Almost Wordless Wednesday

Impromptu Halloween Costumes - Toothless from How to Train your Dragon, a Runner (of course), and a Monitor Lizard.

New Trails, New Views.

For awhile now I've mostly been running trails, and there are trails here out by a corp of engineers lake that everyone keeps telling me are too technical (for me) to run.  With that percolating in the back of my mind for months as well the knowledge that I'd better get over it & start running them because they are the best hope for my finishing the FlatRock25k next year I shut the doubts in my mental closet and headed out to a Saturday morning run with my local ultra-running group and my BRF (best running friend).

It was only a 5.8 miler this morning as the run leader was marking the trail for a 10k they are organizing out there in Nov.  The race is the week after my first half, but I would love to do.  I'm saving the signup for after the Pilgrim Pacer though as I want to make sure I'm up for it.  Anyway, I was a bit nervous, but the run leader is one of my favorite trail hawks (the group is called the Lawrence Trail Hawks) to run with.  He's done races and ultra races all over for many many years, and loves to tell stories while we all run.  Listening to him tell stories makes the run so much fun and makes it feel short (or maybe that was just the comparison to the 13 miles I did last week  :lol: ).  Ex. At the end of the run, on the biggest uphill, when my legs were starting to get tired, he recited all of the jabberwocky poem.  <3<3<3 him (thank you Story Hawk!).

Anyway, my BRF has been greatly adding to my "runxiety" about these trails since we started running trails a few months ago.  She kept saying how she'd hiked them and really wasn't sure how on earth anybody would run them.  I LOVE this lady to pieces and honestly her companionship on runs is one of the things that's kept me going this long, but her "horror tales" of these trails worried me.  I FINALLY convinced her come out with me for a run, and guess what?  She ROCKED IT (which means we ROCKED it. Although I walked a few more of the uphills than she did...sometimes long legs are a good thing.  I can keep up with her shorter trail stride by longer stride fast walking it).

I love it when I can rock (or just finish) something that has been mentally haunting me for awhile.  Also, when exactly did an almost 6 miler  on a technical trail become a short, easy run??

We had such a beautiful view from the top of Sander Mound this morning (my BRF on the left, me on the right).  I'm now looking forward to the many hilly, rooty, rocky miles I will have in the next year out at Clinton Lake in prep for FlatRock.