Opening morning of the bow hunt in Southern Utah. I was worried about whether I would be able to hike without aggravating the sore tendon in my leg but after resting it yesterday and lots of ibuprofen the swelling was gone and there was no pain at all. I did about 3 hours of hiking and never felt a thing from it. Got the opportunity to stalk in close to a really nice buck but wasn't quite able to get close enough. I always do some afternoon runs while I'm down on these hunts and this year I just found out that a long time friend and hunting buddy had just taken up running. He just ran his first race [a half marathon] a couple of weeks ago. He ran a 1:49 off of only 6 weeks training at age 56 and is already signed up for another in 3 weeks. If he keeps with it he'll be kicking some but in that 55-59 age group. So it was nice to have somebody to run with. We both wanted to get in some downhill so we drove up to the pass above camp at just over 9300 ft elevation and ran just under 7 1/2 miles dropping 1800 feet to 7500 feet where we left a vehicle. I wanted a few more miles so I ran another 3 1/2 back up to camp gaining back another 700 ft. Pace going down averaged 8:04. Back up averaged 8:11. I felt good after until that evening when I was out hunting it was killing my quads to go down something steep. I guess I better get some more downhill in before St George to get the legs conditioned for that.
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