Yesterday's Workout: w/u + speedy work 9X300 + c/d = 6.1 miles
Today's Workout: SLOOOW and easy Recovery Run = 4.5 miles
I was super excited when I got the call at 6am that we were having a 2 hour delay for school today. It was perfect because I knew that I wanted to get in a recovery run. Tuesday's hill repeats + Wednesday's faster than MGP run on hills + last nights speedy work with Kara, Rachel, Angela, Danielle and Mike left my legs feeling pretty hammered - today's run made them feel so much better! I also wanted to finish setting up for my
fundraising party. I'm super excited for it and can't wait to show you how it turns out!
The roads on my run today were pretty icy and I slipped a few times. The weather is supposed to stay pretty chilly in this area for the next week (30s) but it doesn't sound like we will get any snow. :(
That's ok though - because I can share with you a crazy snowy trip that Austin Mike and I took over winter break!
After
Austin decided to join the gym her also figured that he would head out on a trail run with Mike and I. Since Austin wanted to come and we all had the day off we figured that we could drive somewhere to a new trail instead of just heading out to Wildwood like normal. We picked out the Falls Creek Falls trail from our 60 Hikes within 60 Miles of Portland book. (This trail was like 90 miles from Portland)
We drove all the way out in our gear with a few snacks and some water for the drive home. But when we got there we found this....
It was so incredibly beautiful, but not what we were prepared for. I can't believe that between the three of us we didn't think of the possibility of snow - and that Forest Service roads are most likely not kept up after December 1st. We decided to park down the road and then run to forest service road and see if we could get over the big pile of snow and maybe play around a bit.
It was super fun to be running on the road with the tall trees and all of the snow surrounding us and having sunshine in the sky!
We got to the the forest service road and jumped the huge snow plow created drift. The trail was 2.5 miles from that spot and we thought - what the heck. Lets just try to keep running a little bit.
This was not a smart decision. In the beginning the trail was packed down with cross country skis and snowshoe tracks... but it the snow kept getting softer and softer.
I was wearing my
trail shoes - which somehow had to be helping me manage better than the guys.
They were both constantly falling and sinking through the snow.
We ran for a while - and walked a little - and ran a little more. Eventually I was getting far to cold without enough running to heat up my body and I started to get frustrated at the situation. Austin still really wanted to go forward through the falls and it took me forever to convince him that we were not dressed to walk in the snow. Not to mention we didn't bring any water with us because we thought we were just going to play in the snow and run back to the car - or around the road.
We turned around and walked most of the way back because some of us were tired and realized that going on toward the falls was really a bad idea. We finally got back to the area where we could run a little because the ground was more solid and I took advantage of it to warm up my body.
When we were back at the car we were all starving and freezing. We changed into our warm clothes and hit up a tiny Mexican restaurant in the small town just down the road a few miles. We ended up with 5-6 miles overall and 3 of them running - and never even made it to the trail head from the Forest Service road. What a wonderful adventure we had! Definitely one to remember - I really hope that Austin will want to try trail running again - because we have to go back and actually make it to the falls!
Have you ever ended up on a trail that you couldn't run on?
Where is your favorite trail?
