Hey friends! How it go? I ran 5 easy today with a few others. 5 of us this morning, including 2 that are coaching next year so I wasn't the only gross sweaty one at our coaches meeting. Which went well. I have a great group of coaches if I do say so myself. Then I had to drive way the hell over to the other side of Houston to pick up my Gatorade for the season. That took over two hours. DH is out running some errands and is supposed to pick up the van from storage and bring it home so we can start loading it up for vacation. I need to look at the fridge (and the size of the freezer) in there before I go get our groceries for the trip. Plus we have a couple small projects to do on it before we leave.

Kathryn and Lisa, hope things are going well out there. Just keep moving forward! That reminds me, I need to add nuts to my grocery list.

Liz, this is so exciting! And wow, just wow on that land. You can forge some trails in there and go trail running without ever leaving home! Are the houses custom or are you limited in design/choices? While custom would be nice, if they have certain floor plans and design options you can lock in a price that won't change.

Damaris, enjoy the 6.

Margaret, I better get moving on a house then! I have said I wish I'd been a runner when we lived in northern CA. If we end up with a place in Ashland, it's practically just really northern CA.

Laura, yay on getting out there this morning. Our insurance works the same with windshields. DH needs his replaced so I contacted insurance and they are sending Safelite out to our house Monday morning.

HCK, love it when a training thing ends early. Nice 7 last night.

Lori, what D and HCK said. Or if not facebook, I upload it to something like tinypic.com or imgur and then copy and paste the code into the box here.

Karen, not sure I'd say "this is practically just really northern CA" to residents of Ashland. I've been up there a number of times and a good many people do not want to acknowledge the existence of their southern neighbor. Mind you, many of the residents of the northern part of CA don't want to be associated with the likes of San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles either...

No, Liz, no extra days. The hotel was expensive and I am swamped at work. I had to get a sub for Wednesday night's class as it was. I flew out on Saturday, arrived in London on Sunday midday, had meetings all day Monday and Tuesday, then flew back on Wednesday -- 4 PM flight from Heathrow which arrived in LA at 7 PM but lasted 11 hours. Endless afternoon. I force myself to stay up until bedtime when I get there, even though I haven't really had a night's sleep, so I can sleep and then get up for the morning in the UK. Also stay up on the return flight so I can go to sleep when I get home. Unfortunately that means I lose one night.

HCK, keep at it -- you're doing better than I am at posting pics!

Judy, "Taos hum"? Not sure what that is. All Karen and I heard were exclamations of delight as we ate at what had been recommended as Taos's best ice cream shop. And it was good ice cream...

And I now have a cold. Bah.

However, managed 5 miles this morning. I wanted to do more but I have so much at home and I was coughing up a lung by the time my run was over, so that was it for today.

So here's a kind of cool thing.  Trail Sisters started an initiative to make races equally friendly to women as to men.  They are highlighting some obvious things, like equal prize money, but also some less obvious things, like providing feminine hygiene products at aid stations.  Western States signed the pledge, and when I picked up my aid station supplies today, tampons and pads were included with the other standard supplies.   WS is the kind of event that could do whatever the heck it wants, and it makes me happy that they're being supportive.  Trail Sisters is also a good group, I encourage everyone to check them out.  Even if trail running is not your thing, they have good articles and are a good resource on issues relevant to women runners: https://www.trailsisters.net

So, that trip to Auburn for supplies pick up and a detour to my Dad's for dinner was pretty much my day.

Karen, Tessa -- True, although Ashland is practically NorCal, I think OR would rather we stay on our side of the border.  One of these days they're going to start building a wall.

Lori, nice 5 miler.  Keep fiddling with the photos, you'll get it.  I put pics in a private album on FB too.  Or make them private so only I can see them on FB.

LC, I kind of miss rain.  Pretty sure we're done with rain until October.

HCK, hallelujah for being able to leave early on Fri.

For tomorrow, either 18 mile trail run or a bit less plus kettlebells.

Rest day for me today. I may go to the Y and lift weights (wut?) or do a kettlebell workout here. I'm going to try to get a longish run in tomorrow or Tuesday since I don't know how much running I'll get in on the trip. Especially W/Th/F when we'll be doing a good bit of driving.

Congratulations Kathryn and Lisa on the 50 mile finish at Mohican!! And for signing up (or getting yourselves signed up) for Rocky along the way.

Tessa, good point. I would never actually say anything like that to the people. I was referring to the climate, the trees, the mountains.......those things that aren't really different just over the border from one state to the next.

Margaret, that is a cool thing. I know Lisa has gotten pretty active in Trail Sisters, nice to hear your positive experience with them as well.

Liz, love love love the pictures. What an awesome place to build. Yeah, I'll be honest, when it came to picking all that stuff for this house, the builder had already spec'd out the colors/counters/cabinets/backsplash/etc. for the next one they were going to build, and we went with probably 90% of their choices. They looked good to us, plus figured they were going with colors and products that would sell well. I think you and HCF have an advantage when building custom, with his contractor experience and your property management experience, you will be great at keeping things on track and being able to communicate with the builder. Oh, the ducks - a short part of our route is crossing under a pretty major highway and running about 1/4 mile along the access road (on a walkway separated by concrete barriers). Loudest, ugliest part of the run, and in the next couple years the county is building a path from the park on one side to the running paths on the other side of the highway, but for now we run along the highway for a bit. We were coming back and a car stopped us telling us about a group of ducklings on the three-lane access road and urging us to help them (what the heck lady, you're in a car, maybe you could help). By the time we got to them, a guy had herded them to follow behind a car going slowly and was almost to the end where they could get off the road, but one duckling was still just hanging out in the fast lane. One of our runners hopped the barrier to try to get that one, which of course then started going the opposite direction and towards the highway itself. She eventually got him to the grassy part where he could go under the access road, and we all just choose to believe he did just that to meet up with his siblings.

Quickish reply, on the phone.  Got to Lisa's with no problem, other than no sleep.  We then drove to Ohio.  Dropped our stuff off and headed to packet pickup.  Pretty mellow.  Did get some free beer and visited with a friend of Lisa's.  Decided to go get burgers for dinner at a dive restaurant with really good ones.  Crashed soon after.

Up at 3am and out the door at 4.  Drive was 40 min.  Decided to park near the finish and walk to the start. A mile away.  Sun came up a bit before 6 and we were off.    Rain was predicted for nearly the entire race.   We lucked out and it wa virtually dry till mile 35, then the skies opened  and we were utterly drenched until we were nearly done.

Really beautiful course.  Lush green surroundings, beautiful forest settings  Lots of fairly steep climbs over rocks and roots.  Definitely a challenging  course. One of the harder ones I've done.  Even some gnomes.

Finished the first lap, approx 26.5 miles in tolerable time.  Fixed some blisters and we headed back out.  Somewhat surprising, but I really wanted it.  Second loop went much much slower.  There were two tough areas of the race with step climbs - one af the start for about 3 miles, and one halfway for about 5 miles.  I DREADED the halfway part on my second loop, but made it well!!

We kept at it, until mile 35.  That is when the skies opened.  Not a little rain, not alot of rain, but buckets and buckets.  When we left the aid station at mile 35, I started to get cold and told Lisa I was done and wanted to drop at the next aid station 2.5 miles away.  Wss extremely upset and disappointed with myself.  As the miles went on, I warmed up and decided to soldier on.  12 miles remained.  I could do that.  I did, but whoa, did it take forever and ever.  We were walking through ankle deep puddles/mud for much of the last 15.

Lisa was an absolute trooper.  She put up with my extreme slowness and sometimes rather snippy responses.  Bless her soul.

So, we finished.  Sadly it took us (me) 24 hours.  Got our medals with no fanfare.  Went back to the hotel and napped for a few hours and are driving home now.  Feeling pretty happy I stuck it out and finished in less than stellar conditions on a tough course.

Guess that was longer than planned.

Cheers all!!

K

Margaret,  blisters were better.  I switched out shoes and that helped.  I got 3, largely because of the wet feet I think.   Yes for Rocky for me too!!!!!