20.25 mile trail run today with 8 guys from the club. What an amazing run. This sits atop of my list of All time best runs. We started up above Angels Landing in Zion NP on a trail that I believe is called West Rim trail. Katy dropped us all off and we started down off the mountain right at day break. It was cool but we all opted to shed most of our cloths before we left the vehicle. A wise choice because after we got warmed up the extra layers would have become cumbersome. Basically from the get go the views were amazing all the way for the entire run. Deep, vast canyons with the fall colors to make it just priceless. The running part was good too. We just took it easy and had fun making our way down the single track trail. As we got closer to the end we started the big drop in elevation and realized that we were actually on the famous Angels Landing switchbacks that we made our way down and kind of pushed our way through the tourists who were hiking up. The entire run was a big elevation loss but there was some really killer up hills throughout that made us gasp for air in the 7,500 ft elevation. What a blast! A few guys took some little tumbles (Steven's was classic) and that made for some quality memories. After we got off the trail we hit the parking lot right at 15.5 miles and could have caught the bus down from there but we ran down another mile to Zion's Lodge and then some of the guys did jump on the bus while the Circle of Trust ran down to the park entry to make it a total of 20.25 miles. The distance was o.k but we pushed out the last few miles at Tinman pace or faster and I really didn't need that but it was all worth it for the run today. This one is a must for anyone! (Black Stratus- 214.9)
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