There and Back Again

Home to Santa Fe; up Santa Fe and back

Feb 21, 2010

15.58 miles

3:10 hours

Snowy morning in the mid 20's and I need to get out and run a long one. Did I mention it is overcast with a wind coming out of the North and I don't have my car? So, what is a runner to do? Why, run down to the trail and go up it into the wind and come back, right? Right!

It took me awhile to get motivated since I did not have to get up and out the door by 7am; however, I finally did. Fully loaded and layered well with an extra hat in my camelback I finally got out the door around 11am.

From my house, it is 3.1 miles to the Santa Fe. Good news; bad news about that - good news: it's all downhill from my house to the trailhead. Bad news: it's all uphill on the way back.

The snow was deeper than I anticipated and there isn't any side walk up where I live; therefore, I played chicken with the cars for about a mile until the shoulder was wide enough and the snow was shallow enough for me to run on instead of the road.

Once I hit the Baptist trailhead I had flat, slightly uphill trail to run on; unfortunately, few tracks on it and the snow was about 3-4 inches deep. Just enough snow to make me work harder than I wanted. On the way up the trail, one other runner passed me, he was getting some serious mileage in - he went past me on the way down, then he ran past me on the way up, and then turned to go back down and passed me again on his way home! Oh well, as always, I told myself to run my own race and not worry about anyone else.

It was beautiful, albeit pretty cold and snowy almost the entire time. Past Hwy 105, tire tracks appeared on the trail which was very nice to run in and that made the middle section pretty doable.

7.75 miles and I turned. I had thought about turning at 6.5 but decided to go a little further. The way down was nice and I enjoyed most of it until I left the trail and headed back up to the house. Looking up the hill I came down and I deflated a bit. I decided to be smart and I power hiked the uphills, jogged the flats or downhill portions and finally made it back to the house.

A very long run. My core temperature must have decreased while out there. I wasn't cold while running; however, once in the house, I immediately hopped into a hot tub but just could not warm up. Finally, I gave up on that and crawled under the covers. Whew! Felt so much better when I got warm!

The hamstring was achy the entire time but no pulls or tears or spasms. The legs overall worked pretty hard; especially the last three miles uphill.

Didn't run as long as I originally wanted to for today; however, with the weather conditions (cold, windy, snowy, overcast), I felt pretty good about the 15+ miles I did get in!