May 2023 Monthly Running Challenge

Scott6255 · May 2023

Good job @tarun_yadavA!

Today's run from the training plan was called a Tired Run workout. Just felt like a Monday

Ticker acting up again today. Monthly total 135.5

tarun_yadavA · May 2023

Thanks @Scott6255 !

@Laurz9191 awww thank you 😊

quilteryoyo · May 2023

@martaindale Great running and thanks for the tip on cleaning the hydration pack. Sounds like the household repairs are going to get done in a timely manner. So glad that they were able to give you AC over the weekend. Enjoy your time away this upcoming weekend!

Great running @kgirlhart . Sorry that they moved Sunny. I miss hearing about him and am sure you miss seeing him. He probably misses you too.

Great running @Scott6255 . Yeah, bending over to pick up things a lot is a back killer for me too. Great run this morning and excellent total for the month so far!

@tarun_yadavA Glad your come back to running is going well.

You are doing great @Laurz9191 .

chris_in_cal · May 2023

Laurz9191 wrote: »

I am trying to practice/find a mantra to actively use while running. Do any of you use this technique to block negative thoughts from creeping into the run and to stay in the moment?

I'm intrigued, please say more. Practically how does someone start this?

martaindale · May 2023

Laurz9191 wrote: »

Also, I am trying to practice/find a mantra to actively use while running. Do any of you use this technique to block negative thoughts from creeping into the run and to stay in the moment?

Idk if it counts as mantra but I have a little series of check-ins I do when I feel myself getting tired. Head up, shoulders relaxed, chest up, core engaged, quick feet. I will focus on each one for a few seconds before moving on. Fixing my form makes running feel easier. Then it's easier to talk myself into feeling better.
Also, during speed work like intervals I count steps in rounds of 10 and focus on quickly picking my foot up with each step.
Mostly my mind just wanders or I'm singing bits of songs to myself or I'm hashing out some issue. That passes a lot of time and I don't really notice I'm running, esp in the neighborhood. On trails I really try to notice things. Birds, plants, pretty flowers, light beams through the trees.

Teresa502 · May 2023

May 1 – 5.05 miles
May 2 – 1.01 miles
May 3 – 5.12 miles
May 4 – 4.49 miles
May 6 – 8.15 miles
May 8 – 5.27 miles
May 10 – 4.35 miles
May 11 – 5.04 miles
May 13 – 7.25 miles
May 15 – 5.66 miles
May 17 – 5.66 miles
May 18 – 5.00 miles
May 22 – 4.01 miles
66.06/75 miles

Hope everyone had a great weekend! I did a slow 4 miles this morning. Legs are sore from this weekend’s hiking adventures (very long recap in the spoiler if you’re interested). Weather was cooler at 51F when I headed out a little after 6:00 am.

Happy Birthday @tarun_yadavA!

Thanks for the hydration pack cleaning tip @martaindale. After washing and drying my bladder and tube, I keep them in the freezer to keep germs at bay.

On Friday morning, I met my hiking friend at 5:00 am and we drove to Hot Springs, NC. We had a shuttle scheduled to pick us up at 7:00 am. We arrived early, parked in the town parking lot which is located about half a mile from where we were meeting the driver. The AT runs right through the middle of town so we used the extra time to hike the “trail” to the meeting area. This connected us to where we left off last month. The driver was a few minutes early so we arrived at Devil’s Fork Gap road crossing, loaded out packs on our backs and were on the trail heading south by 7:30 am. The first shelter was about 4 miles from where we started so after a couple of miles we started meeting a few north bound thru-hikers. (The majority of thru-hikers start in Georgia and hike north to Maine.) One of the ladies we met was hoping to be the oldest black hiker to complete the trail. She was 66 years old. Her real name was Roxanne and her trail name was Foxy. The next lady we met was Purple Haze. I had heard about Purple Haze a few days prior. She was in the Smoky Mountains at Cosby Knob shelter and was bitten by a bear. The bear was very aggressive. It charged at a group at the shelter who were able to run it off but it came back in about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, the rangers ended up euthanizing it due to its aggressive nature. https://reddit.com/r/AppalachianTrail/comments/13czqyp/fyi_bear_activity/

We continued on our journey and after passing the first shelter we only met 2 or 3 other hikers heading north. The biggest part of the “bubble” had already passed through this area. We hit some rough terrain around mile 13. Lots of rocks to scramble up on Big Firescald Mountain but the views were amazing. The weather was beautiful. Sunny and in the low 70s.

A rocky section of trail:

We reached our camping site around 5:30 pm and at 17.02 miles for the day. Per Garmin, we had 7,431 feet of total ascent. We camped near a shelter. That night there were 5 people who slept in the shelter and about 9 of us sleeping in tents outside the shelter. Met a nice couple from Ohio and another couple from Ontario. After setting up camp, preparing and eating dinner, and filtering water I was ready for bed. It was only 7:30 and still daylight but that didn’t stop me from crawling into my sleeping bag.
Me stopping to smell the flowers along the way:

The next morning, we ate breakfast, packed up and headed on down the trail. About 3 miles from camp, we visited the Southern Cookie Lady. She lives in a cabin not too far off trail and gives away cookies to every hiker that wants one. She also provides filtered water and a trash can. We were her first visitors of the day and received a peanut butter cookie. She was trying a new recipe for oatmeal cookies and wanted us to try them and give her feedback – my dream job…a cookie taster! We continued on down the trail stopping for lunch and to filter more water around 11:30 am. At this point we were on the portion of the trail closed to camping. There currently is an 8-mile stretch closed to camping due to bear activity. We didn’t see any bears but while we were eating lunch a couple of thru-hikers heading north stopped and they had seen a momma bear and three cubs about a mile back. Later we met a young girl who had just encountered a momma bear and one cub. The bear snorted at her. She retreated, waited about 5 minutes and then ventured ahead and the bear was gone. The girl was pretty shook up when we saw her.

I took a side trail in this area and climbed the Rich Mountain Fire Tower:

We planned to stop and camp after the no-camping section. This would give us 14 miles for the day. There was a campsite right at the end of this section; however, it was close to a busy road and there were a couple of sketchy people just hanging out there. We opted to continue on. And of course up again:

By this time it was lightly raining and thunderstorms were predicted to hit any time and they were forecasted to last into the early morning hours. We didn’t come to another place to camp until 2 miles later. We debated on setting up camp in the rain or to keep walking. Hot Springs and our car was only another 4 miles away. We decided to keep going. Turns out the rain stopped about a mile before we reached town and the storms went south of us – thank you answered prayers! We arrived in town with 19.86 miles for the day and 4,590 feet of ascent. We were exhausted. I think my shoulders hurt more than anything from carrying a 25-pound backpack for that long. After putting our packs into the car, we hit the local brick-oven pizza place and then drove home. I got home around 9:30 so it wasn’t too late.

Legs, hips, feet are still pretty sore but surprisingly my shoulders recovered quickly.

martaindale · May 2023

May total: 85.6/115 miles

5/2: 9 miles
5/3: 3 miles
5/5: 7 miles
5/7: 4.1 miles
5/8: 3 miles
5/10: 6.5 miles
5/11: 6 miles
5/12: 4.2 miles
5/13: 10 miles
5/15: 5.2 miles
5/16: 6.3 miles
5/19: 5.3 miles
5/20: 9 miles
5/22: 6 miles

Last week of school!!! Decent enough weather for late May. In fact this entire week has lows in the mid-upper 60's and the humidity isn't quite as high as it usually is. So, still a sweaty mess but I can wear a shirt, and that's a win.

tarun_yadavA · May 2023

@Teresa502 thank you! 😊

eleanorhawkins · May 2023

Hi everyone, I disappeared there for a while, life is hugely stressful with kid issues, husband issues, work issues, parental health issues, you name it it is ganging up on me atm. So, yeah, I've been popping in to read, like and hug but nothing more for a while. Don't even remember how long tbh. Time escapes me.

So, quickly before I forget, @Laurz9191 in the past when things have got tough 'don't think, just run' has worked well for me as a mantra, with a word each time a foot hits the ground and just throwing the mental barriers up there and not letting myself think about ANYTHING except those 4 words and putting one foot in front of the other. However, I find now I'm more used to spending long hours on the trails and especially now that I really work to ensure I'm not running out of fuel.

Having said that, I must report on my weekend, which included a race I wasn't intending to 'race' (famous last words). I will try not to waffle too much but I'll stick it in a spoiler anyway so as not to fill pages!

Some may remember that I ran a trail race a year ago in the village where my mother lives. It's a relatively easy 17k with around 500m of elevation and last year I was worried I wouldn't make the 2.5-hour cutoff, but I ended up finishing in 2h 20. So, fast forward a year and of course I signed up for it again because it's a gorgeous place to run and I get to go see my mum too so win-win. The newish friend who I'm running with a lot atm signed up and we decided to leave the men here and make a girly weekend of it, then a load of other people from the big city trail club signed up too so it became a party! Needless to say, we had an awesome time but I ended up spending Friday and Saturday taking them around to see the sights, hike part of the race route, climb up to the castle to see the sunset, etc. etc. So, I was pretty tired before we even started the race. Plus after my marathon, I took 10 days off from running and the longest run I'd done since was 10k. So I knew that realistically I wasn't going to be beating my time from last year or anything like that. Also, we'd had a few very hot weeks, so what running I had been doing was done at midday to try and get used to the heat. Garmin said I was 56% acclimatised on Thursday. The race organisers had announced that they were moving the start/finish to the village sports centre which meant we were saved the final climb back up to the square where it finished last year, which I was very pleased to hear!
So, surprise surprise, the weather did an about turn and all of a sudden we went from 30ºC to 15ºC and raining! Those who know me will know I was very happy about that. It drizzled a bit before we started, then after a couple of miles on the first climb it started to rain, and the heavens opened on the way back down. There were a lot of people in a panic about slipping but I know that stretch very well so just took it carefully and didn't have any issues. I was clearly the crazy person as everyone else was pulling out rain jackets and stuff and I just stuck my cap on to keep it out of my eyes and carried on hahaha.
All was great until we hit the halfway mark and the trail crossed the river and went into the woods. I've only run that area once before, during last year's race. Oh boy, the mud was CRAZY. Because I'm very much a back-of-the-pack racer, 350 people had churned the ground up by the time I reached it and it was a nightmare, slippery and treacherous. I thought the girl in front of me was going to end up in the river 10 metres below up several times before we turned into the woods. There were good 6km where we could barely run at all. We couldn't even see our feet most of the time. I was in a state about the steep descent I knew was coming at km 14 because I slid down it last year and almost fell when it was dry so was really dreading it muddy, but actually the ground was harder at that point and I found it a lot easier. I commented to the volunteer standing there in case anyone fell and he said a lot of people had said the same, and that he was there last year and saw plenty of people hit the ground but nobody had gone down this year.
So the mud was a big negative, but the fact that it wasn't hot at all and that hill being easier were huge positives. After that the trail comes out onto a road that leads back down to the river and I saw that I was running out of time, so I took the brakes off and hurled myself down that road, passing sedate old guys jogging along and chatting along the way. My legs are not too happy about that today! I ended up finishing in 2h26m, phew! So I'm happy with that considering the conditions.
Three girls in our group placed in their age groups, and we won first place for the club with the most finishers, plus we had a ball so it was a great weekend.

quilteryoyo · May 2023

@Teresa502 I don't blame you for walking today. That was a lot of hiking over the weekend. Beautiful pictures. Glad everyone is okay from the bear. I'm not sure I would have the guts to keep going like that lady did.

@eleanorhawkins Hugs regarding your life issues. Seema like everything hits at once sometimes. Love your race report. You did great and so glad you all had a great time!

quilteryoyo · May 2023

Goal for May: 80 miles combined of running and fast walking (greater than 3.5 mph)

May 1: Walk 1.00 mile, Run 3.00 miles
May 2: Walk 1.00 mile, Run 2.25 miles - intervals
May 3: Walk 1.00 mile, Run 2.50 miles
May 4: Walk 2.00 miles (actually a wun), also mowed mom's lawn
May 5: Walk 2.00 miles
May 6: Walk 1.00 mile, Run 1.25 miles
May 7: Walk 2.25 miles
May 8: Walk 1.00 mile, Run 1.25 miles - driveway laps
May 9: Walk 2.00 miles (actually a wun) - driveway laps, mowed, and TWO FULL YEARS OF STREAKING
May 10: Walk 2.00 miles after church
May 11: Walk 1.25 miles, Ran 1.00 mile (quarter mile intervals) - plus over 2 hours of doubles tennis
May 12: Walk 1.25 miles, Ran 1.00 mile (quarter mile intervals)
May 13: Walk 2.00 miles (actually a wun), almost 2.25 hours of yardwork
May 14: Walk 2.00 miles
May 15: Walk 1.25 miles, Ran 3.00 miles - driveway laps and some on the rural road
May 16: Walk 1.50 miles, Ran 2.75 miles - 6 x quarter mile intervals
May 17: Walk 1.00 miles, Ran 3.00 miles - treadmill recovery run
May 18: Walk 2.00 miles (driveway wun) - also mowed mom's lawn and played tennis for 1.75 hours
May 19: Walk 2.00 miles
May 20: Walk 1.00 mile, Run 1.00 mile - helped mom plant garden for 1.5 hours
May 21: Walk 2.00 miles
May 22: Walk 1.25 miles, Run 1.00 mile, played tennis for 1.75 hours

I didn't log yesterday, just because I was lazy. I did walk 2 miles on the treadmill between church and lunch.

Today, I played doubles tennis for 1h46m22s. It was outside and not too bad this morning with 66F (18.9C) and mostly cloudy. I did sweat, but not very much. We switch partners. The teams I was on won 2 and lost one. My avg HR was 88 with a max of 111 bpm.

From there I went to work at the daycare - mostly covering teacher breaks while the kids slept. I did help for about 1.5 hours after nap and got injured. I miscalculated the trajectory of a toy school bus as it careened off of the table from the push of an energetic 1 year old. I moved my left foot out of the way, but it landed square on the top of my right foot, just above the joint where my big toe attaches to my foot. It immediately turned blue and hurt like the dickens, but I think it is okay.

I wasn't sure about running or walking on it tonight, but gave it a go and I didn't even feel it. I did a wun/intervals on the driveway. I walked 6 min for warm up and then ran 0.3 miles, walked up the hills, ran 0.3 miles, walked up the hills, ran 0.4 miles, then walked until I got to 2.25miles. The runs averaged 12:29 min/mile. The walks averaged 15:50 min/mile. For the entire wun, my avg HR was 134 with and average of 154 bpm. Not bad for a driveway run.

The ticker factory isn't cooperating again today. I now have 56.75 miles out of my 80 mile goal.

kgirlhart · May 2023

May Goal: 115 Miles

5/1: 5.26 miles
5/2: 6.22 miles
5/3: 5.26 miles
5/4: 5.26 miles
5/5: 2.03 miles
5/6: 1.51 miles
5/7: 10.10 miles
5/8: 3.15 miles
5/9: 6.02 miles
5/10: 6.02 miles
5/11: 5.51 miles
5/12: 2.26 miles
5/13: 10.01 miles
5/14: 2.10 miles
5/15: 3.26 miles
5/16: 5.51 miles
5/17: 6.05 miles
5/18: 5.15 miles
5/19: 2.25 miles
5/20: 2.02 miles
5/21: 11.11 miles
5/22: 5.51 miles

111.57/115 miles completed for May

I ran 5.5 miles today. The weather was perfect for running, but it was a tough run. I was tired and just took a while to get going. It ended up being a decent run and I had negative splits so I felt like I accomplished something.

@tarun_yadavA Happy Birthday!

@Teresa502 That hike is gorgeous!

@eleanorhawkins Great race report!

@quilteryoyo Glad the foot isn't seriously injured.

eleanorhawkins · May 2023

@quilteryoyo @kgirlhart thanks!
@Teresa502 stunning scenery but yikes, bears!
@quilteryoyo ouch, that kind of stuff hurts so much. Glad it didn't bother you to walk or run on.

I forgot in my rambling report to say that I finally met the village donkey I've loved for years. There are several that you hear round there but one in particular has a very loud bray that's sort of back to front and always makes me laugh. My friend and I were walking about the village on Friday evening and came across a man and a very fat donkey. Stopped to say hello, was told that "no he isn't pregnant, he's just a pig as well as noisy" so I asked if he was the loud one and the man said yes! In fact, he said he's had to move him to a field further away from the village because the neighbours were complaining about the noise he made, which explains why I hadn't heard him the last few times I've been there. We tried to take photos, but he wanted to eat our phones lol.

quilteryoyo · May 2023

Thanks @kgirlhart . Wayto hang in there and get in 5 miles.

Thanks @eleanorhawkins ! Glad you got to meet the loud donkey. It's funny that "he isn't pregnant." The owner must get that question a lot.

spl8 · May 2023

@Laurz9191 - I use a mantra sometimes when I run, and it definitely helps me. It makes running a bit like meditating for me.

@eleanorhawkins - I love your donkey story. Sounds like that donkey is living his best life. Haha

Teresa502 · May 2023

May 1 – 5.05 miles
May 2 – 1.01 miles
May 3 – 5.12 miles
May 4 – 4.49 miles
May 6 – 8.15 miles
May 8 – 5.27 miles
May 10 – 4.35 miles
May 11 – 5.04 miles
May 13 – 7.25 miles
May 15 – 5.66 miles
May 17 – 5.66 miles
May 18 – 5.00 miles
May 22 – 4.01 miles
May 23 – 1.62 miles
67.68/75 miles

Just a short 1.62 miles before circuit training class this morning.

@eleanorhawkins – Congratulations on your race and beating the cutoff in those wet, muddy conditions. I’m glad that you were able to get away for some fun with your friends. Sounds like it was just what you needed. That donkey sounds like quite the character!

tarun_yadavA · May 2023

@kgirlhart - thank you!;😊

polskagirl01 · May 2023

@Teresa502 that hike sounds lovely 😍

@eleanorhawkins great race report! And the donkey sounds like a real character.

@quilteryoyo sorry to hear you got hit by a bus 😆. Hope your foot is OK.

I did a tiny amount of yard work as my activity for the day. The weather has been nice.

chris_in_cal · May 2023

polskagirl01 wrote: »

@quilteryoyo sorry to hear you got hit by a bus 😆. Hope your foot is OK.

This caused quite a start, I thought I'd miss something big. @polskagirl01 conveniently left out the "toy" part. Get well soon @quilteryoyo

Laurz9191 · May 2023

@Teresa502 That sounds like an awesome hike. You guys did so many miles in such a short time too! I really enjoyed the pictures! I am glad you didn’t encounter the bears yourself. I have read many articles lately about the bears being more active on the AT. Did you guys bring bear canisters in your packs or just food bags?

@eleanorhawkins It sounds like you had a real muddy-fun-donkey adventure. Definitely a race to remember! And you made it in under the time limit despite muddy almost impossible to run stretches. I can imagine a constantly braying donkey to be fairly annoying to live next to

. Hopefully he can make all the noise he wants in his more remote location

.

@polskagirl01 @quilteryoyo @chris_in_cal It took me a second too to place the joke. I wondered for a second if I hadn’t read closely enough

. I do hope your foot is ok. Good that it doesn’t bother you running.

About the mantra thing- I sometimes notice my brain placing little seeds of doubt or negative thinking- for example during a hard workout or a long run- so I figure using a mantra might help me banish those kind of thoughts to help me stay in the moment and not “worry” about future miles, or future yet-to-be-attempted intervals. I found the suggestions so far to be helpful to try out. This morning I found myself examining my surroundings more. Sure, I was on high slug and snail alert (it rained last night, so a definite necessity

) but I also enjoyed the flowers, rivers, castle, and grasses

. I got 11.1km in.

So far for May I have 166.8/200km.

May 2023 Monthly Running Challenge

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