Trail Run - Jon and I set off for an adventure today. The mission was to run new sections (to us) of the Bear 100 course. We started off at Leatham hollow and right away, I was hitting new terrain. The 3 mile stretch to Richards hollow is all dirt road and super rocky, but reasonably easy. We made it a whopping .25 mile before Jon made us go back and change shoes. That became a problem as the nasty snow storm that we had started to outrun now engulfed us. Bad start. Once we hit the singletrack at Richards Hollow, things improved. No rocks, no storm. Nothing like chugging up singletrack to liven the mood. The problem (much bigger one this time) was that it didn't take long to hit the snow line. We only made it 1.5 miles up Richards (just past the waterfall) before the snow became too deep to run in. Oh, yeah, did I mention it had started to snow again? Back down Richards and back to the dirt road we went (and back into the sun). We decided to head up the road for a ways since neither of us had been up it before. Definitely not as cool as the singletrack. We went about 3 miles before the snow storm caught up with us and we got to turn around and run directly into a blizzard. The flakes were so big and wet we were soaked and FREEZING! I was very miserable running the 3-4 miles down the road until we escaped the storm. I was very miserable! Really, did I mention misery? Yep. Once the sun came out again I warmed up nicely and actually enjoyed the final 2 miles or so back to the car. Jon, he was tired and quiet (rare). I wanted to get 16+ miles and saw we would be short so I took off with Jon's blessing to venture up Leatham Hollow for a tad to check out the mud. Yep, it had lots. But no snow (didn't go high enough). We were short on time so I turned around before long and found Jon and we made our way back to the car. In full sunshine. Yep, this run sure had its ups and downs.. T-2:18 (8:22) 2500' vertical * Weekly summary (recovery week)
71.5 miles - 4550' Vertical
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