faster with age

     Ran 11 easy miles in the morning then headed to Salt Lake in the afternoon to my parents 50th wedding anniversary. We stayed for the night to catch our plane in the morning.

     We caught a plane for Pennsylvania this morning out of SLC. Never got a chance to run.

     We arrived at the Farmhouse in northern Pennsylvania last night. The 150 acre farm has not been farmed for the last 50 or more years and has turned back into forest as have most farms in the area. It is about 2000 ft elevation. It has been in my wife's family for about 200 years and it now belongs to her parents who live about an hour away but spend a lot of their summer there. I love running there through the tunnels of trees and past a number of ponds and small lakes. There is a lot of wildlife from bullfrogs and newts to deer and bears. I saw a bobcat and a bear on the same bike ride last year. This is also where last year on my first run here I fell and tore my hamstring. I figured I'd rather avoid that this year. I have a favorite loop I like to run that is around 2 1/2 miles. About 3/4 of a mile is paved and the rest dirt. Nothing is flat with a couple of the larger hills being about 1/4 mile long and one climbs over 100 feet. On this first run there I just did 3 loops for 7.12 miles at 8:16 ave pace. This time I finished safely.

     Later I took a short 3 mile bike ride.

     Ran 4 laps at the farmhouse and added another 1/2 mile to make it 10 miles. 8:07 ave pace.

     15 miles on the bike.

     We spent the day in New York City seeing some sights. We had some heavy rain hit us midway through the day. We had wanted to spend some time at Central Park so when the rain got lighter we headed to the park. I decided to run around the park. I took off in what I was wearing which was cargo type shorts with pockets full of everything from a wallet and change to a cell phone. I was wearing some older running shoes and I did have my garmin. My shoes and socks were already completely soaked. The rain was lightly falling at times which kept it nice and cool. I went once around the main road where the Olympic trials were held. That would be a pretty tough marathon course with all the little hills and it amazes me how good of times some of the guys ran at the trials. After once around the big loop I ran a smaller loop. It's a great place to run and a lot of fun. My overall ave pace for 8 miles was 7:31. 

Didn't get a chance to run.