Took out the new blue La Sportiva Helios. Man, those shoes are so good.
Cold, wet, heavy blowing snow in the AM- Just under 6 miles, my favorite loop that I call the Castle Rocks High Point Loop. It was a group run lead by the Buddy Jones (La Sportiva athlete). The girls on the run were drilling me with questions (their husbands climb and live in a place we used to live, etc etc). The loop only has just under 1000 vert gain (which sounds worse than it really is, it's really super runnable, and you get all the vert over in the first 2.5 miles) but the one of the girls was saying this was the hardest thing she'd ever done. Ah, poor girl- 25 degrees heavy snow running and snow pack and wet rocks... but it WAS so beautiful and I felt guilty loving the snow since I knew I should be wanting it to stop for all the climbers' sakes. I was doing my own question drilling to glean knowledge form Buddy, and secretly hoping it'd snow the whole run. Such an incredible loop.
Then I went out with Beth to mark the half marathon course. Beth really wanted to come out, and although I didn't really need help (and I had someone simultaneously setting up the 10k and mtn bike race courses) I took the opportunity for company. Unfortunately her hip/ITB issues were flaring and we pretty much walked the entire thing.
I enjoyed it- it's been a while since I've been on that course. It really is the best link-up through the entire of city of rocks I could piece together. Hits every view of the city, darts between bases of major formations, and gives a tour of the entire park. And since the city of rocks is where I fell in love with running.... well, it's super sentimental for me.
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