Schlarb and I met for the weekly Thursday green ascent this am, despite loads of new wet snow. I woke up to find that it had totally dumped on us over night and was still coming down hard. It was actually pretty nice out, the temps weren't below freezing. And the soft heavy snow felt kind of cool to run on...until it got really steep, then it was kind of annoying.
After a short warm up, we decided to head over the mesa and up bear canyon. I was fairly certain I wouldn't be able to match my pace from last week though with all the heavy snow on the trail. It was worse than I thought it would be though.
Once we started the climb up the canyon, it was ok for a while, then pretty quick we arrived to a section where it seemed every tree in the valley was intent on stopping anyone from moving up the trail. Tree after tree was overloaded with snow and hanging right in front of the trail. We had to duck under them all, or go around. It totally threw off the running rhythm.
At one point I was literally on my hands and (bare) knees crawling through a 6 foot tunnel of overweighted tree limbs that left about 1 foot of space to get under. It was laughable actually. Any hopes of matching my time from last week were out the window, although I was feeling pretty fresh and the legs had plenty of energy.
Then on the first river crossing I saw jason's foot print on a precarious rock in the middle, and I knew I needed to be careful there in order to stay up right. So I slightly slowed down...then promptly I found myself striking the ground hard with my left elbow and noticed my entire left side of my body submerged in the down flowing stream.
Fun! This is a great time to ice out the legs anyway I thought...maybe I'll just chill here for a bit.
Oh wait, that wasn't my thought at the moment after all. I jumped out of the creek pretty fast, pretty shaken from the abruptness and chilliness of it all, and continued up the path. Now wanting to turn around and run down because that was quite lame and it hurt, and the path wasn't getting any easier.
But since Jason was up ahead, I had no choice but to press on and not be lame and just bail on him making him wait at the top forever wondering if I was alive.
That was a good thing I guess. I struggled to get back into running again for a few minutes, then settled back in to enjoying the beauty of my surroundings. I never really got cold that I can recall, but my elbow hurt a bit.
Anyway, I made it to the top in 44:30, a good 6 minutes slower than last week. It was fun though, mostly, and it was really beautiful out there this morning. Jason was a good 5 or 6 minutes ahead of me I think. Maybe I still have him beat (which would be totally meaningless but fun to razz him about anyway) for the time being on the time up that route...we'll see what his exact data was!
Coming off the north side of green it seemed like foot high snow in some spots, definitely giving my bare calves a nice ice down. It was great...now I know how to save all sorts of time. Just combine the after run icing with the run itself and voila...efficiency!
Total for the morning 11.65 miles- 2:30 - 3100' vertical.
And here are a few pics Jason snapped from his phone
