Ramblings & Wisconsin

I've been a little quiet here for the past few weeks, yes. It's practically summer time, you know, and I've already taken 3 different trips this months , both short and long. It's jostled my blog output and my running schedule.

I have kept up with my training (or replaced it with some cross-training). It's just my long runs that have been a little short (yes, pun intended). But if my marvelous marathon in May taught me anything, it was that cutting back and staying fresh is more useful than pressing and over doing things.

I did have a marvelous time in northern Wisconsin last week. Laura and I were up there for 5 nights and 6 days. My actual running miles were low, but I did some great, tough trail runs on the local cross-country ski trails.

I made up the running miles with lots of hiking & nearly 30 miles of mountain biking during the week. Not a grand total by bike standards, but I (and especially Laura) are very new to that sport, so it took a little extra out of both of us. There is an incredible and extensive trail system up there, most of it maintained by the Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association (CAMBA). They've cut and mapped trails for riders at every level of experience. And they're just as good for running as they are for mountain biking.

The only real trouble we had all week were the ticks. It was big time tick season. I've barely had a tick on me my whole life (and I was a camping, hiking boy scout for years), but we had 4 the very first day out. Luckily we found ourselves some serious Deep Woods Off that afternoon, and didn't pick up any more the rest of the week. (whew!)

I'm still on the fence about wether or not I'm going to go to Ohio at the beginning of August to run the Burning River 100. Well... I'm very much leaning toward going, but I haven't fallen off the fence yet. I'm worried about my mileage build up. There is absolutely no way I'm going to be in any kind of shape to race the event. I could only hope to make it through quick enough to stay ahead of the cutoff times. I'd be cool with that. Be very happy, in fact, just to be able to say I finished my first 100-miler. But even at a lazy pace, it's still 30 hours on my feet, all on the go. There's still more time before I have to fully commit. I'll see how the next couple of long runs go in the new summer heat.

Oh, and I got myself a brand new pair of trail running shoes! A pair of Inov-8 Roclite 295s. I'm already completely in love with them, so I'll have a first impressions review up in the next couple of days. I'm just drawn to Inov-8's product line for some reason.