Where'd the trail go?

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

At least the sore throat was better, but I spent the entire day hacking up my lungs…to everyone’s disgust. It had been two days since I’d done anything really physical though, and cold or not I couldn’t let it go another day. I drove to the Polo Fields, parked the car and began running south on the trail along the Chagrin River. I’d not been on the trail since the flooding four weeks ago, but quickly discovered the impact it had had on the trail…because it was gone. There was a stretch running through an open field between the Polo Fields and Chagrin Blvd. where the trail ran right on the river bank. I liked running this section because I could check out the wildlife, hear and see the water breaking over the rocks and wonder about taking a kayak through. Apparently, the water had raged so hard against the western bank…where I was running…that it eroded about ten feet which had slipped down the five feet to the river’s edge. Like those before me, I just began making a new river’s edge trail.

I figured I’d run to the parking lot on River Road closest to Miles before turning around, hoping that would mean around 25 minutes of running. It took a little over 27 and so I ended up with a 55-minute run, one short of the distance I’d cover for the birthday triathlon. I was so tired over the final 15 minutes that I wondered how I was going to get this thing done. I’ve felt reasonably crappy on all of my runs lately with muscle-fatiguing pain nagging at my hips with each step. The achilles was throbbing over the last half of the run, as well. I can probably assign some of the fatigue to the cold I’m fighting, but it sucks in any event.

Holly made us a reasonably low-cal dinner…a noodle concoction with mushrooms, onions and broccoli topped with some crushed bacon…and I’d have been good if I’d stopped there, but I didn’t. I whipped us up some chocolate pudding into which I’d melted a couple of large tablespoons of crunchy peanut butter. Self-destructive behavior tastes so good. Tomorrow I’m riding long no matter how cold it is or what my cold thinks it can do to me.

Oh yeah…John texted me from Key West and wanted to know the elevation there. I’m not sure why he thought I would know…but isn’t Key West next to that big body of salt water they call the Atlantic Ocean? I texted back ‘sea level’ which I figured anyone would know.

Run duration: 55 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 145 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 925.