Early moning antics!

The TRC plan was to meet at the trailhead at 6:00am Sunday however I had agreed earlier in the week to meet with Jes at 5:00am. I had a new flashlight that I wanted to check out on the trails, it’ll be used more and more as summer ends and fall turns into winter. I was on replen duty this weekend and so by the time I had loaded the car stopped for a top up of ice at a local 24 hour pharmacy I was running late, I arrived at the trailhead at 5:15 and Jen turned up shortly afterwards. Within 10 minutes we were heading up the familiar Westridge Trail, it’s a nice wide fireroad and so there was plenty of space, a headlamp each and the new flashlight (review to follow) to light up our way, the cloud was thick and low and the sun was struggling to break through. After 20 or so minutes we turned around and headed back meeting the main running group at a little after 6:00am. The group run set off back the way Jes and I had come back down. After a mile or so we came to the optional loop which diverted us down into a canyon and back up the other side, I headed off down into the canyon, I reached the bottom and looked over my shoulder to see a grand total of no one following me! Oh well, onwards and upwards and upwards and then up a bit more and I was back on the far ridgeline which then curved round and linked back up to the trail. A couple of other runners passed me as I stopped to take some misty photos, I continued up to the Nike Station and saw Sara and another runner heading back down. I realized that I should to think about heading back to the start otherwise there were going to be some hungry and thirsty runners waiting for me. I had planned to take the optional loop back, I managed to find the turning but lost the trail shortly afterwards so ended up running the ridgeline as per the photo above, I finally made it back to the parking lot in good time with 11.25 miles on my Forerunner and just in time to set up before everyone else arrived. A rep from Bear Naked had dropped off a bunch of free samples; another club perk, in fact two runners, Billy and Ernie were running in free Teva Trail shoes! Although Billy had a rough morning suffering from post wedding reception (he was a guest not the groom) early morning wake up jitters. So not quite the scheduled route but a fun run nevertheless.

I nearly have a full set of week 2 returns for the Worth you Weight Challenge. I’ll give everyone an extra day to email me their weight from Sunday. In the meantime I am glad to announce additional prizes to be added into the prize pool, the good folks at Wicked Fast Sports, the manufacturers of RECOVER-ease which I reviewed last month have stepped up and will be generously be donating a few bottles from their product line, please join me in thanking them for their generosity.

It looks like it’s going to be another close week and with three weeks to go there is everything still to play for!