Little Cottonwood Trail

I was in the mood to run trails today since Leslie Peterson and I had planned a long run before she decided to go to the 'Beach House'. I was not sure how well I would do since I had a hard time falling asleep last night and was functioning on only 4 hours of sleep time.

After work I changed and headed up to the Little Cottonwood Trail at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon (what a coincidence). I have not done much hill running this year, so this was a good way to jump in. The trail is 3.25 miles each way and climbs about 1200 feet in that distance. Last year when I tried to run this trail I found a lot of it washed out from spring floods and actually went past the closed signs and had to balance over washed out bridges.

This year the trail and bridges have been repaired. The trail is in great shape and they have done a lot of work digging diversion ditches and placing 'speed bumps' on the trail to ensure it won't get washed out in the next few years.

Since it has been relatively hot and humid this year, I decided to run 100 steps/walk 100 steps on the way up. This year I have had so many runs where I am almost blinded from the sting of sweat in my eyes and it occurred again today. I reached the top in 58:02 and sat on a rock for a few minutes to get my heart and breathing under control. The ground under me was soaked with sweat after just a few minutes. Plenty hot out! Ran the entire 3.25 miles down to the Jeep in 45:01. I want to track this every few weeks to see if I can improve both the uphill and downhill times. I could tell my 'route sensing' abilities are not where they used to be – so need to spend more times on trails to improve that. If you run trails enough – you get a sense of where to pick a path that has the least chance of providing you with catching a toe or face plant opportunities.

I can tell tonight that I need to do lots more hills. After sitting here working on documentation for a Kindle app for 2 hours, I stood up to go downstairs and was so stiff I could hardly walk. Ah – the joys of getting in shape.

One sign of progress – my son, Kevin, told me tonight that my legs are looking fit. He's a good critic – so I accept his kind judgment.