Sunday, March 22, 2015

Mt. Wilson 28 miles

I ran up Mt Wilson via Echo Mountain and the Mt Lowe railway this morning and tacked on  a few extra miles by heading down the toll road from the top, until the GPS read 14 miles, and then backtracked up to the summit spigot for water and on down.  This is my "safe route":   Pending getting a satellite pager, I am staying away from remote single track such as Idlehour, where I fractured my leg last year.  If anything were to happen in a place like Idlehour...well, I hit the jackpot last May with a fall and fracture alone with no cell phone reception and it was a long and rather memorable hike out.

It was an awesome run today.  28 miles, 6071 ft of climb, total run time 4:48.  Amazingly this is a good 30+ minutes faster than any of my 28 mile workouts over the last three years.  I chalk this up to core strength training-  an unanticipated benefit of the fracture rehabilitation.

I ran in my new Merrell Trail Glove 3s this morning and they were sooooo comfy.

Here is the GPC track:

https://connect.garmin.com/activity/726673728

The run started at dawn in a marine layer but by Echo Mountain, 2.6 miles in, I had broken through the clouds:
The views were stunning heading up the Mt. Lowe railway:

On the way back, around 22 miles into the run, a bit south of the trailhead that drops off the railway bed towards Tom Sloan Saddle, the marine layer had expanded..
View to the west towards Mt Lukens




View towards Inspiration Point


Cruising past the Idlehour trail junction I soon dropped into mist for the last few mies down into Altadena.  Just beautiful.

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