Running in the Blue Ridge Mountains

This past weekend, Paul and I went down to Asheville for my sister's wedding. It was a beautiful day with a very laid-back ceremony and reception. Absolutely perfect.

But beyond the wedding, we had a weekend to hang out in this fantastic log cabin way up on a mountain. The image above is from the driveway, looking back down to the street. Here's the topography of the neighborhood (yes, that is a 20% incline, and that doesn't even include the driveway which was the by far the steepest part of the trek).

Needless to say, I didn't do my Saturday run from the cabin. Since I've started my new training regime for the fall running season, I've been running 3 days a week. One long zone 2 run, one long run with mile repeats at pace and one long treadmill hill run. See a pattern here? It's only been two weeks, but here's my mileage:

24 miles last week. Whew. Considering my previous weekly run distance was closer to the 6-10 mile range, this is a big step up. Saturday's run was one of the zone 2 runs. I set my garmin to beep at me if I go out of the zone 2 range, I drove out of the neighborhood, and I took off. I've also discovered that I can download workouts to my garmin, so I can specify heart rate or pace goals, and it will beep at me when I'm outside of them. Very nice for those 2nd type of runs.

This week will be much shorter (~13 miles) with my first 5K race of the season on Saturday. Expect a race report on Sunday. By the way, if you know my officemate R, wish her good luck in the 5K race. She's gonna PR (and she's not gonna walk - unless it's at a water stop).