On Saturday morning I once again pushed my personal limits and set a new ‘Personal Distance Record’ by running 13 miles in around 2 hours and 8 minutes. This works out to a blisteringly fast (that was a joke so laugh) 9:51 minute-per-mile pace.
Since I was home visiting my family for my Mom’s birthday I decided to run between Fulton, IL and Thompson, IL on an asphalt jogging path that was once a railroad track. As you might guess this makes for a long, flat, stretch of path that seems to go on forever.
Above: A stunning view of Fulton's Famous Dutch WindmillI tried in vain to plot my course out with Google Earth but the maps / satellite photography for Fulton, IL are not quite as detailed as say Chicago. As a next best thing I elected to drive along the road which ran parallel to the path to figure where I needed to turn around. This worked fine for 4 miles until the path veered away from the road – the remaining 2.5 miles would be run in ‘no man’s land’ before I made my turnaround.
I left the house at just after 10 AM, hauling around my iPod, Garmin, and CamelBak wearing more clothes than I needed for the 41 degree and sunny weather. I started my timer / GPS and was off down our street. The first mile was fine and uneventful but during mile 2, the GPS went a little bonkers and got off track. It failed to count about 0.3 miles compared to the distances I had found while driving the route ahead of time. This continued to make me mad for the next 3 miles or so until I realized the GPS had basically regained it sanity and was counting miles as it should.
The route went from city streets to paved and marked asphalt path to concrete bridge back to rural street to concrete path and finally there was one half mile of gravel path that zig-zagged into a park of sorts. In the course of my 6.8 mile outbound leg (remember the GPS was nuts so I went farther than it showed) I didn’t see another living sole. In fact I didn’t see anyone else on the path / trail / streets until mile 8 when a guy on a bike gave me a weird look.
The best part of the run was the 2 miles after the turn around which felt effortless. I was tired and a little sore following the run but all in all it wasn’t too bad. In any case I don’t have to go this far again until the weekend after this one.
This week we up the weekday runs to 3 miles, 7 miles and 4 miles from 3 miles, 6 miles, and 3 miles. I will do my long run (10 miles) on Friday so I can have a rest day before the Shamrock Shuffle on Sunday.
I left the house at just after 10 AM, hauling around my iPod, Garmin, and CamelBak wearing more clothes than I needed for the 41 degree and sunny weather. I started my timer / GPS and was off down our street. The first mile was fine and uneventful but during mile 2, the GPS went a little bonkers and got off track. It failed to count about 0.3 miles compared to the distances I had found while driving the route ahead of time. This continued to make me mad for the next 3 miles or so until I realized the GPS had basically regained it sanity and was counting miles as it should.
The route went from city streets to paved and marked asphalt path to concrete bridge back to rural street to concrete path and finally there was one half mile of gravel path that zig-zagged into a park of sorts. In the course of my 6.8 mile outbound leg (remember the GPS was nuts so I went farther than it showed) I didn’t see another living sole. In fact I didn’t see anyone else on the path / trail / streets until mile 8 when a guy on a bike gave me a weird look.
The best part of the run was the 2 miles after the turn around which felt effortless. I was tired and a little sore following the run but all in all it wasn’t too bad. In any case I don’t have to go this far again until the weekend after this one.
This week we up the weekday runs to 3 miles, 7 miles and 4 miles from 3 miles, 6 miles, and 3 miles. I will do my long run (10 miles) on Friday so I can have a rest day before the Shamrock Shuffle on Sunday.
posted by Drew McEleney at 10:33 PM
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