I was sitting in Juns office this morning and we both noticed we had an opening in our calendars, so we made a quick decision to head out and get a lunchtime run in. Headed down to AF and hit the Grove Creek trail. I had never run this before, it starts out with a pretty steep climb, and I took off at a decent pace going up. I knew when Craig was hanging back a little, that I was going to be in trouble. So what did I do? I kept pushing the pace! :) Ended up really tiring my legs out in that first mile (at which point Craig motored past me), which slowed me down considerably on the next two miles. At mile 2 you cross in front of a huge waterfall, which was flowing strongly, cascading off of the rocks as it made its way down. The trail just keeps going up and up, with very little relief. Craig kept a consistent running pace the whole time, while I had to hike some of the steep stuff. In some places parts of the trail became little streams flowing rather strongly down the mountain. Got to Indian Springs at 3 miles on the nose in about 45 minutes, Craig arriving shortly (or not so shortly) before me. We took a minute to take in the beautiful scenery, with snow covered Timp rising directly behind us, surrounded by a grassy green meadow. Refilled our bottles with some cold spring water, and then headed back down. It was a little muddy and slippery for a ways, and we had a good time picking our way through it. At one point I could here laughing and talking a little ahead of us on the trail (we had passed a bunch of college aged kids on our way up) and then Craig rounded a little bend (trying to make as much noise as possible) I hear this blood curdling scream erupt from this girl, who was completely unaware of her surroundings, and didn't notice the two of us bounding down the trail. The guy she was with took full advantage of the situation, 'catching' her and saying "oh, are you OK?" ha ha. Atta boy. It was pretty funny. You would have thought she saw a bear. Once we passed the rest of group and got out of the sticky stuff, Craig really started to open a gap on me. I was keeping a decent pace (high 7's) but my legs just didn't feel like pushing it, (and I'm trying to take it a little easier on my knee that's still a little tender), and he was just flying. I was happy to just let my legs spin and let the hill pull me down. What a brutally beautiful, fun trail, and a great way to get some (almost) completely runnable vert in a relatively short distance. I'm pretty sure we'll make that a frequent run - perfect type of trail to work those climbing legs (up and down!).
6 miles - 1:08:11 - 11:21 pace - 2400 vert PM - 3 slow, relaxed, easy miles pushing the stroller running with my wife. 190 vert
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