Belmont Plateau

I ran this morning on the Belmont Plateau cross country course. It's really the only course for runners in the city. Last week, I was at the Catholic League meet there. I checked out the course and although it looked a little difficult, it ended up being much harder than I anticipated.

It was definitely a humbling run. I planned on taking it easy, but the course was too tough to really do so. I went slow, but still had to work hard. The course is interesting because it starts and ends with a grass loop. In between though, it winds through a wooded trail. This is the area Will Smith referred to in "Summertime" (a place called the Plateau was where everybody goes). There are a lot of empty beer bottles around and when I went there on summer afternoon, it was a ghetto hangout.

Anyways, back to the run. The course starts on grass and has a steep hill early on. My groin and hamstring were both quite sore when I initially started. That went away within a couple tenths of a mile. Although grass is more forgiving that roads, it took some getting used. I never ran cross country and don't venture much on anything other than pavement. It was also very windy today out in the open grass portion and that was very tough.

The wooded area was where things got really difficult. I had wandered back there last week and the parts I encountered were pretty stable. There was a big hill and that was difficult to get up. Even tougher though, ended up being the descent. It was very fast and hard not to slip on rocks or the acorns that had fallen from the trees.

I had trouble throughout the run with my footing. I was running in my regular shoes. Some sections were smooth with small gravel, but others had large rocks. Making it equally difficult was that it rained the night before and there were still some very muddy sections.

I didn't know quite where I was going when in the woods. There are multiple routes in there. They have been marked off for the cross country meets, but I initially missed the one turn. I wound up on a nice, smooth path. I had no clue where it was going though. I ended up at the Philadelphia Recycling Center. After that point, I decided to head back and find the rest of the high school course.

That part was very tricky as it was winding, narrow and muddy. There's actually no room to even pass another runner in this portion of the run. I eventually make it out and back onto the main path. I was exhausted when I came out of the woods. I ran the remainder of the grass route, which included another run up the hill. I finished at cruising speed.

My legs and hips were immediately sore afterwards. All of my recent minor injuries are on my right side. They don't bother me during running, only afterwards as I'm walking. Things aren't getting better though. It isn't serious pain, but it is nagging and seems to be getting worse. I used a heating pad quite a bit tonight.

Because of the soreness, I skipped the hill sprints today. I'm going to attempt to run the remainder of my runs very easy this week. Hopefully, that'll help me recover before Saturday's big race. I really don't want to miss any training runs, but I may have to. So far, I've kept a perfect record since I started marathon training. My cross training is the only thing that has slacked at all.

I'm back at my parents house now and will stay here for the remainder of the week. I have an 8 mile loop in mind tomorrow, but it does have some tough hills. I think for my 4 mile run on Thursday, I'll probably just cruise around the high school track at an easy pace. We'll just have to see how things go.

~3.5 miles - 34:18