Don't hate me because my trails are beautiful!

Hee, hee that title was for Willie.

I will start that this week included 5 - 17 hour days. Monday through Friday. Total insanity.

I left the house each morning at 4:30 am and returned at about 10:00 pm. I was at work all day, then taught an after school AP Biology review session, then went out to teach my class at State, then back to the high school to teach another AP Biology review session. I packed three meals a day to take with me. I was able to run 5 miles each day on Tuesday and Thursday at lunch and go back to shower at school and teach my after school review sessions and so on. When I got home I had to write lesson plans and grade. I slept about 2-3 hours a night. Then on Friday night and Saturday morning I taught labs for AP Biology. In between all this I had a 25 page research paper to finish and turn in and a research poster to create and present. I had to bail on several very important faculty meetings (can you smell the sarcasm?) and now have four friendly reminder (yep, more sarcasm) emails about my absence at said meetings.

It was a hell of a week.

Needless to say I was more than a little concerned about my long workouts this weekend and my ability to complete them.

On Saturday, I did a long ride of sorts. It was only 18 miles, but it did have some hills, so I am counting it toward my new "get your ass ready for IMCdA before you embarrass yourself" resolution.

On Friday, I got an email from a gal that trains with my coach. She was looking for people to run part of her 35 miler this weekend. Hot damn! I told her I needed to do 20 miles and was looking for something relatively easy. We decided to run in Big Basin Redwood Forest and, well, somehow that 20 miles of easy trail translated into 24 miles and a whole lot of descent and climbing.

Garmin had some trouble tracking in the forest, but USGS says 24 miles
and 3980 ft of total climb.

Five of us ran. 3 of the gals ran the 12 miles from the headquarters to the beach and had one of the their husbands pick them up. Then Helen and I turned around and headed back up the hill. I have to say, I would have rather climbed in the beginning and had the descent at the end, but it was worth to get to run with a group for a run I was seriously dreading.

Julia (Run partner from Bizz Johnson) crossing a wood bridge at the end of the first short climb, before the big descent



Julia hamming up the climb. She just got over a nasty cold so she was quite the trooper for being out there


Claire posing with one of the many cool fallen trees that have become part of the trail.



Julia and I in the dark forest



This little red speck is Helen. She is a seriously BADASS ultrarunner. She is doing the 50 miler at the North Face Challenge in Marin on Dec 6th. The fact that I was even on this run with her made me feel more than a little badass myself.


I don't know what happened here. Low light + shaky runner hands = shit picture.
Sorry for the blurr. Left to right: Lori, Helen, and Claire. Julia was off taking pictures of a newt.



Here is Julia as a newt!




















Not surprisingly, I did not take any pictures on the 10 miles of climb up from the beach. I was working a little too hard! But I did get this picture describing the and I had to add oone I took of Jane's thoughts of this trail during Skyline to Sea.




In the end I was pretty damn proud of myself. I had to get a picture with Helen 1. because she is a bad ass and 2. because she helped me get up that damn hill! I look a little happier than her because I am done and the poor thing still has 11 miles in these hills to go!

All in all a great run. I had a blast and felt pretty darn great. Product mini-review: This is the first run I have done using Perpeteum from Hammer. I have been looking for a drink for longer workouts and I had a free sample so I decided to try it. It tastes like shit, but I think it helped. I didn't have any stomach trouble using it with Gu and fig newtons. They jury is still out since it was just one run and I was conservative because I didn't want to have stomach problems in the forest for 24 miles.