Salt Lake County canal loop with Jun: This is a run originally done by Crockett and it is 25 miles of running on dirt trails/roads that run next to canals that run right through the Salt Lake Valley. We started out at a park near Camp Williams at 4:00 am. Just after we started we had to crawl under a fence and then within the first mile I was already heating up. I was expecting it to be colder out there. We had an absolute blast laughing and joking and just chatting at a comfortable pace and the miles flew by. We had to cross a few roads and go over a few fences, but nothing serious. The trail winds through a lot of rural property, neighborhoods and for quite a long way runs in the back yards of several houses. We had a lot of dogs barking at us and set off a lot of motion lights and I'm sure we woke up a handful of people. At mile 8 I took a gel and almost barfed it up. Sick!
At 90th South we got off of the canal road and ran east for about a half mile until we reached a different canal trail that we would follow all the way back. We took a small break to dump some rocks out of our shoes and have a gel and I noticed right away that there was a bit of a headwind on the way back and it lasted almost all the way back to the car. The run back had a little more adventure as we had to jump more fences and cross Bangerter highway. The fence before Bangerter had some barbed wire and I just about sliced my bits and pieces while Craig laughed and threw trash at me. haha. At about mile 19 I noticed that my left hamstring was really tight and it slowed me down the rest of the way. We did stop a few times so I could stretch it out, but it seemed to get a little worse with each passing mile. The last 3 miles are much more rural than the rest of the run and it was really cool to see that part of the valley. Eventually we came to a paved road that took us up a hill and right back to our cars. It was an awesome run and I will definitely do it again. About 95% of it was on dirt trails/roads which is amazing considering we ran so far into the city. Check out Jun's blog for some pics. 4:16 total time including all breaks.
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