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Quick stop in Geneseo (IL not NY)! Found a track so did a mile! Very nice area.
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Another early morning kid drop in Tburg, so I did a couple miles on the track. It was a very pleasant dry breezy morning! My splits showed that I hadn’t recovered from the Triple Hump Course. I saw several student athletes doing off season workouts.
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Does anyone know if we are allowed to run on what looks like an 800-meter dirt/gravel track at the Tompkins County Fairgrounds in Trumansburg? @scottpdawson ?
You absolutely can! I would wear trail shoes, it can have debris from the fair and grassroots on it
Thanks! I’m trying to see how many different qualifying tracks I can hit before the Challenge closes.
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I took advantage of the Sweetgum 1600 being only a short detour on my way to work and completed 2 loops. Technology and I did not get along or I was still asleep or a combination of the two as I forgot to start my watch, forgot which way clockwise was, and didn’t think about Rachel needing a restart for the second loop.
Thanks @harry_greene for opening up this course and your property to us! Your farm is beautiful and a nice break from laps on a track!
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The Warren family all logged their 1600m times today after running in Jura’s hometown of Druskininkai, Lithuania. We set out to exceed the current record for the farthest-from-Ithaca 1600m run in the challenge—let’s see how long it stands.
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This was after logging another forest mile, foraging chanterelles and triggering just the right hit of dopamine.
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And indeed, @Jura, @Columbia_Warren, and Rasa have unseated @mdoruska3 for the more far-flung Sweet 1600. Druskininkai, Lithuania is a whopping 4,306 miles from Ithaca, or 378 miles further than Basel, Switzerland. Who will try to best that?
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I’m in Rhode Island this weekend for the Newport Folk Festival, where I found two 1600-meter tracks near our Air BnB and managed two miles on each. Ears still ringing from fighting the power with Public Enemy last night, I jogged two miles at St. George’s School — a private high school in Middletown, RI.
Next, I drove up to Gaudet Field, also in Middletown, to jog another two miles on the brightest, bluest track I’ve ever seen.
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As I was brushing my teeth this morning, I realized that I likely forgot to get my 10K steps yesterday. I checked my Garmin, and sure enough I was 619 steps short which ended my 1,974 day 10K/d step streak. 
I was so mad that it ended just because I forgot.
While sharing the end of my streak with some friends, I wondered if I was mad enough to complete a fast mile on the track.
I did my usual 0.5 mile warmup, 1 fast-ish mile, and 0.5 mile cooldown.
I wasn’t fast.
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Juvenile red tailed hawks still hanging out by the Cornell track. This time I got some pictures:
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Tonight I ate too much BBQ and thought I would need to be rolled home. I walked a mile on the track while my son and husband shot hoops. So far I haven’t utilized the running clothes I packed. But with the warm weather, I’m a swamp monster in whatever clothes I wear.
My phone isn’t so good at capturing photos in the dark!
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I went to Endicott today to run my last track race(s) of the summer at a Triple Cities Runners Club meet. I planned on racing the mile and then running the 2 mile as a tempo run. I warmed up for 8 laps to pad my lead in the most runs category and then changed into my spikes. As I was doing my warm up strides it started raining hard. Everyone was completely soaked by the time the race started.
The race went off and I soon found myself alone in 2nd place. There was so much water on the 2nd curve that I could feel it resisting my toes just a bit as I was picking my feet up. On subsequent laps I ran out to lane 2 to avoid it. Maybe that helped, maybe it didn’t. The race progressed uneventfully and I finished in about 4:55 (I will double-check once official results are posted). The rain cleared up as the race was ending and we were all rewarded with a rainbow.
A few minutes after I finished I felt good so I decided to run each of the next three races as workouts. (No sign ups are required for this meet, you just get a bib and race whatever you want to.) Next up was the 800. I ran a little faster than 5k pace and finished (in 1st place) in 2:37. I got about 7 minutes of rest before the next race which was 400 meters. I should have walked a lap in between to finish another 1600 but I didn’t think of it. My “workout” 400 turned into a race and I ended up running about 1:03 to win.
About six minutes later was the 2-mile race. I figured that I would run something under 12:00 (tempo pace) and maybe get a little competitive at the end. I lapped my watch after the first 18 meters as we crossed the finish line to get some 1600 splits. It looked like my tempo pace would put me in 3rd place. I clocked 5:49 for the first 1600. I felt good and noticed that 2nd place wasn’t too far ahead so I picked up the pace enough to close the gap over the next 3 laps. By lap 7 the leader was fading and the race for 2nd became a race for the win. With 200 meters to go I kicked home for the win in about 11:23 (2nd 1600 in 5:29). Where were those gears when I needed them in my last 5k race?
I wrapped up my evening with an 8-lap cool down. I think I ran a decent mile given the conditions and I was able to run some quality reps in the other races. That’s a good day at the track!
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While traveling in Bulgaria I found a walking track in the local park in Vidin and decided to do a little track workout.
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While I was running a beautiful couple came to the park to take some wedding pictures. You never know what you’ll see on a run.
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And we have a new leader in the most far-flung Sweet 1600 of the summer! @Paula_Klaben’s run in Vidin, Bulgaria is 4,679 miles from Ithaca, 373 miles further than Druskininkai, Lithuania.
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I like that you keep track of these stats. Do you know what’s the furthest in Challenge history?
I’m pretty sure it’s Peter Frazier’s 2024 Sweet 1600 in Okinawa, Japan, which was 7417 miles from Ithaca.
It would be the “track tracker”!