A Balance, Redefined

A wonderful run on mountain trails. Started at ~8600 ft ran up to ~9100. Most of the run was along a stream and listening to the water was so relaxing. The climb in the altitude was rough but the decent felt normal. I saw two elk and some grouse. I’m going to try and adventure out a little further tomorrow. Avg. 9:00

Today was another great mountain run. I went out the same as yesterday but continued down the other side of the mountain. Total run I went from 8600 to 9100 to 8200 and back again.

This was one of the greatest runs of my life. It was very exciting. I went to a new trail that was a steep climb. I went from 8600 to the top of the ski lift to 9500. Then when I got to the top there was an eagle flying. On the start of my decent I saw a deer. But the exciting part was about 5 min later. I suddenly stopped in my tracks as just off the trail about 10-15 ft in front of me was a brown bear. It looked over at me and huffed a few times and then continued on. I waited for it to get about 20 ft of the trail and then ran by it. I was definitely intimidated but that was the closest to a wild bear I had ever been.

In the afternoon I went hiking on the same trail with people from the meeting. We didn’t see the bear again but when we got to the top of the ski lift we decided to go along the ridge to the next lift and climb another 1000 feet. We hit 10,660 before we turned back. Total hike was 7.5 miles in 3hrs.

The last two days it has been very cloudy with some rain. Today was very clear. I went for an afternoon run with one of my former classmates who also happened to be on the meeting. We did a run along the rim of one of the ranges. It was fairly warm and very sunny. The run was good.

Needed a day off. The meeting was good but exhausting. Late nights and early mornings wear on you.

Nice easy run in the PM to stretch my legs out after the week of mountain miles. I ran into Carol and Bill during my loops of the park. I backed out of doing a Fartlek run with Carol for the race tomorrow morning.

Early AM start. Up at 3:30am. Luckily Chad was gracious enough to agree to carpool to the start of the Provo River 1/2. He picked me up at 4am. Once we got to the race and up to the start, we went for an easy 2-mile warm-up. We were told the race would start somewhere between 7 and 7:30. We got back to our gear about 3 minutes to 7am to hear the countdown. We didn't believe our ears with the number of people milling around. Also, because we had chips we weren't immediately worried. However, working our way through the crowd to find no mat at the start had me a little concerned. We started our watches and headed out anyway. I wasn't exactly sure what my plan for this race was to begin with. I had initially thought I was only going to do it as a marathon pace run but decided to let my legs decide. The first two miles were the only splits I got as the mile markers were way off. However, with dodging all the people they still were 5:50 and 5:55. I felt fine there but then Chad and I started pacing together. He completely pulled me with him. Soon we were picking off some quicker miles. Especially after leaving the rest of the crowd behind. Within the next mile or so we could see Bill and Carol. After catching up to them we found out that we were exactly two minutes off from the start. The turnaround also gave me some added confidence that though the leaders were untouchable there was still a race to be had. At about mile 5 Chad pulled away and I did not have much to go with him at that point. I watched him catch up to a guy about 20m ahead and they started running side-by-side. After a little longer Chad pulled away from him and I had a second wind. I went to try and catch back up with Chad but he had put too much distance on me. I ended up picking off two other guys in mile 8 and 10 and coming back to finish 8th overall in a 1:15.31 by my watch. I felt great about the race especially considering the situation. The weather was perfect and the course was scenic (except those last two miles). A good experience and a great confidence builder. I finally am convinced that I'm back in shape after the injury. The good news is I never had serious pain even now two days later… I have to give Chad a lot of credit he really pulled me along and gave me someone to work off of in the later miles of the race. We also had a great chance to talk some, which made the day a great experience overall.