12 miles of hills

Sometimes when you don't plan things, things just happen (duh!). So the rough plan for Sunday's long run (I couldn't do it on Sat because of Mia's tri) was to run 18 miles. Only I hadn't really figured out a route in Umstead. So Jeff and I just sort of started to run. When we got to the Reedy Creek T, we turned right to the West Gate. This would have been 4 miles one way. However, I started smelling jet fumes (see previous post) from airplanes taking off at the nearby airport. So we decided to stop at Airport Overlook, turn around, then go the the other end of Reedy Creek Trail. This gave us 7 miles at this point. Then, we decided to do the South Turkey Trail. Now this trail has all the most punishing hills in all of Umstead. We're talking 6 or 7 or maybe 8 major, steep hills in a span of about 4.5 miles.

We finished in 2 hours, 20 min, for an average of 12+ min/mile. And I felt good the whole way. Just minor pains in the left knee- nothing to fret about. Average HR was probably 160 per minute. I say probably, cause I just turned off the time feature of my heart rate monitor- it was just beeping the whole time :) Jeff wanted to run a few more miles, but I decided not to push my luck, since my last run was Monday. But I think we can do 20 miles next week, then 22-24 miles on Oct. 13.

So, we have run all of Umstead's trails. We have conquered all its hills. Psychologically, I have broken another barrier. I love hills!