AM- This morning's run was probably the second most enjoyable February run of my life, only behind last year's Rocky Raccoon 100. Barry and I drove out to Issaqueena forest again, parking a few miles south from 2 weeks ago. The first 8 miles included Timber, Barry's dog, as we cavorted around the singletrack in sub-freezing temperatures. Then we dropped off Timber and found even more singletrack. We ventured all over the very twisty, never flat trails before finding the Waterfall area. The entire Waterfall area is maybe 1000 m by 600 m, but has probably 7 miles of trail crowded in that area, and we ran about 11 miles there. The trails are beautiful, narrow, soft singletrack that literally twist back and forth, almost on top of themselves, climbing and falling the entire time. Simply splendid. And the temperatures rose rapidly, such that I went from UA Coldgear and warm gloves to just a t-shirt in 5 minutes. It was pure enjoyment, running on great trails with good company. I just about killed Barry so ended up doing the last few miles by myself. I felt great all the way to the end, pushing hard and running fast. It's fun to be getting in shape. I finished with 21.5 miles (though it may have been more, since I'm sure the garmin missed a ton of tiny switchbacks) in 3:15 (9:05 avg). Really not sure about the elevation, since I have never had a run with so many small yet continuous ups and downs. Garmin says 5050 ft climbing, SportTracks says 2700 ft. I know it was more than 2700 ft, and garmin often overestimates by 50%... so we'll call it 3400 ft (not that it matters). Anyways, a great run. I wanted to show just how twisty the trail is and how it almost runs over itself in the Waterfalls area. Here is a map... ...another map... ...and my GPS trace. Amazing- the scale on this is 500 ft, so this whole area is about 2000 ft by 3000 ft (~.2 sq mi), but it has 6-7 miles of trail!
|