Mid 40sF, 85% rainy run. Endurance run w/ negative splits, and club run. Drove to Centennial Park and ran a little over a mile warm up before the club run. Then I ran the Snoqualmie Valley Trail up to Rattlesnake Lake and back with a guy from my running club who just happened to mention last week that he'd like to run it. Funny coincidence, because last week I was feeling so jealous of Jefferey's run up to the lake. But it's a trail I am not sure I would do alone due to a higher risk of bears, cougars, and bad guys. So I really lucked out, getting this running partner. The trip up is at a slight grade 0-3%, with about 3 miles of solid 3% grade as one approaches the lake. We kept the pace around 10:30-10:40 on the way up. After a welcome pit stop at the lake, we came down at an average of 9:45. I get this information from the final split data, because the real-time Garmin pace readout was crazy-all-over-the-place due to heavy tree cover. So we were basically running by feel most of the time, with a quick check on the Garmins when we came into brief open spaces. My buddy's last few miles were a bit of a problem. As he started to slow down about 4 miles from the end, I slowed with him for a while. He was experiencing a lot of pain in his calves. I was shocked to learn at this point that his longest run to date had been 13 miles. "Wow, that's quite a leap! Well done." He replied, "well done is how I feel right now." He encouraged me to run on ahead, which I eventually did, but I felt like such a heel. I would not have been able to do the run at all without a buddy, and I hated to desert him. When we were a little less than 2 miles from "home" I finally decided it would be kinder to go ahead, relieving him at least of the pressure to keep up. My splits show a couple of slow miles before I left him. Everything else about my run was positive - except the gravel! Oh, how I hate it. I feel every little rock. And I do think it's harder work, but that will be a blessing when I get stronger from running on it. Yeah, it rained and rained. But that was not a big deal, compared to The Gravel of Doom. On to the taper now. First a little, then a (disagreeable) lot. We'll see in 2 weeks what I've really got in the bank. :) | 