Cool Morning Trail Run

Again I woke through the night. At 3:30, I thought, maybe I should just get up. Nah. 5:00 AM, I thought the same, and again at 5:30. When my cell phone alarm finally rang at 6:00, I jumped up, “What the heck! What’s today? What am I supposed to do?” And then I remembered, today’s a stress-free morning – I’m going for a nice and easy trail run. Sunday’s the new member run for my group, and from experience have found the new member runs to be pretty stress-free. (Notice my STRESS on stress-free – I’m trying to tone it down in my life right now : ))

After a couple cups of coffee, I set out beneath big, gray cloudy skies. Rain drizzled as I made my way toward the freeway – just enough for one wiper’s worth. Let me tell you the relief I felt was great, knowing that I would not run this morning in the heat.

I met Tom at the Quail Hill Trail Head, and we took off running on a well groomed almost sandy path for a refreshing run in the Irvine foothills. It seemed like ages since we’ve run together, ages since I’ve run Quail Hill.

We began this morning’s run on an incline, nothing terrible, but still, it’s always tough for me to START running uphill. I really like about 3 miles of flat running to begin (downhill is nice too). One very nice thing about beginning on an uphill is that, if it’s an out-and-back like today, you know you’re gonna end on a downhill. I like that!

About a third of the way in, we met fellow club runners, Sheila and Dave, making their way in the opposite direction (two runs were posted for this morning). We stopped and chatted for a bit. We were all smiles – who wouldn’t be with this nice cool weather, STRESS-FREE run?

Obviously, I enjoyed my run this morning. With us both nursing injuries, I think we did pretty good (hopefully, Tom will say the same). Soon after, I was thinking about, planning bigger, harder runs, when I told myself – take a break, remember? You’re cutting back. Well, at least for October.

Miles joyfully logged this morning: 5.20