Saturday, May 14, 2016

Knee OK- Mt Wilson 28 miler

The plan the last week was to continue slow, easy runs during the week to get in 50 miles ahead of the weekend, then do a back to back this weekend to bust out a solid 100 mile week.  I took an easy recovery walk on Monday and felt surprisingly good on Tuesday's 13 miler.  Thereafter the week was a bit of a  slogging grind.  The knee held together but I was feeling increasingly tired and beat up;  I iced the knee a lot, did a lot of stretching and kept telling myself that it was time on the feet that counted, I was focussing on keeping my stride short and just moving.   By Friday night I was wondering how the 28 miler I'd planned for Saturday would go, I was tired, sore and I'd been working a few hot spots with the foam roller and the tennis ball. I turned in early and set my alarm for 5am.

Alex and I met at 6 and headed up the Sam Merrill Trail out of a solid marine layer.  We walked up to Echo mountain and then ran  easy from there to the Mt Lowe railway.  I stopped to jam my fingers into a hot spot in my calf and it released.  We continued on and broke through the marine layer:
We took it steady and easy up to Mt Wilson and then trotted down the Toll Road 2 miles, turned around and hiked/ran back up to the summit to get water.  It was a beautiful morning:


On the run run down I was surprised at how good I felt-  the knee felt solid and I was pretty loose. It was warm and bright as opposed to the fog down in the valley.
 Finally we got back down to the 3000 ft level where it was cloudy again - nice and cool.
The run went better than I'd hoped, we finished 28 miles in 5:28 run time.  Tomorrow I'll do a hike up/ run down on Mt Wilson to complete the week.

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