Oh yikes, trying a new route can sometimes be good and sometimes it can be ugly. Today it was a little of both. Met Cal for a good hill run, I warned him that running with me he probably wouldn't want to share his splits and I was right! I took my hi-country route, but went around the backside of the foothills and dumped onto Rose Canyon Rd above the cove and came home that way. I'm glad I found a little different loop to come home, but I'm not sure I'll do it again :) After the regular hills we started on the new portion of the route - holy moly crust anloy! There were at LEAST two big nasty hills that were practically straight up. When the sun (that has been up for about an hour) sets again when you are at the bottom of the hill, you know you've got a problem! One of the hills was a dirt road and it was very Ragnar-esque and the other was at least paved. After hitting hills for 4 miles, scaling those ones wasn't easy. Let's just say there wasn't much chatting going on. The last 2ish miles of downhill home made it all worth it and since I'm then recovered when I finish I feel good about my awesome hill conquering run! I got almost 1,000 feet of gain for the run and Monday's run up the canyon was about 870 - so it was a very good hill run. Now I'm off to yoga for a good stretch to wind down the week. I'm feeling a ton better with the hip flexor and am almost to the point where I don't feel it with every step. I can actually forget about it sometimes, even running, which hasn't happened for a LONG time. I only had that for a day or two before Ogden, so hopefully with an extra week of care I can tackle UVM and not run myself into the ground again and have to start recovery over at square one. Proper warm-up, cool-down, stretching and nsaids are key right now!
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