Today was long run day and other than Laurel Valley 2 weeks ago, my long runs had been half marathons, which isn´t quite sufficient when you´re training for a 100 miler. I´ve been trying to make up for it by running higher mileage more frequently during the week and ¨getting my run on¨ at least 6 times a week. I decided to get at least 16 miles in by running my usual ranger station out and back and sandwiching about 6-8 miles in between by joining the WRH trail running group at the hiker´s parking lot at 7AM. Jason and I met at Richard´s house at 6AM and took off. I wanted to keep it an easy pace after last night´s hard run and Jason was kind enough to oblige.

We arrived at the hiker´s parking lot just in time to meet up with folks after refilling our bottles at the ranger station fountain.  was hoping that the pace would be ¨easy¨and once again, no one was in any particular hurry which was great, because it allowed me to chat with all of these guys, most of whom I´d seen out running before, but never met officially. Thanks again to all of you to letting me run with you. I made the run not only easier but also much more enjoyable.

After logging about 6 miles with the guys and arriving back in the parking lot, Jason and I took off to complete our run. It wasn´t pretty at this point. I was only too happy to go slow and Jason was too banged up to go fast, so we were running a for both of us agreeable slower pace than expected. Jason had rolled his ankle(s) multiple times and I wasn´t too motivated to push after last night´s effort. After all, not everything´s a race:-) We completed our training run in one piece...more or less...in just under 3 hours or so.