An easy day

I saw the physical therapist yesterday. He was kind to my aching quads and even did some light massage work on them, plus showed me a few new stretches for the quads. Yesterday, I saw the therapist who is OK with the training I'm doing. On Monday, I saw the other therapist, and I downplayed my recent training. Only two more PT visits and two more chiro visits and I should be good to go for WS.

After the PT appointment, I took my road bike out for an easy 75 minute ride. I never left the little chainring - just easy spinning and a slow ride. Then, I spent some time with the foam roller after my ride, and did some light quad massage work. I'm definitely feeling better today.

And that's a good thing, because I'm planning to hike Mt. Mansfield tonight. My favorite route on Mt. Mansfield is to ascend the Laura Cowles trail - a very steep trail - and then descend by the Sunset Ridge trail. This route is about 6.5 miles with 2500' or so of climbing. My fastest time on this route was 2:17 in 2005. My slowest summertime round-trip is 3:14, done at the end of a day where I hiked all five of VT's 4000 foot peaks in one day. My slowest time ever on this route was over 6 hours - done on a sub-zero January day in 1999. It was Super Bowl Sunday and my buddy Jeff and I had the trail to ourselves that day.

I rarely get to do this route in the evening, but as the name of the descent route suggests, it is a beautiful hike in the evening. The descent route travels mostly west, towards the setting sun, and it should be beautiful out there tonight.

I still need to pick a route for my 30 miler on Saturday. The option of signing up for a local 50K is out there, but it's a tougher route than I think I want to run this close to WS. Plus, the mosquitoes are likely to be horrible on that course this weekend.