Inner High Hawk roads

This AM, I broke the 10 mile barrier for the first time this year. I trekked out Middle and made a left onto Tillinghast. On the right is Arrowhead Trail which connects in with the High Hawk neighborhood, so I did the "inside" roads in that neighborhood - I'll return at a future date to complete the outer roads, which leads to a longer run and the reason that it didn't occur first. The return trip was just a reversal - Arrowhead Trail to Tillinghast to Middle. This exposes the frustration of this folly - of today's 10.32 miles, 6.86 miles was retracing previously completed paths.Ten plus miles to knock not even 3.5 miles off the goal! Argh!

One cool thing to note - there's a really cool water wheel on the west side of Tillinghast just north of the Arrowhead Trail intersection. It wasn't working when I went past, but it looked like it could be engaged manually.

Tillinghast is a difficult little road - lots of rolling hills, vs. Middle which has giant hills on either side of the Rt 2 valley. High Hawk was hillier than I expected - nothing major, but I found myself struggling at times. Which leads me to...

I must be either the worst runner ever or the most predictable runner ever. If I'm on a downhill, my mental state is all "Yeah, no sweat, I won't have to walk at all on this run"; if I'm headed the slightest bit uphill, I'm all about "Wow, I'm gonna need to walk to recover a bit." I'm waiting for the runner's high to kick in - I've only experienced it a couple times, but I found it to be incredibly invigorating and made me feel almost invincible.

Here's the new ground that today's route covered. I also covered a teeny little cul-de-sac off Middle but it's not worth calling out with its own picture.

Totals to date: 35 runs totaling 193.7 miles, for an average of 5.53 miles per run. And here's the new consolidated map - you can see the High Hawk progress in the left center below:

Next run should push me over 200 miles!

Tillinghast North

Took on the northern part of Tillinghast yesterday - between Middle and Frenchtown - along with a couple neighborhoods hanging off the sides. That completely closes out the Middle / Tillinghast / Frenchtown / Rt 2 square. The new area covered yesterday is below:

That run added 9.36 miles to the total, giving me 183.38 total miles in this bizarre exercise, averaging 5.39 miles per run across the 34 total runs.

Progress to date:

Division = DONE!

I executed my plan today, though it was in doubt at several times. I set the alarm for 4:30 AM to get up and out before the traffic on Division picked up, especially around the highway on / off ramps. Forces were aligned against me last night, though, as my wife was out at a wedding with her mother and returned around 11, followed shortly by my daughter coming in to report that she was having scary thoughts that prevented her from falling asleep. So, instead of falling asleep at 10:30 or so, I was up until about midnight. The alarm went off at 4:30, I shut it off and reset it for 7:30, but the birds - the damn birds! - were already up and happily making noise, so I hauled myself out of bed and left the house by 5 for the run. We'll see what that does in the long run - I'm working this morning and possibly into the afternoon and on-call all afternoon / overnight, the girls have skating tests this afternoon / evening, Game of Thrones is on tonight at 9, and - oh, yeah - the Penguins are playing a slightly important game tonight at 8. If I don't squeeze in a nap somewhere, I'll either be asleep by the second period or will be a complete waste at work tomorrow.

Traffic was perfect - no issues in either direction at the highway ramps or while crossing Rt 2. The run itself wasn't bad - a bit slower than the Adirondack run, but I'm not doing this for speed. I only walked for a small distance on the return trip, right after the 4-way stop signs on Division at Shippeetown. Had something bothering my ear, got in a good brow wipe with my shirt, then off and running again. Really humid this morning, so I was drenched - very different from the Adirondack run which was a similar temperature but the air was so dry that my shirt was only wet in spots. I was drenched from head to toe today.

Here's the new ground covered today:

Can't believe I was over at Centre of New England - I never knew EG went that far, but I was warned by some friends who commented on EG being involved in approving the McDonalds that was built over there. You'll also noticed I ran outside of EG and off map at one point - it just made sense to continue on vs. back track - nothing in my "rules" prevents me from doing that, and I'm all about minimizing the distance these days :)

And the full map (new area covered is in the very upper left):

To date, that's 33 runs totaling 174.02 miles - that's an average of 5.27 miles per outing. I'm still hamstrung by the Division time limitations - I really only feel comfortable heading that way early in the morning on weekends for obvious traffic reasons, so I'll have to pick my spots carefully. In the meantime, I'm torn between finishing the Rt 2 neighborhoods (both the mobile home area near Flood Ford and the Canonicus Trail neighborhood further south, across from the National Guard location) and finishing the areas between Middle and Frenchtown. I think those decisions will be based on the distance of each run, how I feel, and how much time I have.

Adirondack and PI

Ran down to Frenchtown and through the Adirondack development on Thursday - 9+ miles. I'm shocked at the amount of poison ivy that I see on the roadside - I had no idea how common it was. I had a rough time with PI as a kid - my house backed up to the woods and I was in there constantly. My parents thought I might be so allergic that I'd get it somehow from the air - maybe someone nearby burning brush? My biggest paranoia as I'm running is that a car will lose control, head towards me on the shoulder, and I'll have to ditch into the PI alongside the road to save myself. I'd almost rather risk the leap onto the hood of the oncoming car!

Anyway, slow week due to some work stuff and uncooperative weather. Aside from the Adirondack run, I only snuck in a short one to knock off the little road behind ON Semiconductor. Not even worth calling out separately, so here's the view of the Adirondack coverage:

And the complete picture to date:

I'm up to 32 runs covering 165.33 miles, for an average of 5.17 miles per run. My goal for tomorrow is to get up bright and early and run the length of Division and cover the northern end of Shippeetown and Crompton as well, making my way very close to BJs and the Centre of New England plaza.

Solid week to knock out northeast

I finished up the area north of Frenchtown and East of Rt 4. Early in the week, I concentrated on a bunch of roads near Post, between Cedar and Sweet Twist. Then I took on a long run yesterday and covered the Middle / Rt 2 / Frenchtown / Post loop, finishing off the road behind Hilltop and a small dead end up behind Sweet Twist.

Here's this week's coverage area:

And the overall master view of coverage to date:

I'm now left with the scariest chunk, which is the long run down Rt 2 and the large areas across Rt 2. This thing is getting real now - no short runs left, unless you count the tiny road near ON Semiconductor on Rt 2 / Middle, or the mobile home park on Rt 2 across from Bostitch or whatever it is now (Toray, I believe?). The north end of Rt 2 is also available, but I was kinda hoping to save that for a short celebratory concluding run :)

Stats to date: I started this foray on Feb 23, but it was still winter so I had a bunch of treadmill runs in late Feb and March that didn't provide any progression on the map. So far, I've had 30 EG runs for a total of 152.51 miles, which is an average of 5.08 miles per run. The mileage and average per run will certainly be climbing quickly given the areas I have left to complete.

Humidity!

Whew, humid one yesterday. Only about 70 degrees but I actually wrung out my shirt at one point on the way home from my 6 1/2 mile run over to River Farm.

I think that knocks off all of Tanglewood, and I'm getting much closer to having the entire eastern part of EG finished. There are a few outliers off of Post that I hope to knock out this week, then the longer Rt 2 - Frenchtown - Post loop to close out the area north of Frenchtown and East of Rt 2/4.

As you can see from the map, the Western side consists of much more distance, but the density of the roads isn't even close.

I'll continue my commercial for dwMap - this thing is invaluable for my effort here. I map out a few courses in advance to ensure I'm covering dead ends and optimizing my route - limiting retracing my steps, for example - and then choose a route that's got the distance I'm feeling comfortable covering each day that I run. Definitely saves me from the problem I described a few posts ago, where I'm blindly guessing (and wildly underestimating) my distance and the duration of my runs.

Heat!

I'm not a fan of the heat. Before heading to Mexico, it was 60 with enough wind to make it feel much cooler than that. Returned from Mexico and it's in the 80s with no breeze whatsoever. Not conducive to long runs.

Went out on a short one on Thursday to knock out a small road, Frybrooke, off Middle across Rt 2 from me - turned out to be a private road, but I didn't have anywhere else to go for a quick run at lunchtime so I bit the bullet and did it anyway.

This morning, I went for a more aggressive run - about 6.25 miles - and knocked out an area in Tanglewood but deeper in, almost over to Post Road.

Couldn't get up early enough to venture out Division past the highway on/off-ramps so stuck to this side of Rt 2 again. Maybe tomorrow or Monday morning...

Here's the full map to date.