Ave Twin Peaks with Mark K.
I met Mark at the Capitol at 5:30 and we were quickly running up the road to City Creek Canyon. My legs felt great, so we kept up a decent pace to the canyon. Once we hit the hills Mark was hiking some of the steeper sections and it was slower than we normally go, but I was totally ok with it this morning. We were just chatting away and we came around a bend and both of us saw a set of eyes just off the trail about 50 yards away. They looked exactly like the cougar eyes I saw at the Wasatch 100 and looked about the right height. It definitely wasn't a deer, but looked too big to be a coyote. As we moved up the trail the eyes disappeared and we never saw it again, but as we came around the next bend in the trail there was half of a deer leg right off the trail, so it probably was a cougar and it freaked me out a bit.
We had a really relaxing fun run up to the ridge where we encountered a lot of windblown snow and in places the trail had been completely covered. We actually lost the trail a few times and ended up post-holing in the drifted snow, but quickly found it, although we did have to put in some new track over the drifts. We hit both summits and took a quick break, but didn't stay long. The run down was fun. We just chatted about upcoming races and gear and the time flew by.
Back on the road Mark really picked up the pace and dropped me for a bit, but he waited for me and we ran it in back to the cars together. It was a fun morning with perfect weather. My legs were a tiny bit heavy on the run down, but overall I am really happy with how I recovered from the 50K on Sat. | 