Week 9 CIM: traveling and training, part II

Week 9 was a light week (step-back week)..which was a good thing.


After the Deerfield wedding, (which was wonderful...did I mention lots of dancing and up till late before the aforementioned long run @ 6:30am?) we decamped to North Adams, Mass. It's way in the upper left corner of Massachusetts.


My sister and her husband live nearby in Vermont and so we visited with them for a couple of days...seeing some local sites..

downtown North Adams Ma.

We stayed in downtown North Adams. The first day dawned and it was only lightly raining and I had some hill sprints. I went over to East Main St and did what you see below. Not super speedy but I was was still a bit tired from the long run two days before. 


North Adams is a town "in transition", i.e. it was a hopping place when the Sprague Capacitor factory was operating, but that shut down long ago. The huge and beautiful old buildings were re-purposed for the Mass Museum of Contemporary Art, which is very cool, but that hasn't generated too many jobs out there.

Split	Distance	Avg Pace	Avg HR	Max HR	Avg Cadence	Elev+	Elev-	YPB
1	0.07	6:57	131	142	92	27	0	2.015
2	0.07	6:60	145	153	97	0	0	1.821
3	0.05	8:39	120	130	94	0	0	1.630
4	0.05	7:40	120	133	93	0	0	1.913
5	0.05	7:35	115	129	94	10	0	2.087
Summary	5.57	11:05	121	165	83	273	256	1.312

Chateau Frontenac

The next couple of days involved treadmill running only ..nothing very interesting to report..and we had made our way from North Adams up to Quebec City, Canada. For a couple of nights we stayed at the Chateau Frontenac..amazing place. Lots of walking here of course including a 2 hour walking tour of the old city 8)

greenspace created at old port Montreal

Next stop Montreal! We stayed near the Vieux Port (old port). I cased out the area the day we arrived as a place to run my 10k time trial the next day. Alas the developed part for tourists was about .8 miles long so we did a back and forth run until we hit 10k.


This route went along the old canal that was built to let boats bypass some very fast, nasty rapids on the Saint Lawrence river.


They had a restored tugboat on the canal.

canal at Montreal old port

This run went well...I hit pretty good paces with an HR that wasn't too high. There was a stiff headwind/tailwind running which didn't help when it was a headwind. Also, having to stop and reverse course every .8 miles cost a few seconds...

Split	Distance	Avg Pace	Avg HR	Max HR	Avg Cadence	YPB
1	1.00	8:02	137	143	91	1.599
2	1.00	8:06	141	144	90	1.541
3	1.00	8:09	142	145	90	1.521
4	1.00	8:04	143	146	89	1.526
5	1.00	8:15	145	148	89	1.471
6	1.00	8:11	143	146	89	1.504
7	0.21	8:03	146	148	90	1.519
Summary	6.21	8:08	142	148	90	1.526

My PR from two years ago for 10k is an 8:00 pace....this is garmin pace so I'm probably 12s per mile slower than my PR..but during that race my average HR was 152, not 142 and I'm pretty sure 10 bpm would get me to a pretty big PR.  I would need the actual race situation to crank the adrenalin to do that but my point is that I'm pretty fit.


I'm also not done yet..on to CIM week 8!


After the 10k we went hiking up in the Mont Royal park (That's where the name Montreal comes from) and eveybody was up there! It was a nice warm sunny day and everybody was enjoying the last bits of summer weather. The walking is really good to keep from stiffening up after a hard run.

view from Mont Royal

can you believe we are in a big city?