Thanksgiving running

I am taking advantage of Thanksgiving to get in some miles.  Thanksgiving day, we did the Oceanside Turkey Trot; there is a 5 mile run that we did last year, 5K, and and option for the combo.  I decided that we should do the combo this year...if we are driving ~45 miles each way, we might as well do both, right?  The 5 mile race was crowded with one start and Alan and I dodged people for the first mile before settling in; I forgot my Garmin so we were running by feel and saving some for the second race.  I could tell we were running faster than normal but had no clue as to our pace; around mile 4, I decided to push the pace but leave some in the tank so I parted with Alan.  I was surprised to finish the 5 miler in 39:23 and Alan finished about 45 seconds later.  While that's much slower than my "old running paces," it was faster than I expected.

About an hour later, after a quick walk to the car and change of bibs/chips, we started the 5K.  There were thousands of people (like 5,000+!) so I was happy they did a wave start.  My goal was to run it comfortably and see what my times was.  My legs felt good and I cruised in for a 24:11 finish.

Today I did some work before we hit the trails; we wanted to go somewhere new but got a late start so we settled for Aliso and Wood Canyon; we only did one short run there before.  I was not a fan of the seemingly endless pavement from the parking area to the trail but enjoyed exploring the area; we took it very easy and "played."  We ran Aliso Creek Trail to Wood Canyon, to Cave Rock, to Dripping Canyon Trail, up Matthis, down Car Wreck Trail and back to the car.  The Car Wreck Trail was much more technical than I expected and we took it very carefully/slowly going down that way.  All in all, it was only 8 miles but it was fun to explore new trails.  I tried wearing different trail shoes as I noticed a pattern with my plantar fasciitis ongoing issue...it gets worse after every trail run when I wear Cascadias.  Tomorrow I hope it's not worse and that I discovered what has made getting it under control seemingly impossible.

CO Dreaming

The first weekend of November we traveled to the Denver area to visit my brother and explore his new hometown.  I fell in love with the area and this weekend's trail run in El Moro made me long for the beautiful trails I saw and explored there.  I was thankful to be able to run trails in El Moro yesterday but my mind kept drifting to CO....

Right out his front door is the trail that connects to the Cherry Creek ecological preserve area and I explored a couple of miles of it but PF prevented my running much of it.  We went to Red Rocks Park and, while I wanted to run and run and run, my foot was bugging me so I took it as a cool bonding time to hike with my brother and husband.  I have yet to upload the best pictures but you can see how cool it was...

We drove into the mountains to the west of Red Rocks and I was like a little kid in a candy store.  It was sooo beautiful and the views from ~13,000 were breathtaking.  We saw lakes, streams, parks and trails that made me so happy; at one point, I took off running on a path and got yelled at because they thought I might take off to run to the other side of the mountain.

We visited our friend Sam in Broomfield and I could see why he boasts about hitting a trail ~400 feet from his door.  I was sad to leave CO and cannot wait to return and explore some more!