Nice Recovery Weekend

Cockadoodle doooooo....Happy Mothers Day! I came home from my run this morning and was greeted by this metal rooster. Bill was so proud of himself as he laughed his head off at my Mother's Day gift. Both him and Alex found this guy at some off beat place and just couldn't resist him. I actually like him! He might become my good luck charm and then he would have to travel to races with me....just kidding. Alex also got me a water bottle that measures how much liquid you are drinking. I think my son knows me far to well as he found the perfect gift.....a water bottle that calculates something :).

What a nice weekend. Saturday Micheal and I headed to Hamilton Mountain for a loop. As you can see by the sign you can take the "difficult" route or the "more difficult" which is covered by Micheal's head. Big surprise....we chose the more difficult route. Hamilton is a great place and an awesome trail. The more difficult route offers somewhere around 35+ switchbacks to reach to summit. I have counted them before but have forgotten the exact number but I know Beast has the correct number. The climb is only steep in a couple of spots so you can run the entire way with a consistent comfortable pace. This was a recovery week so Saturday's run was less than 2 hours and not supposed to be hard so we just ran steadily and talked the whole way. At the summit you stand just in front of Table Mountain which is another fabulous route which we haven't yet done this year. By the looks of it from Hamilton there should be very little snow left. Once at the top of Hamilton Mtn. you can choose to go back down the same way or continue on the ridge line and take the back road down to the Hardy Creek Trail. We ran along the ridge and then down the road which is extremely rocky and the rocks are large so you need to stay focused. Once at the bottom you take the Hardy Creek trail back to the car. It was a nice relaxing run.

Sunday we met Jim for a 2-2.5 hour run on the Wildwood trail. This run was going to be a bit more focused. Micheal lead Jim and I like dogs on a leash, tongues hanging out but our tails were wagging. :). Jim started using Scott J. as a coach for WS100M and Spartathon which he will do in September. It's been great to see Jim just embrace all the training and watch him improve month by month. He really loves the variety of his weekly runs and really enjoys seeing all his hard work pay off! We finished the 14 mile run fast thanks to Micheal.

Next week is a build week and the beginning of the last big training cycle before WS. I have to shuffle my runs a bit this week so instead of doing Black Saturday I have to do Black Friday then follow that up with McDonald Forest. I think I have a couple of people to join me on Friday for 2X50 min. hill repeats which will be great.