Clyde's Comeback!

Regular loop this today. It was a nice peaceful morning out and I couldn't help but think that there isn't a better way to start the day. I passed Dave this morning after a little over a mile. He was most likely finishing his 25 for the day. I felt pretty good with very little pain in the hammy. I kept the pace super slow and didn't push anything out that would stimulate pain.

I'll try and catch the daily loop for most of the week with a long run (36-40 miles) planned on Saturday up in Zion.  

A family outing this morning. We went down to the river trail and I ran while Mik'L rode her bike while pulling the bike trailer with Myler inside. We found this really nice Burley bike trailer on Craigslist and it works great. Right now while Myler is small we can just put the car seat it's self in the trailer. Then when he gets a little bigger it will work the conventional way. It was a really nice morning out and we were able to move right along at 7:30 pace for the trek. Instead of going down to the DC we turned at the bridge at River Road and took the other trail down to the bottom of Bloomington Hills then back. The hammy was o.k and at a stable 2 for the pain scale. 

Regular loop. No hammy pain until mile 5 then it was around a 3 for the rest of the run. Nice morning. 

Did the Zen loop tonight on the bike. I haven't been on a good trail ride since the week before Myler was born so I was overdue for a ride. I was calling this 3 miles worth of running back around the first of the year so I'll just stick with that. It takes anywhere from an hour  and fifteen to an hour and thirty to do the loop.

I had a couple more encounters with some snakes... way too many lately. The first one was up at the top of the hill where you can look over Bloomington off the cliff and I saw this little green box that someone had obviously left under a big rock. So I went over to see what was inside. It had a rock on top of it and was kind of stashed so I thought there might be some loot... well I got closer and crouched down to grab it when I heard a rattle start and on the other side of the box was a little rattle snake all curled up. It scared the living daylights out of me. Another six inches and my had would have been slammed.  So I didn't look in the box- just got back on the bike and road off.

The next one was down on the southern side at the bottom I was going slow after coming through some rough stuff and saw this little (no bigger that a straw- wide or long) red and black ringed snake laying right in my way. So I just rolled the tire up to it slowly until he slithered away. Snakes are awful!

The ride was ok. I'm a little unpracticed and things weren't as smooth as when I've been riding a few times a week. But it was a nice little ride and curveball for the legs.  

7.2 miles this morning on the old GS loop. I haven't ran my good ol trail much in the last few weeks and was missing her. I had a nice run and the hammy pain was less than 2 so that is a nice start to the day. I'll try to catch a few more by my self or with the club tonight. 

Nice little morning run with Nate. We met up at the DC and did my "house shopping" loop from last week but extended it to hit an even 20. Beautiful morning for a run. We clipped along at a conversational 7:20 pace for the run and the hammy really never hurt. Smile! Now I'll use the stick good and rest up for tomorrows long run. 

Well we did the run of what I'll call The Last of the Mohicans run. It was so beautiful and at times while we were running a long the white ledges it totally felt like we were in that movie. 

The run started up in Kolob canyon and took at trail all the way down to where you climb up Angels Landing in Zion NP. There were 6 of us at the start but it was dark and Steve and I took off and really didn't see anyone after that. Steve's wife met us at around 14 for an aid station and then again at around 23. I between I packed water and GU. The first leg was the prettiest as we worked down two separate canyons crossing two different streams like 20 times. I stopped worrying about keeping things dry as it was not possible. There was about 10 miles of sand running and that sucked and really wore the legs out faster than they should have.

The second leg was around 8-10 miles long. I didn't keep track and it didn't have any sand thank goodness. However we did do around 2000 ft of climbing here but I ran well on this trail and ended up pushing ahead of Steve and the rest of them for good.

The third leg was basically the run down the West Rim that we all did together last November. By now it was hot out and it was around a 14 mile leg with only the water you could carry. I ended up rationing it out pretty good but got way hungry. Like way. Should have eaten more at the van... live and learn. I enjoyed everything until you start dropping. Unless you've been on the trail before you'd never understand but it drops, and drops, and drops and keeps dropping until your so sick of running down steep switch backs that you feel like just jumping off the cliff. After getting my feet wet on the first leg and then doing that kind of pounding I ended up with a good blister on my front toe.

My garmin lost a signal about 3 times so I don't have any real numbers. I was firmly at mile 30 in 5:05 before things went haywire. The distance was a little farther than we thought but then we did take a extra road on the first leg and then extended it down at the parking lot to be at 40.

It's a sweet run and we should get a big group from the blog to do it sometime or at least a portion... I was surprised to see so many people. There were camps and hikers from start to finish.

Anyways it's the longest run of my life to date. I'm thinking I could really easily leave it at that too and not do Squaw. But I'm sure I'll end up at least attempting it on race day. Steve also ran really good today. I was proud to see him finish within around 15 min's of me. I'm sure there are a few of the guys we started with today that are still up there running. Seriously they could have been a couple hours back. Oh it would be hot by now because it was hot when I finished.