faster with age

     After spending a second night in Capitol Reef National Park, we packed up camp this morning and moved it about 75 miles to the east. We went on a 7 mile hike that dropped 750 feet in the first mile over sand and slickrock down into Horseshoe Canyon. Then we hiked up the sandy bottom of the canyon with patches of cottonwood trees and a few short stretches of running water with towering red cliffs on both sides of the canyon. We hiked past several panels of ancient Indian petroglyphs and ended up at what is considered to be one of the most impressive panels of petroglyphs anywhere in North America called the Great Gallery. We also hiked past dinosour tracks in two different places. It was awesome and worth every bit of the hike which was actually quite fun. We had a perfect sunny day with temps that only felt slightly too warm for a short part of the hike.

     This morning we went on a hike up Little Wild Horse Canyon. I have hiked several slot canyons before but this has got to be the coolest of all. It was our second time hiking this canyon but you could never get tired of this. It has long stretches of the canyon than are only 3 to 4 feet wide at shoulder height.

     Later in the day we went over to Goblin Valley [which is only 5 miles from Little Wild Horse] and did a bunch of hiking and exploring there. My son never seems to get tired of that. In Runners World magazine they feature what they call a "Rave Run" each month. A while back they featured Goblin Valley so I thought I had better give it a try before we left. I ran a loop around through a lot of the valley that ended up being just short of 2 1/2 miles. It was quite challenging running in some soft and some packed sand with lots of dips and small washes and some short steep hills that almost brought me to a walk. I wasn't running it too hard but I wasn't exactly taking it easy either and my pace ended up around 10 min per mile. It was fun and we had perfect weather again all day.

     10 miles easy. Very strong wind.

     10 miles easy again. Temps 20 deg colder than yesterday and lots of snow falling but actually much nicer than yesterdays run in the wind.

     7 1/2 miles this morning. Very windy and cold.

     Ran 8 miles this morning. I started with around 8:15 pace for the first 2 miles. Then around 7:35 for the next 2. The next 4 miles I did a fartlek run with 4x1/4 mile then 2x1/2 mile with recoveries of equal distance between. I kept the faster parts just under 6 min pace and the recoveries averaged just under 7:40 pace for an overall pace of 6:47 for the 4 miles. Overall pace for 8 miles 7:20.

     Woke up to 3 or 4 inches of new snow this morning. I waited until late morning when the sun was shining. There was no wind so it was pretty nice. The roads were snow covered but starting to melt. Just shortly before turning around, it was like a switch had been flipped and a huge wind came up out of the west. After my turnaround my next 2 miles were directly into the wind. The sun was still shining but the wind had to be blowing 30 mph and was blowing snow up from the ground and into my face so I could hardly see. My last 2 miles were a crosswind which made it much better but still not fun.