Inspiration point; Merrell Ascend Glove Goretex in wet trail running conditions

I had a nice run up the Sam Merrill Trail this morning with a 6:30am start on the trail up to Echo Mountain, to the Mt Lowe railbed trail on to  Inspiration Point and return, for 12 miles.  It's been raining hard the last couple of days in southern California- and so  I ran in my Merrell Ascend Glove-Goretex trail shoes.  I had bought these shoes last summer as an experiment to see whether the Goretex liner would keep trail dust out.  They did, but for summer running they were just too hot -  no surprise,  and I had been warned that this would likely be the case.  So I tucked them away for winter running.  Winter conditions at last showed up and so, I was looking forward to running in these shoes under the conditions for which there were designed.  It was cold and rainy yesterday and the Goretex Ascend Gloves kept my feet warm and dry while running in the neighborhood, even splashing through puddles.  The traction was terrific and kept me from slipping even on slimy moss covered sidewalks.  Today's run was on very rough trail and vertical terrain;  while it was not raining, everything was soaked and there was a good wet fog on the mountain for much of the run.  The shoes were perfect for these conditions and my feet were snug and dry.

I crossed paths with Larry Gassan and a couple of his AC100 buddies running up as I was coming down towards Echo Mountain.  It was nice to see these guys and great to see Larry running.

My achilles behaved;  I took it easy today, power walking up and then running down in a smooth easy gait, no rush.  By the bottom of the mountain both achilles were letting me know they were present, but they were fine afterwords and feel great now.  My plan is to keep building slowly and taking it easy to  adapt back into running after my 3 month lay-off.