Trail Running Rocks!

We met up with a few CFEB folks for a morning T-Day trail run. It was foggy and chilly, but the park is really beautiful, no matter what the weather. A few folks ended up at the wrong park entrance, and the start was delayed, but I had my own watch, I know I'm slow, and I needed to get home before noon if at all possible, so I started off on my own.

Daniel assured me that the path was pretty easy - just 3 trails - east fire trail, right on prince trail, right on stream trail.

My plan was to run 2 minutes and walk 2 minutes, alternating. I had the countdown timer on my watch set to 2 min, so all i had to do was restart it every time it beeped.

I wish I had had the presences of mind to hit my lap timer every time i switched trails, so I could get a better idea of how long each segment took me.

Things got a bit trickier when I missed the right turn onto the stream trail, and ended up on a trail I thought was the stream trail, but wasn't. That trail dead-ended, and I had the option of continuing on a much steeper, narrower trail, or backtracking, but since I thought i was on the stream trail, I didn't know that backtracking would have helped me - I just thought that maybe the stream trail =had gotten closed, and the maps hadn't been updated, so I set off up the narrower, steeper, Mill trail, which met up with the French trail - another steep and narrow trail - whose name I recognized, and knew that if I followed it I would eventually end up back where I started.

Up until the mill trail turn off, I had done very well at sticking to the 2 minutes run, 2 minutes walk. Once I started up the Mill trail that completely fell apart, and it was just run whenever I could manage the breath and/or strength.

I ended up adding almost a full mile to what I intended to run, and -probably - several hundred feet of elevation gain - unlike the stream trail, which is basically flat along the bottom of the valley except for the last steep climb at the end, the french trail goes up and down several times along the edge of the valley. And since I managed to find my way back to the stream trail just before it headed up and out of the valley, I still got to do that steep climb at the end, too.

Directional goofs aside, however, I loved this experience. I always thought trail running sounded fun, except it also sounded dangerous - high possibility for twisted ankles and such, but it was a lot ess scary than I thought it would be. Running through the park was beautiful, even in the fog. My new trail running shoes are awesome - even going down some very steep hills my toes never felt smooshed.

... As soon as my hips/ass stop hurting, I want to go do it again! ... The sore hips are a bit of a downer. I've now been hobbling around like an arthritic old lady for two days. That's no fun at all. But hopefully doing this more often will build up those muscles so they don't hurt so much. It'll probably be good for my squats, too. Strengthen up those glutes and hamstrings!