Baptist thru Greenland and Back

April 11, 2010

Baptist to Palmer Lake

Palmer Lake to Greenland

And Back!

22 miles

4:24 hours

11:58 min/mile

Coming down Santa FE looking at Greenland ahead

I couldn't decide what to run today - wind again and I waited until I heard whether I needed to head up to Denver to watch Jess play softball or not before I headed out to run. Finally got the call that I could go ahead and run. I headed out the door and decided to be nice to my feet which have been on Greenland and hurting because of the ruts in the trails out there.

I started at the Baptist trailhead and headed up the Santa Fe Trail through Monument and continued on to Palmer Lake. From there, I went through the parking lot and headed up the hill to the right and caught the continuation of the trail up to Greenland.

At the southern end of Greenland Open Space, I hopped on that trail and continued up through Greenland on the dirt road there. At the 11 mile point, almost to the northern trailhead, I turned. Wham! Wind! Who knew I had such a tailwind behind me on the way up? I was really looking forward to running down the trail for 11 miles ... not anymore.

So, for the next 11 miles, I gritted my teeth, ducked my head, and ran and powerhiked through that nasty wind. Finally coming out of Monument, I got into a groove and really gritted the teeth for the next 2.5 miles to finish this long run. I was very glad I had my arm warmers with me and pulled those back on when I turned into the wind.

When I got home, I checked the wind speeds. I didn't have a tailwind when I started out. From the time I started, the winds went from 5 mph to 20mph with wind gusts up to over 40 mph. Dang! Wind is my friend, wind is my friend .... really tired after the run and happy that one is over!