Trailbreaker? Probably

Running: 
Last week I finally made the decision to try the Trailbreaker  marathon on April 2nd.  While the last several days have been cold the warmer weather over a week ago cleared most of the snow and ice. The long range forecast looks to be about normal or 30/50 low and high temps which is nice for a marathon. I haven’t signed up yet because I can do it on race day, so as long as the weather holds and the injury bug doesn’t bite I’m going to do it.  I’m not confident in guessing my time, but I would hope to be in the 3:30ish range as my last two efforts of this race ended up. Yesterday I ran the single track trail up to the Lapham tower and there was some slippery spots, but the trail was quite runnable. Both of the last couple weeks my total miles were 53. I got there in different ways though.  This last week my longest run was only 12 miles on Saturday and no day off.  I’ve still only taken one day this year so far.  With the marathon coming up this weekend my total this work week will be low. I may take as many as three days off including today to be sure the legs are rested enough.

The past week I’ve had to break out a couple new pair of shoes as my older ones reached the 500 mile level.  I scored on a good pair of Asics Attack trail shoes on eBay, and a pair of Asics 2150 trainers on sale at SportMart. Both were real good deals and much less than ½ retail price. The trail shoes are a bit lower heal profile which I found quite comfortable on the few runs so far, especially the trail yesterday. I will likely use these for the IAT50k run in May.  Mileage through 3/27 :
WTD 53
MTD 229
YTD 709
ODO 27980


Hunting:
I had a couple links presented to me that I thought are interesting the past couple weeks. The first is a link to a news clip regarding 7 deer killed in a Southern WI field by lightening.   A year ago or so I posted a link showing three bucks with their horns locked together.  Here is a link to another recent article and pictures with the same thing happening in Ohio this past December.

Gardening.
Two weekends ago I was able to finish pruning all my apple and peach trees.  Still some minimal pruning on the pear, cherry, and plum trees.  These don't need close to as much work as the apple and pear do.  I also was able to burn two large piles of brush accumulated from wind damaged limbs and normal pruning last year and this winter.  I noticed the crocus flowers were out as well as the leaves sprouting on the tulips on the sun side of the house.  Spring can't be far now.

Much needed rest day

Running:
Running continues to go well so far this year. Today I took my first day off since late December 2010. Yesterday I managed to get in my first 20 miler of 2011. I’ve put on a lot of miles with no time off, so the end of that run hurt a bit. I finished the run in 2:45:52 which wasn’t a bad time considering the volumes I have been running. I figure I’m due for a break before my body makes me take one. I’ll likely use this week as a cut back week. Then I need to decide if I will run the Trailbreaker marathon the first week in April. If I do think I will run it, I will not run anything too hard for a few weeks. Maybe one day of speed work and a moderate length run of 15 miles or so on the weekends. If I’m not going to run it, I will start to target peaking for the 50K race in May. I would likely start to pick up with some hill work and more tempo style runs for the next several weeks. I continue to run both outside and on the treadmill. I have put more miles on the treadmill this year already than any other year of my life. The one thing this has done is allow me to be consistent. There was never a day when I couldn’t run or didn’t want to run because of the weather. Totals through 3/13:
WTD 63
MTD 123
YTD 603
ODO 27874

Hunting:
I still have not been out in the woods to retrieve my stands. I contacted the land owner about a month ago to say I would be coming out one of these weekends, but something just keeps coming up. If I don’t head up north this weekend hopefully I can get it done. The last couple of weeks I have seen so many deer in the fields near my house. One day last week on the way to work in the field closest to me I counted 8 deer. That’s just the ones I could see in the field and a little ways into the woods. I didn’t see any with antlers so likely they have fallen off by this time. Many of these deer are also coming into my back yard searching for the last leftovers. The dogs are frequently barking at them when they notice they are out there. This is a real good sign for next season. I don’t ever recall seeing this many nearby over the previous 7 winters in this house. Just as I was beginning to feel guilty about not doing much late season scouting I read this blog post at bowhunting.com. It makes sense to me and made me feel better that I wasn’t wasting my time.

Gardening:Two winter chores still to finish. I have a couple of large brush piles that I want to burn before I lose all the snow. If I don’t get it done over the next few days I may lose my chance for this year. I still have to prune about ½ of my fruit trees before the weather gets warm too. I still should have a few weeks for this chore. This weekend I noticed my fish came out of hiding. I hadn’t seen them for months. I also noticed several frogs had crawled out. I guess two signs that spring can’t be far away.