Let's Make it 50K

I slept fitfully, but a lot, for me, Saturday night.  I'm pretty sure I was asleep before 8pm.  I would wake up for short stretches, but did not really wake up till 6:30am.  Refreshed?  No way.  I felt that same scratchy thoat and slightly feverish feel.  AAArrrghhh!  My calves!!!!!  I'm not even sure what was wrong with them.  Stretching wasn't a problem; they weren't tight.  They just hurt.  The stick did help them a bit.

Rick was up and moving pretty well a bit before 8.  He'd run his longest run in years getting in a full three laps.  He gives a lot of credit to George for making the last full lap doable.  Saturday night, I suggested heading to Turner to run at the Androscoggin Riverland Park.  Rick asked when I wanted to get going.  Hmmm...how about staying put, not wasting time driving, and running the FatAss course?  We needed to retrieve the flags at any rate.  Rick doesn't take much convincing not to drive somewhere; he does far too much of that during the week.  Since I think my schedule probably called for 10 miles, it seemed appropriate to finish the 50K.

Yikes!  The frozen footfalls of the day before made some stretches very treacherous on the ankles.  There were no places to land that gave an even landing, yet the virgin snow was not crusty enough to hold our weight.  It felt so good to get to the tire tracks.  That and the bare ground was the best running.  Rick was happy getting one lap in.  That made for just over 20 miles for his weekend (what his weekly mileage has been around).  My second lap was a little friendlier.  The snow was softening up in the sunshine.  The only concession I made to my grumpy calves was to skip the stretch down to the beaver swamp.  I started down, but, since the sun doesn't make it onto that strip, it was still just frozen, ankle/foot/calf hell.  Instead I added the distance I needed by crossing the road.  I figured that the hill made up for the improvising.

Rick and I spent most of the remainder of the day sprawled in some fashion of various furniture.  Fortunately, I didn't have to put effort into feeding us; there was plenty of goodies left from the aid station table.