Happy Monday everyone! I’m guessing that the rest of this week’s posts will be dedicated to our upcoming Alaskan adventure, but in order to stave off your impending boredom with our trip preparation, I’ll give you a breather today. Instead, let’s chat about my latest and greatest day on the trails!
I knew that I wanted to get some solid trail running in this weekend and that Sunday would have to be the day. You see, Will and I spent all Saturday morning shoveling rock out of our property, and that in itself was exhausting (so much so that we’re staging a rebellion and hiring someone to finish the rock removal. I’m a failure as a landscaper!) We managed to conclude the day with a smile—and some popsicles—when the ice cream truck rolled through our ‘hood, but regardless, I was beat!
I had previously chatted with Heidi and made plans to meet her somewhere early Sunday, before I headed to a friend’s house to babysit their new kiddo. I had originally wanted to do 6-7 miles, but I knew that rock removal day had zapped my energy. Luckily, I showed up at Belcher Hill trailhead at 8am only to learn that Heidi had finished off her Saturday night with a 17-miler on the trails. Yes, seriously. Obviously, she wasn’t out to kill it and even though my now-poor excuse of rock removal was sounding a little more shameful, I decided to go with it anyway. We agreed on a ~5 miler and headed up!
This girl can run for days!
The one thing that Belcher Hill does have is elevation gain which is great because that and time on my feet are my two training goals for the Xterra Half. Unfortunately, this trail does seem to start climbing immediately from the parking lot, so I didn’t get a chance to do much of a warm-up! However, we both realized pretty quickly that we would be doing some significant power hiking on the climbs so we found a pace, started chatting, and enjoyed the views as our heart rates started to climb.
More than anything, I am loving time on the trails because it allows me to get away from all the chaos in my daily life. I have some stressful stuff going on that’s kinda been wearing me down lately, and it was so easy to talk to Heidi about it all, and then move on. By the time we finished our 4.5 miles, I felt physically renewed and mentally refreshed; a perfect combination.
In the end, our stats for the run were:
:: 4.51 miles
:: 837 feet of elevation gain (which I’ll take since it was half up and half down. 765 feet in 2.25 miles is pretty okay!)
:: 713 calories burned
:: a 15:23 pace
:: an entirely new outlook on my Sunday!
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Why do you run trails? And if you don’t, why not?