back to back

as the date for my salomon xt wings challenge gets closer, i'm needing to pack more distance and difficulty into my miles.  with a long weekend, i decided to go long on both friday and saturday and include some challenging climbing.

friday morning, i met up with mr. k and we tackled some of my favorite hills and single track in el moro and laguna coast wilderness.  we did a 16+ mile loop from ridge park including a trip along the rarely traveled serano trail and into the nix center, over to the james dilley preserve and back up to bomber via laurel canyon and willow canyon.  the weather was on the brink of raining the whole way, but it kept from dumping on us and the temperatures stayed perfect for running.

mr. k and i tackled all the hills aggressively and turned in a real quality run.  i took the nokia n82 along for the ride and captured some photos, video and a gps track of the workout

i had hoped to turn in a 20+ mile run on saturday with lambert to complete the back-to-back long runs.  i made the 3:30am treck out to idyllwild and met up with him at 5:30.  we drove up to the devil's slide trail head and were greeted with fresh snow as we climbed elevation.  at the trail head, the snow was covering everything and about 3" deep.

hello, opposite ends of the spectrum.

yes, last weekend's run was in the 90's.  the temp at the trail head was 34.  i was fortunate enough to be prepared for extreme weather, so i geared up and lambert and i went out for a quick 5mi out and back while we waited for his friend, eric, to show up.  we dropped down about 500' over the 2.5mi and then climbed back up to our starting elevation of  6700'.

we rolled back into the trail head a little late, but the timing was good because eric wasn't there yet.  when he showed up, we geared up again and were off to climb up to the saddle and run along the ridge.  we were running about 45 minutes late, so i figured we'd loose about 4 miles or so from the total mileage

the thing i didn't take into account was the view.  every turn revealed a new snow covered view.  and every new view was photo worthy.  we made a good number of stops over the course of the run so we could take photos and video.  some of those views just can't be done justice by a photograph.  the view over suicide rock when we got above the clouds was a once in a lifetime type experience. 

we climbed up to the saddle at 8200', headed out for a couple more miles and then turned around due to my time constraints.  total mileage for the day was only 13.1, but it was all up at altitude with some significant climbing.  really, though, on days like this, training takes a back seat to the experience. 

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Posted by jeff at May 25, 2008 9:12 PM