3 Hours, 2 Days

Been a busy couple of days, but in a good way.

My buddy Matt is in Maine visiting his family and his fiancee's family. They live in Fairbanks, Alaska, so visits are few and far between. The good news is that I got to go for two runs with him.

On Wednesday evening, I met him and Nate for a run from Matt's folks' house in Freeport. Honestly, I have no idea where we went, but it was groovy. From their yard, we connected onto a bunch of trails that offered some nice single track. It had white and blue blazes just like the AT, kinda neat. Eventually, we hit field, a dirt road, then another road. We turned off this road into a maze of trails that apparently connects to LL Bean intergalactic headquarters. I never really assumed that Matt knew where he was because he probably didn't, but we ended up back at his folks' house in about 54 minutes just as we planned "no more than an hour." Great run and great to catch up with Matt. And, even though he lives 5 minutes away, this was one of the few runs I've done with Nate all summer. I'd forgotten how cool it is to run with people. (Not that D isn't a people, but we're married, so that's different.)

Based on the success of this run and the desire to hang with Matt some more despite his crazy schedule, we made plans to run at Bradbury on Thursday morning. I wanted to get a longer run in, and no one complained, so I suggested we run the Bradbury Bruiser course.

We met early, but not too early, at Bradbury on Thursday morning. It was raining when I woke up but thankfully stopped by the time I headed out the door. It only sprinkled briefly during our run. Matt and Nate were in the crew again, and Kevin also joined us for a short while before he had to get back to work. I was the only one who had done any/much running at Bradbury, so these guys finally got to see firsthand what I have been raving about.

Trails were not as messy as I would have expected. Muddy, yes, but not too bad. I only made one major wrong turn (we ran the Fox East loop backwards), which resulted in us running a good-sized hill twice. No one really complained. I hadn't run the "O" Trail since the race last October, and it's significantly more fun when you're not trying to race it. That being said, it really works you at the end of a run, and we were happy that it eventually spat us out on the other side. Another great run, and great to catch up more with Matt, who claims he's fat and out of shape, but could have easily dusted either Nate or I had he chosen to do so. We arrived back at the parking lot in about 2:06 giving 3 hours of running over the last 2 days. Good stuff.

It's turning into a solid week for me, and my legs are feeling it a bit. No pain, just fatigue. Short run planned tomorrow morning, which will bring my official running miles to 24 for the week. Add in the 20 miles we ran/hiked on Monday, and I'd said that's pretty good marathon base building. Or at least I hope so.