Wow! My tag line is "Every race is an adventure!" I truly believe that. I thought about "Every RUN is an adventure!"...but if I'm honest, many runs are not all that adventurous. Today, however, was an exception.
Larry, Wayne, and I met at 8:00 for leisurely 12 mile run. I put in a warm up mile before that. They suggested the canal road towards Pleasant Grove and that sounded good to me. As we approached Pleasant Grove, Wayne suggested we head up Battle Creek canyon and take the Bonneville Shoreline Trail back. I had never run that way before, but they had and I trusted them, so I agreed. I soon began to wonder what I'd gotten myself into. We proceeded to run up and up and up for the next 2.5 miles, from about 4900 feet to 5700 feet. The splits for two of those miles were 13:08 and 14:37. There was a lot of downhill after that, but with enough uphill mixed in to keep my legs pretty tired. Despite the hard work, it was worth it. The views of the valley were beautiful. I told Karen afterwards that I wish there was some way I could share those experiences with her and the children. The combination of a beautiful morning, good people, exercise, the wonders of nature...well most of you reading this will know what I'm talking about. I feel so blessed. I wish everyone could experience it. We were all pretty much beat when we came out of the foothills, but we were only at about 10 miles and had planned on 12. Larry took a more direct route home and Wayne and I decided to loop down 2000 N to 400 W and back home. Larry actually ended up doing an extra half mile loop around the block and probably ran farther than we did. Wayne and I pushed pretty hard the last 1.5 miles and averaged 7:47/mi. Wayne's running pretty well after his battle with pneumonia over the winter. Today's run felt more like an 18 mile run than 12.5, but I'll only count the 12.5.
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