Spent the night at Juns house so we could leave bright and early for a pre-work Lake Mountain run. Got up, dressed and left by about 3:15. Drove to the south end of Lake mountain and spent a little bit of time looking for the right place to put a drop bag - we didn't want to drop it too early and miss it, or too far and have to run further than we needed to get to our stuff. Found what we thought was the right spot, and luckily it ended up being right! Headed back north to Eagle Mountain where we parked the car and set off running. We ran clockwise heading south on the east side of the mountain. The first few (ok 12, really) are a pretty much a bunch of rocky, rolling ups and downs as you make your way along the side of the mountain. At Enoch pass you hit the high point of the run and we stopped there for Craig to take a 'break' (I had already had a couple). As I stopped to wait I started to feel a little bonky - or at least like one was coming on, so I tried to eat a few things while I was waiting. From there you have about 3 miles of a long gradual downhill, and once we got started on that Craig left me in the dust. It was cool though because you could see the road just stretching for miles out in front of you. At this point I just tried to keep a nice, steady pace - I knew I still had 20 or so miles to go and didn't want to push anything too hard. I had to make a quick, urgent stop about a half mile before I hit the road at about mile 16 and caught up to Craig (who was walking so I could catch up). A hair over a mile on the road brought us to our turn off and 'aid station'. We refilled our water and grabbed the Coke and food we had waiting. We spent the next few minutes walking along - I with my Coke and PB&J, and Craig nursing a Pepsi and eating a burrito, laughing about what we were eating while running and the responses other people often give when you tell them what you eat and how nothing beats a Coke on a long run. This next section is a couple miles of gradual uphill on dirt road. I had to walk on a couple of the 'steeper' (ha) parts - but eventually got into a rhythm and was able to move along, although (of course) Craig pulled ahead of me. The road then starts to head South again, which your body says should NOT be happening at this point (the car is NORTH!! :)) Eventually though, the road does bend north and down, dumping you off on the Eagle Mountain dirt road that would take us to the finish - in about 12 miles. Craig waited for me (again) at the road and we moved right along. I still wasn't feeling great - I hadn't really felt good at all this run - just OK, and kept feeling like I was teetering on the edge of a bonk for a long time. Anything that hit my stomach would make it turn. I stopped to walk a couple of times on this stretch, which felt ridiculous because this was finally a nice long, FLAT section. I finally did come to a point where I realized that walking didn't really help anything other than to make this take longer, so I'd pick it up and run along. We didn't really know exactly how far we had to run, but as we got closer we began to assume that it was likely going to be more than our goal of 31 miles. Kept moving along and it was quite nice sight to finally see the car off in the distance. Craig really turned it on and had a strong sprint to the finish. I just kept going until I got there :). Overall I felt fairly good about the run - I had run 13 miles the day before (and 20 a couple before that), and the goal was to run this one with some miles and vert on the legs. I didn't ever feel great, but was happy that I was able to just keep chugging along. Driving home I joked with Craig that we might as well just drive over and hit Timp - and had we not had to get to work, I think he probably would have gone for it - if only to spite me. :)
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