I got up at 5:30 AM and picked up Richard. We drove up the mountain to meet James and his buddy Ed at the hikers' parking lot to go for a 17 mile trail run. Ed was a trail virgin and we were all wondering how he would handle running the first half of the Mountain Mist 50K course. He is actually registered for the race and today was literally the first time he went for a trail run.

To my surpirse, Ed handled it really well. I, on the other hand, was struggling a bit today. It appears my groin strain from a previous run is still a bit of an issue, so I had to back off little towards the end of the run. We ended up running about 17 miles in pretty cold temps around freezing. I opted for three layers on top (half zip base layer, short sleeve tech shirt and wind breaker) and compression shorts covered by running tights at the bottom. We also needed a headlamp for the first 30 minutes of the run as it was still dark around 6:15 AM when we took off. We ran a little over three hours and I was spent after finishing up. I think I need to learn to back off during training runs and training races, keeping my eyes on the big prize (or race, to be more exact).