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After the nice long run I had in Delaware park earlier in the week, I decided to try driving to the park again and doing my entire planned 5 mile run there again. Unfortunately, when I arrived the park was packed with visitors and I couldn’t find a parking spot to fit my truck into. There were so many people there that instead of parking parallel to and on the side of the road, cars were parked perpendicular across the one lane of the loop running the park’s perimeter (it’s a double wide road, but cars are only allowed in one direction). Some googling after I finished confirmed my suspicions it was the Buffalo Zoo’s annual Wines in the Wild event (the zoo is located in one corner of the park).

Disappointed I couldn’t run the entire run in the park, I headed home and began my run from there. I ran a regular route of mine to, around and back from the park. After having seeing a turkey and juggler on stilts during previous runs, I’ve come to expect to see things out of the ordinary, but was still surprised that this week I ran past a tight rope walker in the park! He’d strung a rope of some type from two trees in the park and was traversing back and forth between them. I can only wonder what I’ll see next…

Monday was supposed to be my long run for the week. The schedule called for and I was looking forward to an 11 mile run. As luck would have it, right as I put my running shoes on, the rain came down. I was discouraged, but waited it out for a while & and finally decided to get the run in once it lightened to just a drizzle. Fearing heavy rain or lightning might still come, I decided to do something a little out of the norm for me – drive to Delaware Park and run the whole distance there (normally I run to and around the park). By running the 1.8 mile loops around the park, I’d be close to the truck if I had to leave in a hurry.

What a great night for running! The temperature has been in the mid-80s the last couple weeks here in Buffalo, but was a comfortable 68 when I arrived around 7:45. Occasionally the wind picks up at the Park and annoyingly blows across the golf course, but there was none that night. The only other weather condition that could have made it better was a light rain. Low and behold, a mist began to fall. The park is normally packed with people, but this night is was almost empty. There wasn’t a soul on the basketball courts & very few cars. At the most I saw 5 or 6 people during the entire loop around the park. Between the lack of people, the mist & the approaching night, it was a bit creepy, but I felt like the entire park was mine.

Without look at my watch at all, I ran the following splits:

• 7:27
• 7:43
• 7:47
• 7:47
• 7:49
• 7:52
• 8:00
• 9:47 (included a water break)
• 7:48
• 7:52

Overall, those splits add up to a 7:58 minutes/mile pace!
It’d been a long time since I felt as good as I did at the end of that run – not only for a run, but in life in general. I set out to do something & did it well – accomplishment. The fast pace came to me without putting forth much effort & I felt like I had more in me when I was done. The week before I ran 11 miles at a disappointing (to me) 8:29 overall average pace. Besting it with a run like this is the type of thing that inspires me to challenge myself by running distance. I thought about doing another two miles for the sole purpose of seeing how the time would compare to my half marathon last year, but forced myself to stop (plus it was getting dark).

I look forward to the next long run, but don’t expect such a quick pace and know that the weather had a lot to do with it. I may very well head back to the park for long runs though – being close to the truck is nice not only if I have to leave from bad weather, but in case I get paged for work.

I ended up heading down to Zoar Valley this past Saturday to do some hiking. Unfortunately, my eTrex Legend GPS didn’t want to stay powered on, but to give you an idea of where I was at, I do have a map and

gpx file from a previous hike near the same location. Photos from the day can be found in my photo gallery.

I’d been to this area of Zoar before, but never down Knife Edge Ridge the whole way. Going all the way down it was tough enough, but coming back up was really challenging – especially since I’d done a 5 mile run earlier that morning. On the way down, I saw a set of two families with young children at a beach near the bottom of the ridge. I can’t imagine taking young kids down the ridge, especially with beach chairs and the other gear they had with them. (A couple people die each year at Zoar from accidents involving the cliffs.)

After heading downstream and then back up Knife Edge Ridge for a while, I hiked the top of the ridge, heading upstream for a little for the first time. It was beautiful, but the weather was starting to look a little threatening and I decided to head back towards the truck.

Just as I came out of the woods into the field you would first enter, I thought I saw a pheasant up ahead shoot across the path and then back a couple times. I pulled my camera out and very quietly crept up toward the spot I thought I’d seen it. Much to my surprise, when I got there, a turkey jumped out of the opposite side of the path and took to the air. I was able to capture this picture of it in flight. As it was only about 10 feet away when it took off, I didn’t think I’d get any closer to one. But then another hen popped out onto the path and was even closer – she must have been within 5 feet of me!

I was pretty happy to be able to just get one picture of the 2nd bird, but she didn’t run from me, so I switched the camera to capture some video and was able to follow her for almost two minutes. Check an edited version of it here.

If only it had been fall turkey season…

Yesterday I finished another Palahniuk book – Invisible Monsters. This was my fifth Palahniuk book, and I found it to be by far his most twisted and wild one. I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to be inside his head. The story started a little slow, but the last two thirds was full of great surprises that were both unanticipated, yet that made perfect sense – not unlike the surprise in The Sixth Sense.

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Today I finally cracked double digits and did a 10 mile run. Total time was 1:22:15, an average 8:14 mile pace.

I’ve been contemplating running the Rochester half and Niagara Falls full marathons, or the full Rochester marathon, but had some serious doubts. Today’s run felt great. I didn’t push any of it and wasn’t hurting at all during any part of it. In fact, I know my true average for the run was actually under an 8:00 mile the whole way – right before the end of mile 5 I ran into a guy from my soccer team and stopped to talk to him. Eventually I stopped my watch, but the mile still clocked in at 10:44.

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While I typically head back home to Angola to enjoy the outdoors, put the boat in the water or do some work at my parent’s house, this weekend I stayed in the Buffalo area and had plenty of things to do. (more…)