Blister in the Sun

It's been awhile....well I was out of town in the UP running during the nice cool UP mornings.  Ah how I miss the coolness up there just to come home and be engulfed in heat once again and the nasty deerfly. 

So I had a nice training week while visiting the Upper Penisula of Michigan.  Ran in an awesome trail race on the 4th of July.  The Black Bear 12k Trail Run.  The first 2k or so was down a paved road running into the morning sun we turned left into the Hiawatha National Forest and was greeted with ice cold water and a hard limestone packed trail.  The trails we ran on are ones used by four wheelers.  Then about 4k into the race the trail turned to sand.  OMG is that the hardest thing to run through.  It pulls at your hips, begs you to stop but I kept plugging away.  Picking people off as I went, I was not in a hurry at the start I still cannot figure out why people kill themselves at the begining.  Well I guess they just do not understand how to race.  Finally we turned a corner and there it was the mud the starter told us about.  Not too bad but there were logs down on the ground and it was not safe to run on so i walked through this area only about 20 feet or so of this and took off up the hill.  Ah the hill, a nice rocky, sandy, crappy beat up by 4 wheelers hill.  I started running up it and then it got too steep so I walked the rest of the way up got a drink and started on my last 3 miles or so through the nice hard packed trail through the hardwoods that made a wonderful cool canopy over our heads.  I had my eye on the guy in front of me I knew I had to get him, he kept slowing down I kept speeding up I got him in the last 2k stretch.  We come out of the woods onto a paved road that went downhill and around a loop to the finish.  I was really bookin' then!  My brother yelled go Cathy only 100 more yards!!  I was sprinting to the finish.  I felt great!  First in age group, 12th overall and there were only 35 runners in the 12k....everyone else ran in the 6k which had over 100 runners in it.  Hmm wonder why?

I had some good runs while in the UP and did a lot of hiking on the Pictured Rock Lakeshore.  Nice get away.  Time to gear up and get ready for the next trip out to Montana.  Try some running in the higher elevations see how that goes.  I will be running with my high school running buddy Amy I cannot wait.