Recovery

That VT 50 race kicked my butt. Susan and I have pledged to come back again next year better trained for the hills. We want to finish in under 10:30.

I rarely have definite running goals. For me, running is a daily vacation from organized thought. Because I am always fitting runs like jigsaw pieces into the puzzle of family life, I usually have a definite idea about how much time I can run each day. But the intensity (or lack thereof) of each run generally unfolds in its own good time.

Having a yearlong goal changes that somewhat. I have started runnin hills on Wednesday mornings, as well as a serious 20-minute treadmill uphills on Mondays during Ben's swimming lesson at the Y. I will also be incorporating more hills into weekend long runs. And I'll probably try to power walk the huge hill behind the Dragon's Egg during the kids ' weekly yoga class Monday afternoons.

Love the hills!

With all of this hill running burning my brain, it was difficult to take a week or so to rest after Vermont. Difficult, that is, after the requisite first three days of stiff-legging around town, taking stairs backwards, and powering my painful way into and out of any sort of sitting position.

Two days after the race, we were back to doing farm chores, as we do every Tuesday morning at Terra Firma Farm.


I had quite a time of it, hauling 5 gallon buckets of feed and water to the chickens and the pigs! Nell, thank heavens, is getting bigger and stronger now and she absolutely loves the animals, so she was a huge help that day. There she is up there feeding the 5 new piglets.

The boys, on the other hand, have a different sort of fun at the farm. They love to chase and catch the chickens and the goats. I watched them enviously from behind my wall of stiff soreness as they bounced and danced and sprinted around the barn and the yard.







By the weekend after the race, I was feeling well enough to go for a long walk at Hammonasset State Beach in Madison, CT. We spent a long time on the rocky beach turning over rocks and catching the little green crabs that live underneath.


We walked out to Meig's Point along the trail, which was lovely on the bright fall day.



And we came back along the rocks, which of course the kids loved. And it was good for me to jump from rock to rock. The landing and balancing gave my poor old stabilizer muscles just enough of a post-race workout.




After a week of fairly hard running, I am once again in taper mode. The Bimbler's Bluff 50K is this Sunday in Guilford, CT. It is thrilling to have a good race so close to my house. This is the third year of Bimblers and it's reputation (and entrant's list) continues to grow each year.
The course is surprisingly difficult for coastal Connecticut. There are lots of pissy little hills, lots of rocks and twisty turns to trip you up, and many, many ways to get lost in the rabbit's warren of trails through the Guilford woods.

I am again running with Susan. The last time we ran this race we got so ridiculously lost so many times that it took us literally all day to finish. This year we are hoping to be Much Improved.

Here's hoping.....