Thursday, May 13, 2010

L10 Day 17 - Battle Road



I stayed in a hotel near Lexington, Mass these past couple of nights, and on Tuesday night I went jogging in a park called the Minuteman National Historic Park.  It was pretty awesome.  Here is the map. This is the old road that goes between Lexington and Concord.  It's where Paul Revere was riding and was captured.  There are a ton of landmarks along the way and a few gravestones of "British soldiers are buried somewhere around this spot".  There is preserved architecture and a preserved farm from those very distant days.


I got kind of a late start, and by the time I got back to where I had begun it was dark.  So dark I couldn't find the little feeder trail back to the hotel:

Oh great, I'm lost without money or ID in a strange state.  I'm cold, tired, and hungry - practically shaking at a combination of those three things.

I gave up on finding the trail and started walking streets.  Narrow awful streets without sidewalks.  Somehow, I had dead-reckoned correctly.  It was such a relief to find the hotel.  I ordered a pizza and a movie and afterwards crashed like a rock star.  I'm not sure what that means, but I crashed like Bandicoot. Like the stock market did in '29.  Like a Zildjian symbol.

What's interesting to me is how my effort went down so dramatically.  But even when my heart rate was down in the 130s, I was doing 4.5 mph.


In total, I did 8.45 miles at a 12:25 pace (4.8 mph speed).  This is a new distance record for me! My average heart rate was 142 and my max heart rate was 152.  These two numbers will be important for the next post.  The surface was sandy gravel.  I did 15 of the first 16 laps at 5 mph or better, so I really slowed down on the way back.


This was an awesome trail, and I hope to visit it again some time.  The weather was a little nippy at 57°, and speaking of nips, I really should have had the anti-chafe for that run.

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