Saturday

Got up early (0615) for my weekly group trail run.  This would probably be my last long run before my 16km mountain trail race next weekend, so I wanted to make it a tough run.

Met out with the guys at 0700.  We're starting the normal lap at 0715 to account for it staying dark later every day.  The early group was late coming back so we didn't get started until between 0720 and 0725.  I don't know for sure when we started, because I was an idiot and forgot my Garmin GPS watch at home.  It was really cold, so I was worried about dressing appropriately and completely forgot my watch.  Ah well.

Started....sometime...I guess.  It was a staggered start.  Some guys left, then a couple minutes later, a few more left, then a few minutes later I left with Rick and a woman I didn't know.  We chugged along while Rick and the lady chatted, then Rick mentioned he wanted to start reeling people in, so we reeled in the next group.  Chatted with them for a bit, then reeled in the next group.  Stayed with them up through the halfway point.

I had been debating what to do to make this a more difficult run, and decided that I would run all of the major hills twice.  Seemed like a good idea since next week's race is 10 miles of going up a mountain.  So at the top of the first hill, I turned around, jogged back down to the bottom, turned back around and ran back up to the top.  Along the way I caught up to a lady who normally runs with us but had started late.  So we ran and chatted until we got to the top of the second hill, where I turned around, ran back down, then turned around and ran back up.  She was long gone by that point, so I ran up the next hill, turned around, back to the bottom, then back up.  That was 3 hills, one more to go.  Little bit farther away but legs felt good, so I picked up the pace to get to it.  Up, turned around, down, turned around, back up, then turned it up again and finished strong.  Thinking I finished maybe around 1:30?  I have no idea.

Legs felt great.  The first hill was probably .2mi, the second and third were maybe .3mi, and the fourth was probably .2mi.

Now that its several hours later, yea, can definitely feel it in my quads and butt.