Wednesday, September 19, 2012

A 14 mile trail run in Millcreek canyon

For a couple of months now my brother has been trying to get me to run down in Salt Lake with him up Millcreek canyon.  It has been such a busy summer that I couldn't do it until last weekend.  And I'm so glad that I did.  It was beautiful.  


We saw 3 lakes while on our run.  The weather was perfect, cool and sunny.



 The autumn leaves are starting to come out and we had great views of them.


This was the wake up call that my body has not completely recovered from the 50K.  My calves were tight the whole way up and my body just felt tired.  I don't know what I was expecting.  I plan on keeping my runs short until everything feels good again. 

My brother and me


I was so excited that Heather got to join us for the run as well.  It seems like it's been a while since we've run together and I've missed our time together!


Hollie, Fast Cory's sister also joined us for the run.  She's training for her first marathon in a couple of weeks.  You can tell she's Cory's sister by her great sense of humor.  I enjoyed listening to her tales of pacing Cory during his 100 miler last year.  I hope to get to run with her again soon and look forward to hearing all about her first marathon!  There's nothing like your first!


We had run on some pretty technical stuff.  Lots of rocks and roots.  It felt like an obstacle course a lot of the time.  But I was pretty proud of myself for not falling.  I'm kind of infamous for tripping and catching myself several times during trail runs and even going down a few times.  So after we got on the nice soft dirt covered in pine needles, I must have let down my guard a little.  I tripped on a tree root and went down.  In my mind it was really graceful.  More like a somersault.  But in reality, it probably looked like a face plant.  I wiped myself off and went on our way.


About 5 minutes later Heather went down.  And being the good friend I am I took her picture before helping her up.  :)



It looked like an enchanted forest much of the time. It was really really beautiful.  It was busy though.  Especially towards the end.  I am used to not seeing a single soul on the trails and we were passing people and their dogs the entire time.  Crazy busy.


As we were on the way home, we stopped for some lunch and it was here that I realized that I still had quite a bit of dirt on my face.  No wonder people were asking me if I had fallen.  What a day...

8 comments:

Josh said...

Looks like a great run! Hollie is EXTREMELY fun to run with! If you ever need someone to run with during a 20 mile run ... she's a hoot!

susette said...

This looks soooo fun!! Next time you are down let me know. I would love to go with you guys. I would love to run with Hollie someday too. She seems like a sweetie.

Sweat Is My Sanity said...

Your pics make me excited to move back to Utah...I've been so nervous that I'll miss AZ too much but let's be real...it's way prettier in Utah. Love that you took a pic of your friends spill before helping her up...in true blogger fasion! :)

Tasha Malcolm said...

Looks like a really beautiful place to enjoy a run. Glad you had fun and a few laughs along the way. I tend to steer clear from trail running because I have fallen hard before, but it looks like you were okay. :-)

Jeff Gallup said...

Wow.. what an amazingly beautiful trail!

Julia said...

omg. so fun!!! i am unbelievably jealous! looks like the best lil running group ever! and the trails look so peaceful and perfect and gorgeous! MISS YOU EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Unknown said...

Wow!! Gorgeous trails! I will be daydreaming of running there ....

Unknown said...

Hi Jen, You sure do have the views in Utah! You all look so healthy and happy. "It's a good day to be alive" resonates from the photographs! :)