 11. Hot and sunny with a nice breeze. Felt pretty good, but the long straight run and the sun wore me down a little bit, so my pace slowed from just under 7:00 at the beginning to about 7:45 by the end.
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Thu June 26th - 8mi

Time of day 7:00 PM
Distance 8.00 mi
Shoe Gel-ds Racer 8 (1)
Comments This was a night of live music. The Smithsonian Folk Life Festival is going on this week, so around mile 3 I stopped for a minute to listen to a Chinese wooden drum dance, then at mile 6 I stopped to listen to a Kenyan band (the Kenyan tent was packed and jamming - a lot more fun than the Chinese tent), then a mile later I stumbled upon the President's Own Marine Band playing on the steps of the Capitol to about 50 tourists (I guess they do that every Wednesday with Thursday as the rain date - I learned something today).
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Wed June 25th - 4mi

Time of day 8:00 PM
Distance 4.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Temperature 83°F
Conditions Cloudy and Humid
Intensity Easy
Overall Feeling Good
Comments Quick run around the Capitol. Had a reception to go to after work, so after loading up on wine and spring rolls I headed out for a little run before it got dark. Legs felt a little heavy after yesterday, but not too bad.
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Tue June 24th - 10.5mi

Time of day 7:00 PM
Distance 10.50 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments ran my 10.2 mile loop to georgetown and back, but spent some time zig-zagging on side streets in georgetown looking for a specific restaurant, so i added a little less than a half mile to the run. felt ok. left hamstring was a little tight.

k street was shut down for 6-7 blocks, apparently because a commuter bus hit a person. a reminder to be careful when running across the street.
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Sun June 22nd - 5mi

Time of day 8:50 AM
Distance 5.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Temperature 70°F
Wind None
Conditions Cloudy and Humid
Intensity Easy
Overall Feeling Average
Comments a little sore after yesterday, so instead of doing my planned 10 miles i cut it to 5 to be safe. the last thing i need is to get injured early in my training and not be able to toe the line at lehigh.

total mileage this week: 26.2 miles
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Sat June 21st - 10.2mi

Time of day 9:15 AM
Distance 10.20 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Temperature 69°F
Conditions Light Rain
Intensity Easy
Overall Feeling Good
Comments longest run i've done in a long time. ran down to east capitol, past the capitol, past the monument, down to the lincoln memorial, then up into georgetown, then back along k street, then cut down to the mall again near the archives, ran past the capitol on the senate side, and back home along maryland ave. light rain and cool, which made the run very pleasant. no foot pain like i had the other day.
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Thu June 19th - 4mi

Time of day 6:15 PM
Distance 4.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Temperature 78°F
Conditions Sunny and Humid
Intensity Easy
Overall Feeling Average
Comments easy run around the capitol. the top of my left foot hurt from the beginning, but i loosened my laces and that seemed to help. the pain was gone after 2.5 miles or so, and the rest of the run was pain-free.
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Mon June 16th - 7mi

Time of day 7:00 PM
Distance 7.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments Ran past the Capitol and around the Washington Monument. Felt pretty good - a little slow after the past couple of days, but I loosened up after a mile or two.
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Sun June 15th - 7.5mi

Time of day 8:00 AM
Distance 7.50 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Temperature 71°F
Conditions Sunny and Dry
Intensity Easy
Overall Feeling Good
Comments same route as yesterday around the washington monument, but when i was on my way home 3rd street and part of the mall were closed. it looked like they were filming a movie - lots of russian arms attached to cars. anyway, i had to run down to the department of energy before being able to cross, so i added another half mile to the run.

heading back up 8th street i raced a bus from east capitol to my house and won (about half a mile). good speed work. ran around the block at the end to cool down a little.
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Tue June 3rd - 6.22mi

Time of day 2:45 PM
Distance 6.22 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Route YMCA Treadmill
Comments ran a 10k on the treadmill at our hotel in curacao. turned the screen to a track, then pretended like i was running the 10k at states my senior year. that helped get me through an otherwise boring treadmill run.

would have liked to run outside of the hotel, but it was so hot and we were so far from anything interesting that the treadmill seemed like the best option. my outdoor would would be the equivalent of an out-and-back on a driveway through the desert.
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Sat June 14th - 7mi

Time of day 2:00 PM
Distance 7.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Temperature 76°F
Conditions Sunny and Dry
Intensity Easy
Overall Feeling Good
Comments my usual run around the capitol, except that i extended it to run down the mall around the washington monument and back. nice sunny day, not too hot. there was a lot going on down on the mall, so this run required a lot of tourist dodging.
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Sat May 31st - 4mi

Time of day 7:00 AM
Distance 4.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Route YMCA Treadmill
Comments another morning run on the treadmill at the santa barbara beach and golf resort in curacao
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Thu May 29th - 4mi

Time of day 7:00 AM
Distance 4.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Route YMCA Treadmill
Comments easy run on the treadmill at our hotel in curacao. the treadmills were in front of windows facing the pool and the ocean, so i had a great view for the run.
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Sun May 25th - 5mi

Time of day 2:30 PM
Distance 4.00 mi
Distance WU/CD 1.00 mi
Comments pre-wedding run to kill some time before getting ready. this ended up turning into a race, since i had joe and danny on either side of me and we could all see each others' pace. i was leading danny for a little bit before my glasses fell on the treadmill and shot across the room (they were fine - otherwise we would have had a minor situation on our hands).

ended up running 4 miles right around 6:15-6:25 pace. fastest running i've done in a while, but i recovered in time to walk down the aisle without limping or crawling.
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Fri May 23rd - 4.5mi

Time of day 2:30 PM
Distance 4.50 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments ran around the capitol building with joe once he got here from boston. good to take a break from wedding prep for a few minutes.
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Thu January 2nd - 4mi

Time of day 9:30 AM
Distance 4.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments ran around the capitol building
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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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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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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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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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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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Sun October 21st - 13.1mi

Time of day 7:30 AM
Distance 13.10 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Temperature 55°F
Wind Light
Conditions Sunny and Dry
Intensity Easy
Overall Feeling Bad
Comments Empire State Marathon

I knew it was going to be rough, so I took it easy from the start hoping to hold off the inevitable knee pain. I was pain free for about half a mile, but the pain was manageable until about mile 6. From mile 6 to 9 it was excruciating. Around mile 9, though, we hit some hills and my knee felt much better on the uphills. It's the only time I've wished for more uphills in a race. I made it to Baldwinsville OK, but I knew my knee wouldn't hold up much longer so I cut it short at the half marathon timing mat. My mom was there to watch at miles 6, 11, and 13, so I was able to get some ice and ibuprofen right away before hopping in the car to head home.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful course. I'll definitely go back at some point, hopefully with more training and a well knee.

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Sat September 29th - 8mi

Time of day 9:00 AM
Distance 8.00 mi
Shoe Adrenaline Gts 11 (19)
Comments Ran with Fleisher on a RCP loop through the horse trails. My left knee started to bother me after we stopped at the Capitol Ruins, which ended up bothering me through the rest end of the weekend. It's getting a little worrisome with the marathon around the corner.
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