Training Log - Friday, September 10, 2010

Another great day for a morning run. The temps are finally getting lower overnight. I picked up Richard at 5:30ish this morning and we met up with James and Mike at the Blavins Gap Trailhead parking lot right off 4 Mile Post Road. Mike and Richard had run sections of this trail before, but none of us had every run the trail loop we identified using the set of maps that the Land Trust of Huntsville and North Alabama has posted on their website. We started up the Bill and Marion Certain Trail onto the Varnedoe Trail to the Sugar Tree Trail and finally onto the Smoke Rise Trail looping back to the trailhead parking lot. The weather was perfect, low humidity and almost a cool breeze accompanied temps in the high 50s or low 60s. I also took this short run as an opportunity to try out my new Montrail Mountain Masochists. They felt great. I stll need to tie them just a tad tighter before the next run, but I am hoepful these will work out. The loop added up to almost exactly 10K. This, of course, fostered ideas of creating a nice little 10K trail race out there. It actually has two really nice climbs right at the beginning and at the end of the loop. Anyway, it made for a great change of scenery since I am pretty bored with road training runs as of late and any change of scenery is quite welcome. Especially considering that I love trail running and I had never been out there before. I am heading down to Destin, Florida at lunch today to spend the weekend with friends. That will be a great opportunity to scout the actual location and run a section of the first annual Destin 50 Beach Ultra marathon scheduled for February 2011. I am planning Saturday and Sunday morning runs of 10 and 5 miles, respectively. The longer run will be in road running shoes and the short run will be in VFFs. We'll see how that works out, especially considering less sleep than usual;-)