Week 6: “Soggy doggies are better than no doggies at all.”

This week was a fucking rollercoaster.

I’d rather have a life that consists of crazy highs and lows than to live at an unvaried average though.

On that note, clap for bacon!

 

Wednesday: 4 mile trail run

Friday: 2 mile walk

Saturday: 2 mile walk

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Weekly total: 8 miles

TOTAL total: 83 miles

Ran on the “natural trail” at Fort Dickerson park, where some things apparently happened during the civil war. There was a sign describing why the park is important but I got burned out on history as a child from visiting too many museums and monuments and spending six hours at Custer’s Last Stand (which is just a giant field). So I can’t make myself give a shit.

Source

I’d actually run on the greenway in the park before but had forgotten. The natural trail is a mile long and finding/using it was a little confusing. I mean, this is where the trail starts.

Do you see a trail there?

But it was a fun trail, and pretty easy. Most of the trails I’ve been running on are built by the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club, so thanks to those bros. I’ve started to notice that all of their trails have a bunch of bumps that seem to be intentionally built in, which must be a biking thing? It’s kind of fucking annoying.

I took it really easy on the run because of my knees. It felt great until maybe the last half mile, when my left knee started to feel a little sore.

The park has a cool little lake that’s from an old quarry that I’d also forgotten about until I wandered over to an overlook to stretch. Prettyyyyyy.

My knee felt fine until a few days later when I was biking and the soreness became a little more acute. This freaked me out enough that I decided to nix the five mile trail race I’d been planning to do on Saturday and I took the weekend off from working out.

My mood is highly correlated with how well my workouts are going. I’m just starting to realize the extent of this. I’ll feel on top of the world when running is going well, which was what it was like a few weeks ago, but then immediately become somewhat despondent and generally unenthusiastic when old (or new) injuries flare up. It’s difficult to have my emotions dictated by my body because how my body behaves seems to be completely out of my control, and I’m a control freak.

Because of this I’m getting increasingly better at listening to my body. I know enough by now that when particular spots are sore or the soreness is of a certain type, that I need to stop. But I don’t always stop when I need to because I’m stubborn and like to stick to my plans. I’m slowly learning patience and flexibility with workout plans, and recognizing that I’m developing valuable character traits helps me deal with the frustration from my injury-prone body.

I’m going to take it easy the next couple of weeks and just see how things go. And I’ll keep you well-informed about all of the tedious details, kind reader, don’t you worry!

The only other activity from the week that is worth mentioning is accidentally exploring an abandoned insane asylum.

For real.

My bf and I took a walk on Friday at Lakeshore park. Neither of us had ever been there before. About a mile into the greenway loop there was a junky looking brick building and we decided to peek in and see what was up.

In that window, we could see a gym, so we thought it was a high school. We walked around outside the building a little more and ran into some dead ends until we found a door that had been busted out that allowed for entry. So we played Ghost Hunters for a while.

Now, I would normally never encourage trespassing. I’m generally a law-abiding citizen (except for open container laws obvs) but there weren’t any No Trespassing signs. Besides, I’ve learned that you should never say no to an opportunity for a good story.

We didn’t realize how good that story was though. If I’d known it was an insane asylum, I might not have gone in because I watched too many horror movies as a child and am slightly traumatized by the paranormal.

Especially because this place, the Lakeshore Mental Asylum, is supposedly haunted by all the tortured patients that resided there. There are a bunch of stories on the Internet from people who heard screams, saw ghostly figures, whatever. I try not to believe in that sort of hokey shit, but the place is fucking creepy. I’ll let you know if I’ve been possessed from my asylum jaunt.

There was some good spray paint on the walls, but this most appropriately described how I felt walking through.

Week 5: “He looks like an angry softball trying to get out of a coin purse.”

First thing’s first. Meet my new best friend.

Apparently the only way I can get myself to do anything worthwhile is via random ass challenges, so I’ve started a gallon challenge. No, not that gallon challenge. (My cross country team would do a gallon challenge during preseason every year. I never participated because milk is super nast, but I got to see a lot of my friends vomiting uncontrollably into a river.)

I have to drink a gallon of water every day. For a long time, I was great about staying ultrahydrated, but I’ve fallen off the water wagon pretty hard lately. Drinking water is a lot of work, and I would like to just use an IV instead. I’ve actually heard that EMTs will hook themselves up to an IV when they’re severely hungover, those lucky bastards. Anyways, I digress.

It’s been pretty easy to finish a gallon a day so far. I just pretend that jug is my child and it will die if I don’t drink all of it. And I don’t even like children. Easy peasy. I now pee like I’m pregnant too.

Tuesday: 5 mile trail run

Thursday: 2 mile walk

Friday: 7 mile trail run

—–

Weekly total: 14 miles

TOTAL total: 75 miles

Didn’t quite hit my mileage this week. I meant to hike on Sunday, but I really needed to cross train, and you’ll have to read the rest of the post to find out why. Also, was spending a lot of time with my other best (liquid) friend this week.

So, the run on Tuesday was the most incredibly awful shitty disgusting run I’ve done in recent memory. I actually thought I might die.

I checked out Sharp’s Ridge Trail. It’s not actually part of the Knoxville Greenways system, but I found it on the greenway map. The trail is about 1.25 miles long, a nice dirt singletrack in a densely wooded area. Really pretty. The trail also has some short but fun ups and downs. I think what I’ve been running lately is too boring (i.e., flat). 

The trail is unique because it’s on a random ridge in the middle of an urban area, but if you ignore the subtle sounds of interstate traffic, you would think you’re in the middle of nowhere due to how dense the vegetation is. I only saw a single other person in the park, some friendly old dude with binocs. This is fuckin rare for Knoxville, as most of the trails are crawling with people doing shit. I appreciated it greatly because it meant no one was there to see me suffering and probs looking like trash.

I ran Sharp’s Ridge four times to get out 5 miles, and felt like death after the first half mile. This was mostly due to allergies, which I’ve never had to deal with before, but I basically had a cold and my body felt like shit. I was also a little dehydrated due to Cinco de Drinko activities the night before (see my solution to that problem above). The cherry on top was that it was VERY hot and VERY humid. It took a lot of willpower to not quit when I got back to my car after 2.5 miles.

I stopped paying attention to my form because I was so exhausted  and miserable and started feeling some soreness in my shins during the third traverse. My running form has been a years-long project and I’ve pretty much gotten to the point where I don’t have to think too hard to maintain it. Or so I thought. My knees were cracking a lot more the next couple of days than they had been recently, causing me to have some spastic freakout moments about my knees getting injured again. Ugh. #firstworldproblems

I wanted to do a longer run later in the week in preparation for the Panther Creek 5 miler next weekend (more on that in the next post) and planned out what I thought was 7 miles in the Ross Marble Quarry area south of Ijams Nature Center. Starting from the parking lot by the quarry, I intended to do the south loop section in the park (Ross Marble and Burnett Ridge trails) and then do Flow out and back.

Source

I’ve done a longer run on the greenway in that area with some friends who were training for a marathon before, but have heard good things about the trails and have never checked them out before. The trails were really nice, very well maintained and in a pretty, forested area. Like Sharp’s Ridge, there were a lot more ups and downs than I’ve been doing recently, but had that rollercoaster feel even more so, and I loved it.

This is the latest installment in a project called Shit Found in The Woods, which was started on my first solo backpacking trip three or four years ago in Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky.

While I was really nervous about this run the night before because of the consequences of the Sharp’s Ridge Trail run, it actually went extremely well. I felt light on my feet the entire time and was just flowing along the trails. It was cooler than it’s been because of clouds from an impending storm, though still humid enough that I was drenched in sweat by the end.

I did unfortunately start feeling some pressure in my left knee after I’d finished the south loop portion, but because I’m a stubborn asshole like most runners, decided to try to do the Flow section as planned. Obviously, my knee didn’t get any better as I ran more, so I ended up not finishing that trail. I think I did 0.75 miles-ish of it.

From what I can tell using the magic of the internet, I ran somewhere between 6 and 8 miles that day, but I don’t know for sure. I should probably start a “Kristina needs a Garmin” fund, or just stop being so damn frugal and fork over the cash. My lame ass excuse is that I’m a poor graduate student.

In summary, my knees were acting up this week and that freaks me out. They’ve been cracking and they were pretty sore after sitting in a car for four hours on Saturday. My knees are just delicate snowflakes, though, and sometimes they have to remind me they’re there. I need to better about cross training; the more I run, the more I should cross train, but it tends to go the other way. Also, while I thought yoga would be a sufficient replacement for strength exercises, I did some hip work yesterday and discovered that my hips were not as strong as I thought. Fail.

Sorry for all the words in this post. My body misbehaving makes me a little word vomit-y. As part of my apology, have this picture of a cat.

Week 4: “We have to protect the forests to keep the unicorns alive.”

So, I’m in Tennessee now.

Quick rundown of Tennessee vs. Utah. TN pros: rolling hills, green and lush as fuck, hanging with some of my main bitches, delicious food, live music everywhere, hipster-y people running around. TN cons: mountains are further away (at least an hour), outrageously hot and humid. Tennessee wins, obvi.

 Monday: 3 mile trail run

Thursday: 2 mile walk

Friday: 6 mile trail run

Saturday: 11 mile hike

—–

Weekly total: 22 miles

TOTAL total: 61 miles

If anyone is keeping track besides me (unlikely), this is the first week I’ve actually exceeded the number of miles in a week that I need to finish 1,000 miles in a year. Go me!

Also, my body has felt amazingly great this week. It blows my mind, because I’m incredibly injury-prone and used to hurting myself whenever I increase the volume or intensity of my workouts. I’ll take it. Thanks body.

After spending all of last weekend stuck in a car, I was raging to get outside on Monday. I was looking for a decent trail that’s close to where I’m staying, so used the power of the internet to find Victor Ashe Park. Knoxville has a set of multi-use trails sprinkled throughout the city called greenways that they’re developing. Apparently it’s up to 86 miles of trails now, I guess. I was kind of worried that most of them were paved, but I’ve found several so far that aren’t.

Source

I did the 1.5 mile unpaved loop trail twice. It was fucking hot and humid, but somehow that didn’t drive me too crazy. I got to check out some dudes playing disc golf in the park, and the second time I ran by the dog park, two adorable puppies followed me along the fence. I felt super fit while running past all the fat white dudes taking a stroll in the park.

The greenway in Sequoyah Park was the other place I checked out this week, which I’ve heard is awesome from multiple sources. In my attempt to have more active rest days, my bf and I walked around the park. I kind of figured this greenway was paved, which was why I wanted to scout it out first, but it wasn’t. Score! Also, it’s a really beautiful, big park that’s adjacent to some really nice, likely insanely expensive, houses.

I returned to the park the next day for a 6 miler. When I hit the last quarter mile, I didn’t even want to stop, so that’s probably a good sign. I kind of hate that every quarter mile is marked out on posts, though, because it’s a constant reminder that I’m not done yet.

I’ve been meaning to get new trail runners for a while now, because my old pair had something like 900 miles on them. Woops. I picked up a new pair from the New Balance store in Knoxville; they’re the same model I had before, the Leadville 100s, but a different color. Definitely the manliest-looking pair of trainers I’ve ever owned.

They were running some sort of promotional deal, too, so I got $25 worth of apparel for free? I got this sick new pair of shorts that I don’t really need, but runners can’t say no to new running shit.

The cherry on top of this most excellent week was heading up into the mountains to hike with a couple of my girlfriends. We intended to do the 4 miles out to Alum Cave (not really a cave), but ended up going all the way to the LeConte Lodge for a total of 11 miles. It was a glorious day with some awesome people.

Pictures > words.

I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus due to allergies, so that’s all you get. I might just crawl back into bed.