Record Fast Runs and New Year's Resolutions

Hey everyone! I can’t believe we are finishing out our FOURTH week of sending newsletters! Time is flying, and we hope you’re enjoying it as much as we are! As always, if you have any questions or suggestions on content you would like to see, leave a comment or reply to this email and let us know!

As you know, earlier this week we rang in the New Year. This is the time of year where some people tend to make resolutions, so we thought we’d share some of ours, and the dogs’, with you.

Pence:

• Get spayed (maybe not her goal, but the human’s goal for her)

• Socialize more

• Run more

Boo:

• Do better with nail clippings (please…for everyone’s sake)

• Get better at sharing things with Pence (couch, people, food, etc)

• Not hate Hannah’s dad as much

• Run more

Hannah:

• Get back into better shape

• Drink more water (I hate water, but I’m trying…)

• Run the dogs more often (limit excuses for crappy weather or being lazy)

• Fix the broken suspension on the scooter

• Run the dogs on our new (to us) sled

• Potentially try a short sprint race on a sled (pending snow and schedules)

• Two dryland races this fall

Riley:

• Focus on and develop better processes for all things business, personal, and newsletter to stay more consistent

• Start running again

• Read 25 books and 8,000 pages

• Get a new mountain bike for bikejoring

• Run the dogs on new trails

This past week, I (Hannah) have been running the dogs due to Riley having COVID. But, we’ve had some AMAZING runs! Like, record breaking runs for us since we’ve been running dogs in Indiana.

After Doty, Boo went to Beth’s house for a few weeks. While he was gone, we tried running Pence a couple times, but she seemed pretty nervous by herself and around weird sounds in the neighborhood. But when Boo came back to my house last weekend, we started running them together again. Typically Boo’s first run or two after being gone for a few weeks is rough. He’s slower, more distracted at first. However, that was NOT the case at all this time.

When I run the dogs, I log our runs in an app called Runkeeper. It tracks everything from distance, average pace, speeds, elevation change, and run time. Over the last year or so, I’ve tracked 48 runs on this app. Not all of my runs were tracked and none of Riley’s were. But out of those 48 runs, our three fastest runs ever all happened this week!

The image below is our fastest run ever. Our fastest speeds correlate with the downhills and straightaways, and our slower speeds are our turns.

The first run of the week felt FAST and the data proved it. On the scooter, we ran 1.26 miles in 6 minutes and 18 seconds, with an average speed of 11.98mph. Previously, we had been averaging 8-10mph, so that was a big change. When I looked at our max speeds, it showed we hit over 17mph three times on the run, with a top speed of 17.96mph! Previously, the fastest I had seen was just under 16mph and that was only once or twice ever.

The second run of the week felt even faster, and it was! We ran 1.28 miles in 6 minutes and 21 seconds, with an average speed of 12.1 mph! Looking at our max speeds, we hit 19.72mph!!!!!! We were just shy of 18mph three other times during the run as well.

The third run of the week was a tad slower on average, but we ran 1.5 miles this time in 7 minutes and 58 seconds. With our distance being slightly longer, I wasn’t surprised that our average speed slightly dropped to 11.32mph. Still, we hit 16mph four times.

I know the mileage may not seem very long, but these dogs are used to longer distance racing and pacing themselves more. I love seeing their speeds increasing in these shorter distance runs that are more comparable to the dryland distances we race them on. However, we are trying to slowly increase the distances as well now.

A lot of times, we run the dogs after dark when there is less traffic. But when we do, we make sure to have a headlight on the front of the scooter, a headlamp on the human, and a flashing red light on the back of the human’s helmet. We also have some fun new pieces of equipment coming next week for the dogs that will help even more with safety on the streets!

We will be back on Tuesday with another blast from the past newsletter, talking about our first dryland races as participants and some fun times at the famous cranberry bog!

[PREMIUM VIDEO] GoPro Footage of Hannah’s Run This Week

Subscribe to Urban Mushers Fanatics to read the rest.