A Summary of September

It appears that I've neglected the blog, once again. I tend to get a little lazy when ENDURrun is over. I slack. I've been slacking in the blogging and also slacking in the strength work that I was doing leading up to ENDURrun, and a bit in the rest of my training as well. Not too bad... but I've been lacking a bit of motivation to work as hard as I wanted and intended. Looking back at previous years, I tend to feel about the same at this point every fall. Then I generally look back and see that it hasn't actually been nearly as bad as I thought it was. I really haven't been focusing on 50 mile training, though.... we'll see how JFK goes next month.

But for now... here's how September went.

I'm going to ignore the first three days of September.. for no reason other than it was the end of a week and I feel like starting with a Monday.

Sept 4-10 - The week of.... nothing, really. I can't think of anything of interest. It started with Labour Day, but nothing else was different than a regular week.
Monday - 6.2 mile run.
Tuesday - Wee WO: 7.1 miles, including 4x Marshall Hill.
Wednesday - 7.1 miles, combo of road and trails.
Thursday - WO: 4x 1.5 miles at half marathon pace. 15.7 miles total.
Friday - no run
Saturday - Long run with H+P: 17 miles.
Sunday - 10 miles
** Total mileage for the week: 63.2 miles. Total elevation gain: 3,097 ft. 

Sept 11-17 - Another week of nothing special.
Monday - nada
Tuesday - WO: 6 miles at half marathon pace. Total run: 8.3 miles.
Wednesday - 8 miles combo road and trails.
Thursday - Wee WO: 8 miles, including 4x 2 min hard.
Friday - 3.5 miles
Saturday - 15 miles
Sunday -  20 miles: 16 miles road, then 4 miles trail.
** Total mileage for the week: 62.9 miles. Total elevation gain: 2,844 ft. 

Sept 18-24 - The week of the Harvest Half
Monday - 7.1 miles trail
Tuesday - 0
Wednesday - 1 mile x2 commute runs in the day, then 6.3 miles in the evening.
Thursday - WO: 5x 1km @ 5K pace. Total run: 11.7 miles.
Friday - 7.6 miles
Saturday - 18.1 miles, including a half marathon at around marathon pace. This was a last minute decision to hop into a race (Harvest Half) since it was a super hot and humid day and aid stations sounded like an amazing benefit. Gillian and I ran most of it together, talking pretty much the entire time, then Gill went ahead to run the last 3K as a fast finish. I maintained my same pace for the last 3. She invited me along for her fast finish... I declined. :) We ended up finishing 1-2 for the women (small race). I ran 1:37 for the half.


Sunday - 13.3 miles, mostly trail.
** Total mileage for the week: 66.4 miles  Total elevation gain: 3,196 ft.

Sept 25-Oct 1 - The week of The Toad and the Beer Run.
Monday - WO: 8 miles including 8 min 10K pace and 10x 1 min hard.
Tuesday - 4.4 miles
Wednesday - 5 miles
Thursday - Wee WO: 7.8 miles including 6x1 min hard.
Friday - 3 miles
Saturday - Run for the Toad 50K. I ran this as a training race for the 50 miler, so I guess I'm doing *some* 50 mile training..... just not much that's 50 mile specific. The race was fun. Well, mostly. The last loop got lonely.... but the first 3 loops were great! It's a 12.5 km course, so you run that 4 times if you're doing the 50, twice if you're running the 25K. I ran it at a comfortable pace, but didn't dilly dally. I didn't race it, but I didn't saunter. I ran a solid 50K, finishing in 4:22, 10th overall, 4th woman.

Sunday - Kitchener/Waterloo Beer Run: 10ish K route with beer sampling stops. This was a super fun day with some of my H+P teammates.

** Total mileage for the week: 67.7 miles. Total elevation gain: 3.907 ft.

So there you have it: September (and the first day of October). Next up, Fall 5K Classic tomorrow... More proof of how much I'm focusing on training for a 50 miler. ;)

The rest of the April road trip

I dropped the ball on continuing with the posts in a timely manor. So, instead of trying to write anything decent, I'll pretty much just make this a post of unedited cell phone photos with very minimal writing. Once I actually work on the SLR photos, I'll put them up on flickr.

Boston, Massachusetts 

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

The day after the Boston Marathon, my friends & teammates were heading out of Boston, so I was now on my solo vacation. I had no actual plans at this point. I had to be out of my hotel by 11 or noon or whatever checkout time was and didn't know if I was going to stay in Boston or travel elsewhere, but was leaning toward elsewhere. I had just spent a few days in Boston, it was time to explore some more.

In the morning, I went out for a run with my phone in hand, to take a few photos along the way.

It was the perfect morning for a run. It was cool and there was no humidity... why couldn't it have been like this the day before? Oh well.. 

I took one more photo on this run, in the middle of the above photos. I somehow caught this out of the corner of my eye while running. I'm not sure how or why I saw it, but I'm glad I did. 

No more hurting people. #peace #seenonmyrun #bostonstrong

A post shared by Vicki Zandbergen (@vickizandbergen) on Apr 18, 2017 at 6:19pm PDT

After my run, I packed up and checked out, put my stuff in my car, which was booked to stay in the garage all day, so I set out to wander and explore. And.... it got cold... cloudy... windy. 

I checked out Faneuil Hall. 

Then headed out for more wandering/exploring.

I considered getting a cannoli from Mike's since it's apparently the thing to do.... then I saw this line:

I guess it IS the thing to do... but I didn't want to wait.

So... I went to Boston Public Market, where I got a coffee and a delicious vanilla bean donut,

sat and contemplated where to go next.

I decided on heading to the White Mountains. Checked for some options of places to stay, figured out a rough game plan, and then did some beer shopping (also in the market).

** ok.. interjecting here with something sort of funny that just happened. The mail just came, so I went to get it out of the box and in it was this:

That makes me feel slightly better about taking so long to finish up writing about April! haha **

New Hampshire

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

I arrived in Lincoln, NH at some point late afternoon or early evening. Checked into the Holiday Inn Express, was upgraded to a larger room since there weren't many people staying during the off season. Brought my stuff to my room, and walked to Woodstock Inn Station & Brewery to get some dinner and beer. 

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

This was a day of hiking at Greely Ponds Trail and Hancock Notch (with a bit of post-holing... post-holing to mid-thigh!) and just enjoying being outdoors.. until it started raining. At that point, I headed to a One Love Brewery for some food (and a beer) and then called it a day. 

In a shop window.

Wednesday, April 20, 2017

I went out for a short little run from the hotel around Lincoln in the morning and took a few photos. It was such a pretty morning!

My plan for this day was pretty loose. I would most likely cross into Canada at some point, but planned to stop several places on the way to do more exploring.

First stop: Franconia Ridge, Falling Waters Trail.

2nd stop: Littleton (for no real reason, just wanted to wander around a town with my camera)

3rd Stop: a lake in Vermont that looked pretty from the road. 

4th and final stop before Canada: Newport, VT.

I walked around by the beach for a bit and then to the East Side Restaurant for some food, since I hadn't had anything since breakfast. After this, it was time to head to my parents' house where I would stay for the night before driving back home to Kitchener. Actually, I think I stayed two nights. 

So there you have it. I can now get back to more recent/current posts... just in time for ENDURrun to start this weekend, the one time of year when I consistently blog. :)