Training Log - Friday, August 26, 2011

Rich (in back) and myself (in front) coming up the power line cut.

4AM came early this morning. I crawled out of bed straight to the coffee pot and got to brewing. By the time I had downed the coffee and a bottle of water (for pre-hydration, as I wasn't going to take a bottle on my run) and gotten my running gear on, it was 4:45AM. I headed out the door and drove over to Richard's house to meet up with him and James for what we refer to as a "Drake Run".

A Drake run generally consists of a 9-13 mile loop that includes a large amount of road running, a few miles of trail running and the namesake for this run, Drake Avenue. The Drake Ave section is basically a run up the side of the mountain with  some gradual and some really steep climbs up to the top.

Once we reached the end or top of Drake, we turned towards the end of the neighborhood to get to the power line cut pictured above. We climbed up about a quarter mile or so until we reconnected with another neighborhood for some additional road running. Once we crossed Governor's Drive on top of Monte Sano, we continued on to Monte Sano Blvd until we reached the Bluffline Trail on the left. From there, we went on to the hiker's parking lot on Bankhead Parkway before entering the final trail section down Tollgate Trail towards Five Points.

While I was gertting tired towards the end, I had a pretty good run today. Highlights: The temperatures were reasonably low, in the low to mid 70s. We left at 5AM which allowed us to still see the starts above us above the mountain. I got attacked by fire ants for the first time. I don't know how and where they climbed on me but it hurt. We got some temporary "brier tattoos" on our legs as the initial section of the power line trail wasn't quite as cleared as we had hoped or expected. That created a nice burn in the post-run shower;-) Great run, can't wait to do it again.