It Doesn't Hurt to Ask

Saturday I headed to Bradbury to run with Mindy and any other TMs that showed up. We ended up with Jeremy, Allen, Mindy, and me. Mindy and I had eight in mind. Allen was OK with that distance. Jeremy might go longer. Heading out, we found the trail to be runnable, but draining. For nearly two miles I ran with Allen out front. The crunching snow was too loud to hear anyone who wasn't right next to you. So I enjoyed my conversation with Allen and I assume Mindy and Jeremy enjoyed their conversation for the first bit. After that Jeremy and Allen slowly pulled away from Mindy and me. The guys waited for us at each road crossing and at the 4 mile turn around (they're sweet). We were basically working relatively hard to turn out 12 min/mile.

As usual, I thoroughly enjoyed my run with Mindy. I can so see her being a great therapist and hope that she gets to include running in her practice. She's good therapy for me : )

Mindy planned to meet a friend at 9:30 to walk/run up to the summit. I don't think she planned on our pace being so slow. We were a little late getting back to the parking lot, but her friend was fine with waiting. Jeremy and Allen said we were just behind them. Allen left, planning to ski with Karen later. Jeremy headed back out to retrace out 8 mile run (good job!).

Mindy introduced me to her friend, Mellisa and we headed out. We walked to the summit, enjoyed good conversation, the hike, and the view at the top. On the way down we started getting cold so ran back. Then on to Edna and Lucy's for our well-deserved reward. Mindy and I had both been dreaming of their Black Pastrami sandwich since we witnessed Ian, Jim, and Erik scarf them down last Saturday. Well, even after all the hype, there was no disappointment. YUM! Oh, yeah, I think I ended with close to 8.8 miles.

I took a while deciding what my run would be today. In fact, I didn't even know heading out what it would be. Last night we'd gotten snow and then a T-storm on top of the couple of inches. I suspected that the snowmobile trails might be better if they'd gotten some use. So the plan was to take the snowmobile trail near us, if it was runnable, otherwise, I'd run out King Rd and try the snowmobile trail off of Littlefield that is maintained by the Lewiston club. If that wasn't good, I'd run the roads. Fortunately, I was able to stick with our trails. The footing was easier running than yesterday's. That is where it was...where it wasn't, I was post-holing big time. Overall, my pace was still 30 sec/mile faster than the day before. I enjoyed every bit of it.

Three miles out, in Sabattus, I saw a group of snowmobiles stopped on the Sabattus River. Seeing them and thinking about how our usual trail packers were unavailable, I decided to run over and ask them if any of them would be willing to go over the Fat Ass course. Figures, I stumbled on a group of riders all from away. Didn't hurt to ask, but the answer was no. As I got closer to home, I decided to run up the street about a 1/2 mile and ask the "new" family on the street (they've probably been here close to 2 yrs now) if they could break our trail (and then feel free to ride it as often as they'd like). I'd met the husband last year when Linda and I were out running the FA course and told him all about it.

Well, I dropped in and asked. What a nice family! I have no doubt that our course will have a snowmobile go over it at some point before the event. I thought maybe today, but...they have a young family including a baby so have other priorities.

I finished the day with 6 miles of running. A few hours later, I headed back out on snowshoes to take advantage of the packy conditions. I think we could actually get a good deal of our loop packed well enough to run, if we get cold after good packing. I stomped on the part of our course closest to the houses, really packing it down, for close to 1.5 hours. I was beat by the end.