Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

Another day, another bike commute. I'm experiencing potentially serious technical difficulties with my bike, and the thing only has about 500 miles on it. I hope I can resolve things quickly.

Early morning on the stair machine. I suppose I should be preparing if I'm going to give Speedgoat a try, but I'm still afraid to try running every day, even though my knee felt fine after both of last week's runs.

I was up helping to feed Elliott around 4:0 0 this morning, and she didn't go back to sleep until about 5:30. So instead of going back to bed for 30 minutes, I decided to go run Grove Creek.

I hit the bench in 26:18 and Indian Spring in 40:42, a couple of minutes slower than last time I ran the trail, but not awful. It's interesting how much the trails change with the seasons. When I first ran up here in the fall, the grass was dry, the leaves were changing colors and the waterfall was low. Last time I ran up here the water was raging and the trail above the bench was a marsh. Now it's a jungle.

Speaking of jungles--I took a bad step less than a quarter mile into the descent and went flying into the trailside foliage (if you're up there, look for the unmistakable impression of my body in the plants). I hopped right up, but as I started running I could feel a burning, stinging sensation all over my right leg. I stopped and rinsed at the first water crossing I came to, which helped a bit, but when I got home my leg was covered in little welts (as were my arms and my chest, to a lesser degree). At first there was some itching, so I was afraid I had fallen into poison oak (does that stuff grow up here?), but at the time I'm writing this I'm back to burning and stinging exclusively, so I think I'm okay.

Also, there were some people camping at Indian Campground. Actually, they were camping on the trail by the campground, which ruined my opportunity to hang out an enjoy the view before heading back down (it's hard to not feel like an intruder when someone is getting dressed five feet away from you). Hey stupid campers--that's what the campsite is for. I hope they stepped in poison oak on their way back to the car.

Night run!

I watched Elliott while Catherine went for her run this evening, and then I headed up to Battle Creek for my run. I think I hit the trail sometime between 9:30 and 10:00. I'm terrible at running on technical terrain by headlamp, so I had to keep my pace mellow. So, so mellow. Even so, I almost fell on my face several times. Good run. 

Thirty minutes on the stair-stepper.

I meant to write more, but now I'm two days late, so . . .

Anyways, I had a great morning with Catherine, first at the Run for Mali 5K, then at the Tour de Donut. Despite not eating well in the morning, I decided to head out for my long run at about 5:00. I started at Dry Canyon, ran up and over Big Baldy, then down via Grove Creek and back to the car via the BST 

We can divide this run up into two parts: the good part and the crappy part. The crappy part started near the bottom of Grove Creek when my stomach started acting up. It got so bad that I limped through the flattish final few miles at about 13:00 per mile, with lots of walking. Not cool.

But up until then the run was great, and I'm glad I went.