I spent some more quality time on Barr Trail yesterday.  Since I had already done intervals on the Ws earlier in the week, the sensical thing to do was to climb the Incline before cutting over to Barr Trail.  From there - whilst my quads threw a tantrum - I continued onwards and upwards to Barr Camp.  Oh, Barr Camp, the beautiful beacon on a hill that allows you pee somewhere that is not in the middle of the woods.  The Barr Trail section took exactly an hour, which is a drastic improvement over my first trip to Barr Camp.  The Incline, however, slows things down in a major way - nowhere else on Earth can you actually spend 40:00-50:00 plodding away while only covering one mile.

Most importantly is not that I put in another solid training run on Zebulon Pike's dastardly mountain.  Most importantly is that this week when I fell coming down Barr Trail I managed to catch myself before hitting the ground.  Take that single track, I made it down with all my skin attached!  That is not to say I made it up and back comfortably.  Barr Trail takes everything I have to give and sends me home with a stack of IOUs.  Between the sun, the rocks, the altitude, the distance, and the time commitment I was so spent last night that I fell asleep while foam rolling.

Yes, I said I was going to put in another 10-12 miles today.  No, that didn't happen.  I slept until 10am by which time it was well on its way to a sunny 94 degrees.  Upon finally rolling out of bed I walked like the tin man - my right hip has been bugging me lately and yesterday didn't help the cause. It gets better as I warm up, but it's really slow going until then.  Instead I ran 5.5 miles in the sweltering heat and them spent my evening playing Ultimate Frisbee, which is probably the most fun way to get a sprint workout in.

In the past week I've covered every mile of Barr Trail - from Ws to the summit, at least once.  Next week brings the Summer Round Up and the following week the Barr Trail Mountain Race.  Until then, I think I'll give Barr Trail a nice wide berth and get some cross training in. 

Since I'm really into videos lately, here's an amazing, inspiring video for all of us who "run like girls"...