The Buford Beast

RUN 15.7 miles in about 3.5 hours, 3100 ft climbing!

While packing for this run, I noticed that the Cascadia 8's are missing some lugs! They have about 350 miles already, that seems soon but I do put a beating on those shoes. Time for new ones!

This was like a special day, excursion run. One of those once-a-summer runs in which the driving vs running mileage is unfavorable, but it's all worth it.

EK and TV ran with me, starting off with a rainy drive down, followed by a rainy start and a foggy overcast. This eventually burned off to a sunny day with stunning views over the mountains. And of course, the pretty rain :)

I call them mountains, they're really the only local such option! And they lived up to the name in relative terms. The hills were LONG. Long as in Oh Geez when is it going to end long. And rocks. Rocks everywhere on some of those hills. I ended up walking up the rocky hills, in part energy conservation and in part ankle conservation. I was walking up as fast as I was running them!

But the down hills I used to improve on my weakness--downhill technicals. I'm a pussy-foot down the rocky hills for good reason, but it's become a little too pussy-footin'. These descents were long enough for me to try various things in a sustained test. I found that keeping my eyes more forward on the trail worked better than keeping them drilled into the few feet in front of me. I also found that just keeping a steady pace helped, instead of slow-go-slow-go. And EK had a good suggestion, to make use of the width of the trail in a lateral sense. I was doing that--picking a line from left to right and back--but I wasn't taking advantage of it. I thought it was a problem slowing me down, but I think if I worked on it I could take that and "run" with it, haha.

It wasn't my mileage goal today, but it was all worth it!