Summit junkie!

I really want to run to the summit of View Benchmark from my house, so today I just went out to see how far up to the top of Suncrest I could get in 45 minutes since I had 90 minutes to run. From my house I ran to 1500 N. in Highland and then went west to 6800 W. where I turned and went north. At Freedom Elementary I turned left and followed that to 7200 W. I was excited to run the huge hill here. I think it is as steep as any I have seen in northern Utah County and it was fun to blast down the hill and then make the steep climb back up to the top. When I reached SR-92 I turned right and ran on the road that has been blocked with construction cones. The construction crews were nice enough to leave the Honey Bucket open, so I took a quick potty stop and then continued to the road that goes up to Suncrest (Highland BLVD). I was able to run almost a mile and a half up the road before I had to turn around. I had to stop and make a phone call in a neighborhood and I was getting chilled fast. 

The run down and back home was fun. I had a lot on my mind and the miles went by really fast. I did make another potty stop and also had to make another call, so that slowed me down, but my pace was faster on the way back. Hopefully I can run all the way to the top of VB next time.

Weights at the gym for an hour. I worked my upper body and core. 

View Benchmark with Jun:

Jun and I had a tough but very fun run up to the summit of View Benchmark in winter conditions. The trail was completely snow covered from the start and after about a mile we were breaking the trail all the way to the top which made the running tough. There were several inches to run through, but as we got higher on the mountain the drifts became deeper and it really slowed us down. The final push to the summit became more difficult because we were post-holing in deep snow and getting blasted by a really cold wind. When we left Jun's office it was nice and sunny and it was hard to believe that we were getting slammed with this cold wind, but there was no way we were going to turn back. 

We slogged up to the summit in 1:06 which is about 20 minutes slower than normal. The summit was enveloped in clouds so the views weren't great and the wind was very cold. After Jun made a phone call we took off down the mountain running as fast as we could, but at times we were really slowed down by the deep snow, but we were having a blast. We usually run fast the last two miles, but it wasn't really possible to push it with all of the snow. We did pack a nice trail in up there though. Just before we got back to the car we saw a HUGE buck running on the side of the mountain. I rarely see 'em that big in northern Utah. It was a really fun day and the effort was much greater than the mileage total would indicate.

Check out Jun's blog for some pics.

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.

Weights at the gym for an hour. I worked my upper body and core. The weight room is pretty dead on Saturday. I love it.