Standard Big Water loop in 1:34:25. Top of Mill Creek Road up Big Water to Dog Lake to Desolation Lake to Wasatch Crest Ridgeline to Canyons Junction to Old Red Pine Road Trail to Top of Mill Creek Road. 3000' of gain. Garmin had 10.7 miles, but I suspect it measures a bit short in densely wooded areas, as the pace tends to jump substantially every time I go around a corner with a lot of trees overhead, indicating that it's cutting the majority of corners in its measurement. In any case, what matters is that I was doing this loop in 1:5x on a good day 2 years ago and hit 1:34:25 today while going about marathon effort on the way to the highest point, and then relaxing after that point to avoid beating myself up on the downhills. Was going to run with the group this morning, but have just been exhasted over the last few days, so I slept in. Sorry everyone! In any case, this has been a weird few months for me. I've been lazy and I feel like I'm in terrible shape, but when I go after it, I'm pretty easily hitting times that I've struggled to hit or been unable to hit in the past (2nd at BOSHO again, 1:15 at Provo City, 7 seconds off my PR, 1:10:40, pretty easily, on a super aided half, and now this, which I expected to hit in ~1:40 if I worked super hard the whole time). I'm running Speedgoat on Saturday, so I hope this will translate, but I have the feeling that I'm just going to be running on fumes after 20 miles or so. Also, I'm saving all my money for the trip mentioned in the paragraph below and I'm too cheap to buy new trail running shoes at the moment, so I think I'm probably going to run Speedgoat in 5 ounce XC 5k flats, which don't do much for rocks. That ought to be interesting. :)
In other news, Daria just left for Africa yesterday, hence me not running for the better part of last week. I won't see her for 5 weeks, so I wanted to spend a lot of time with her before she left, in addition to helping her prepare for 5 weeks of travel, followed by a climb up the world's tallest freestanding mountain (Kilimanjaro) that I'll be joining her there for. So, while I didn't run, we did plenty of active hiking/walking oriented activities in the outdoors. One of my favorites lately has been the Solitude hike/disc golf combo, even if I'm terrible on that course.
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