That last run I did really made me nervous. I need to start doing some aggressive stretching, especially my IT band. The experience was bad enough that I've been avoiding running, but today the guilt of keeping Charlie indoors on such a beautiful day finally got to me and we had to do it, right at sunset.
For something completely new, I headed south to the Rubicon Trail head and just a short out-and-back. Since running uphill is so much slower than down I added 5 minutes to the uphill to compensate. This mean we took about 20 minutes to go up, and just a little more than 10 minutes to run down.
Starting out was
hard; it took a solid 10 minutes before I finally settled my legs and breathing into a rythm. Short staccato steps up the old ORV trail to Buck Lake, with the snow getting deeper as we climbed until it was past my ankles. Oh well - I don't care about wet feet on a short run like this.
I knew that we were close to the lake when we turned around, but it was getting dark. I didn't bring a cellphone or a headlamp, so we called this one conservatively and headed down.
We ran back down in a nice dusky light - I always like how snow covered terrain is brighter and easier to see than bare earth when it gets this late.
Statistics: Buck Lake, Out-And-Back, 3.2 miles, 680' gain/loss, 31:26.
