Notes
Once again I found myself on a long stretch of poorly-maintained gravel, but this time, many others shared my journey. I had heard good things about a park 20 miles South of town, I just hadn't realized it would take 45min due to gravel roads and no good way to get to them. It also started raining as I drove and the temperature dove down to 55. Still, I successfully found the trailhead nearly full with bikers and hikers (thankfully no horses and no motorbikes were allowed on Tuesdays).
I wanted another good mountain to climb, but not as crazy as some of my other runs. This one worked out great is it rose 2000ft in over 4 miles. It also wasn't always a continuous climb with a few flat and downhill sections. The rain and the slope got me a little fired up to start and I wanted to blast up this hill, thankfully my brain prevailed and I kept a simple pace (which of course got tiring after a few miles, but I maintained).
I did achieve a great goal, I passed 3 mountain bikers pretty easy on the uphill. They didn't look amazing but I sure wouldn't want to bike uphill for 4 miles over rocky terrain; it looked hard just to stay upright. Either because of passing them or reaching a harder section, my heart rate suddenly jumped and I couldn't get it back down no matter how slow I ran. So I stopped to walk for a minute. I think that was a good decision as I returned to a comfortable feeling for the final uphill mile.
The descent was pretty smooth and basic. I get pretty bored descending after a couple miles, which leads to daydreaming, which I love to do on normal runs, but here it's a little risky for ankle sprains. None today though, just need to recover physically from the weekend and I'm ready to destroy headwaters.