So how often go you get to post on 2/29? About as often as I post at all these days.
Here's a brief recap of my February.
With this years transition to fitness runner as I work on getting things fixed and finished for our upcoming move there isn't much to post about. I'm not racing so there are no stories to embellish on that front. As for the work consuming the bulk of my time; tales of manual labor would be lost on most folks today.
Working up in NH gave me zero running days for the first week of the month. Terry and I did manage to get in a nice walk over some snow machine trails on the way home.
For two of the four weekends in the month I got out on the Holyoke Range.
One week Sanjay and I ran a couple hours heading east from the Notch.
Last Saturday Sanjay, Rick Scott, Rob Higley and I headed west from the Notch on a semi Sisters.
That run was pretty treacherous as the frozen ground had a coat of ice pellets and the majority of the rocks coated with a coarse verglas. The thermometer at home read 37F that morning and I was running late so I forgot the Oroc 340's, ran in the 295's, and called myself an idiot for the next 2 hours. Things were finally thawing as we descended Bare Mt. on our return.
Late on Tuesday the 28th the youth and I did some running on
Mt. Tekoa.
I'd hiked and camped up there in my younger days. There are reminders of a number of fires that have burned it's slopes over the years. As a kid I remember sparks off the wheels of a passing train starting one.
There is a major fire road that now runs up along the ridge. It does see some atv traffic but not to the extent other trails in that area have.
Anyway Adam and I had a nice sunset run on a mix of singletrack, fire road and bushwhack.
Other than the trails I did do my annual track workout in February.
Todd is always bugging me to go to the track so once a year, twice if I'm totally bored I'll surprise him and show up.
Mid month on a 40 deg evening I joined him and three others at the Amherst College track. Todd is 12 yrs younger than me runs a LOT more miles than I do in a week. The other three guys about 30 yrs my junior and always training for some big race. This would be interesting.
After we did a 3+ mile warm up on the bike path, which adjoins the track, it was 800m of strides. That was followed by 4x 200 (39/42/39/43) designed to set up the pace for the 5x800's. I settled for 4x800 (2:48/2:52/2:58/2:51). The rest of the guys clocked in 10-15 seconds faster for the 800's and 5-7 faster for the 200's.
Following that we jogged over to the famous sledding hill on campus for 10 sprints up the 150m long grade.
Glad to have that out of the way although it won't stop Todd from continuing to badger me.
February is outdoor film festival month in our area. The
Banff World Tour makes it's way through Lenox and then the Telluride Mountainfilm stops by Hampshire College a week later.
This year we took in both nights in Lenox. With Mary living in the Berkshires we could save the long, late ride home and make a weekend of it. A total of 17 films and one of the best selections I've seen in years.
The Telluride Tour consisted of 7 films three of which I'd seen the previous week. Of the remaining five, three were interesting and two were geared to the 20 something crowd with a soundtrack at near ear bleed level.
Both shows were full house but the audience at Hampshire needs a lesson in courtesy. Students walking in an out at will; having normal voice level conversations during the show; and new age parents who think it's ok to stay for the duration with a noisy, crying baby. Sorry kids, not everyone is as in love with junior as you.
February wrapped up with a 3' coating of wet snow here in Amherst. Nothing but a nuisance at this point as I was done with "winter" weeks ago.
I am so looking forward to getting this "project" behind me so I can get back at it up in the mountains of NH.
Until next months post...
