Vacation report

Helen gave a couple of notes about the kind of things we were doing while up in Great Barrington. We kept pretty busy – a 13 mile run, a 1:20 trail run, I went swimming once, we went for a nice (but surprisingly strenuous and confusing) hike on the Appalacian trail (or "A.T" to the cognoscenti).

We never did make it on the tri-state bike ride. Our ride down to Connecticut was really nice – a quiet relaxing ride. And as Helen said, it's really nice to be able to ride side by side on a country road. I actually went on three rides during the week. The highlight was an 80-mile ride that included a climb up along Mt. Washington road. From what I can tell, there are two Mt. Washingtons in close proximity to Great Barrington. This was the less steep one… it was a good, challenging climb. Not a Vermont-level climb, but since I was already 40 miles in it was a good workout. I did get a bit lost a few times on the ride. I had a map with me, but it gets frustrating keeping on taking the map out and looking at it. So I wound up missing the part where I'd go to New York State. Helen was out on a smaller ride that day, and she too wound up not making it into New York. Oh well.

The third ride was my attempt at a 'tempo ride' – 5 intervals of 2 miles hard and ½ mile easy. It's a decent workout. I can see how this would help later on. It's not nearly as much fun as a real ride – it's more training than riding. But it didn't take long. Really, if I want to work on getting faster, I should probably be doing more single leg drills. But those are tough.

The last day we wanted to leave at noon, so that limited options. Our legs were pretty shot by that point. We decided to go for a hike and, if there was time, a swim as well. But we spent a few minutes looking around for the trail markers after we missed a turn, and wound up combing back without enough time to swim. And by then, my legs felt pretty shot anyway. The hike was one big climb in, so it really took a lot to get up it. And with all the running and biking already, I didn't need to do more.

Now we're back in Philly. It's good to be home.