Back on the Trails

It was another busy day with back to back meetings through the morning and mid-day (when I would normally get out for a run), so I had to go much later than I usually do. It wasn't a bad time to go really, but trying to schedule it that late means that it is more likely that something is going to get in the way to conflict. Well, today it worked. There was a light rain coming down when I started, but I had a baseball hat on and frankly, we've had so much rain (day-after-day-after-day of it) that a little light rain really isn't all that bad in scope of all the crazy freaking weather at this stage.

Anyway, so a little light rain, and my phone. I decided to give my father a call while I was starting out. He had called last night at 10:00 (10 PM! What was he thinking???) So I returned the call and was able to talk to him while I warmed up. Of course, the call took longer than the warm-up warranted, so I walked a lot more in the beginning than I needed or otherwise would have. Because of the extended walk, I got to the bottom of my hilly trail set much fresher than I normally do. So I was able to run up the really steep first hill that I usually walk. It was pretty interesting because of all the mud avalanches that had obviously powered down this hill in recent weeks. Anyway, I was happy to do the hill and many of the hills afterwards. This part of the trail is consistently hilly enough that I do have to walk frequently, but I also feel like I've gotten a little better at this. The second half of this particular trail was as wonderful as always, long stretches of down hill and flat, that allowed me to run on & on without stopping for "miles" (not really THAT much, but if feels lovely anyway). As I was coming back down the fire road after this trail, I decided to make a turn once again down my short trail (called the, "Beaver Path" trail) since I walked through it the first time around while I was on the phone. I dipped into there and ran through and at the end, I turned around and ran back (walking some this time around).

Well, it turned out to be a pretty good run (I figure that I did about 3.5 miles), although my quads feel shredded right now. Between the intervals yesterday, the weight training and now trail hills today, I am sore, sore, sore! But it's a good sore.

There were a lot of mosquitoes out today and I saw even more varied and interesting toadstools. The large bright red ones are now as big as dinner plates. I also saw clusters of teeny tiny bright orange ones growing out of a rotted stump and I also saw toadstools that exactly resembled live coral you might see while snorkeling in the Caribbean or something. Crazy-ass-shit, all those mushrooms.