It's been a while since my last blog update so I thought I'd highlight the past few months living and working on the east coast. Another travel assignment is just about in the bag!! For the past year and a half my wife and I have been living life 3 months at a time, working and travelling as travel nurses. I wanna take some time to show the adventures we got ourselves caught up in over the past 3 months. I had never ran or explored anything on the east coast/New England area. That all changed when I took a travel assignment for work and was able to spend the past 3 months putting in work and trying to get outside and play as much as possible. First off the weather was a stark change from the AZ desert I grew up in. My wife and I arrived in April and we were lucky if the temps hit 50 and it looked like we were stuck in fall.
Our home base while working here was at the Yale hospital in New Haven Connecticut. The first few weeks were rough, as they usually are with the short travel assignments. We had to move in, get settled and start working right away. With only a few orientation days to learn new systems and policies, we were off. I got in a funk the first few weeks and just wasn't really feeling like going out and doing anything. I took an entire week off from running to recharge (which never happens!). I think being tired, missing friends and family, and the lack of sunlight got to me. It took about two weeks to pass as we started getting into a groove with work and new routines, and the motivation slowly came back.
We found a pretty awesome running group (New Haven Roadrunners) where I was hitting Wednesday night group runs on the regular. This opened up the opportunity to learn some of the road and trail options that were close to our downtown studio. Sleeping Giant state park was our first trail running stop (and it quickly taught us climbing up boulders was a regular part of trail running around here). West Rock and East Rock parks were both within a mile or two from our front door, and were regulars on my running schedule. When the weather was chilly we had a treadmill in the basement of the apartment next to the boiler room, which made for some great heat training even on the coldest of days!!
I only competed in one race these past 3 months (The North Face Endurance Challenge New York, check out the recap if you haven't!). While racing didn't happen much this time, many adventures went down! Two highlights were bagging Killington Peak and Mt. Washington, the highest peaks in Vermont and New Hampshire, respectively.
This has been the most consistent running I have ever done. Tempo runs, hill climbs, long runs, intervals.... everything was just clicking. Slowly building mileage to the highest it's been has felt good so far and I have hit my fastest mile and 5k since I was in high school!
The fire is back and I feel great! Who would've thought a few months on the east coast with some new trails would put the fuel back on the fire.
Tomorrow starts the cross country road trip back to Arizona from Connecticut. See ya New Haven! Next stop Niagara Falls! Shoot me a message if there are any must do trails that I can try to work into on the way home! Hope you enjoyed the read.
Upcoming Races:
Big Cottonwood Marathon- UT September 9th, 2017
Vail/Colossal 50 Miler- AZ November 11, 2017
Black Canyon 100k- AZ Feb 17, 2018
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