New Friends

It has been a crazy week for me, which is why this post about Sunday's 12 miler is slow to be written. Sunday ended up being a very challenging run. My legs were a bit tired and I am just glad that I didn't do 20 like originally planned. Glad I was able to be flexible with my training and not worry too much about it, but in turn just enjoyed the day with some great ultra runners.

It is always great to meet new runners. Today there I ran with Stan and Jay and the awesome Michaela. She is a very strong runner. She tackled goat hill like it was nothing while I was huffing and puffing just trying to get up.

We met at Cool and after a brief check in the mileage was dropped. Captain Kirk wasn't feeling very well and Wonder Woman was still feeling Saturday's run. Those two are work horses. They have then mental and physicals abilities I could only dream of. But maybe on day....hmmm one day.....

We crossed over hyway 49 and headed up the trail. I was in the lead and was a running a very conservative pace. My legs were feeling every little climb. During this run though there were some amazing views that just took my breath away. I guess Sunday was about being back in nature and really seeing nature and taking it all in.

We had a interesting sections were there was a little down hill  creek and since I didn't want to get my feet soaked called for a little bit of creativity on how to get through it. It made for a interesting day.

Now how would you not get your feet wet?

We flew down goat hill, but before we arrived at goat we saw this......

and heard at least 4 shots. Yup there was someone just above the ridge line firing a shot gun, or some kind of fire arm. This is a state park so it was a really nerve racking hearing the fire. We arrived at goat hill and the best part of the day was flying down it. It is very steep with some sharp switch backs. We then ran about 1.5 miles until our 6 mile turn around.

base of Goat Hill

Once we turned around we were now running the Way Too Cool course in the proper direction. Which means just before I hit goat hill there is a sweet gentle down hill. This means I can make up a little time, but I have too keep Goat hill in the front of my brain. I hiked most of goat hill, I ran a tiny little section where it leveled out and once on top it was mostly down hill from there until the last little climb back to Cool.

Stan is running Western States this year, Jay was our tour guide and Michaela was the speed demon!

It was a very challenging run, a fun run, but for me probably a really good mental training run. I had to keep those positive thoughts flowing through my head. Once I found those thoughts I really started to enjoy the run no matter how long it took me to run it. All in all a great sunny day on the Way too Cool course with some new ultra friends.

What a run!!!