Saturday, October 19, 2013

Beware the Purple Poodle Dog...

Not this kind, scary as it is... 



This kind!

It looks so pretty in the summer...


Today's 8-mile trail run along the Silver Moccasin trail from Neucomb's Ranch to Shortcut was spectacular... as long as we dodged all the purple poodle dog bushes along the first 3-4 miles.  Most of the trails we ran were narrower than this one and the bushes loomed much close. 


Thankfully since they bloom in the summer, all we encountered for the most part were bushes easily my height, with a bunch of dead flowers on them.


I was so focused on just keeping up with all the super fast bastards running ahead of me that I wasn't paying close attention to anything but my feet and let one of the tall ones slap my bare arm in passing... not to mention the countless times my covered legs rubbed them as I charged past, intent on keeping the distance between myself and the next runner to a minimum... with only limited success I might add.

As I sit here typing, there are no hives anywhere, but I'm itchy almost everywhere... all psychosomatic, I'm sure!  BUT, it seems this stuff can take anywhere from hours to days to rear it's ugly little rash, so we'll see come daylight.

Today was the first of hopefully many Saturday's that will be spent on the upcoming course for the 2013 Bastard 50k Trail Run.  Today we began at the start line (Newcomb's Ranch) and ran about 8 miles to the first aid station at Shortcut on Highway 2.



The weather was surprisingly cold for the first 3-4 miles, then warmed up quickly.  We had 17 chilly bastards with us, including a whole slew of red runners.  It was such fun to have a chance to run with all these people again.  I am really looking forward to the coming weeks!



As a side note... first week back on the team included two hard sessions of speed work and a challenging tempo run. I'm definitely going to have to kick up my nutrition and recovery even higher if I'm going to hang with this bunch.  Time for bed.  Sweet dreams my friends!

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