Part of this has been my seemingly increasing disappointment with the lack of good close trails for mountain biking.  Road riding here is pretty good, although I'm a bit bored with it at the moment, and road riding has always been more of a fitness thing for me.  Trail running has become somewhat of a stand-in for mountain biking.  It at least gets me on trails, which is really where I want to be.  But, I feel like I'm losing riding, and I'm not sure what to think about that at the moment: I'm both quite mad and frustrated about it, but also sort of feeling like it's just this moment in life.

What I'm holding on to right now is that I'm pretty excited to go run - I really want to run, and run most days.  There are days when I really need a rest, or I'm having some ankle or other joint pain from a longer run, and need a break, but most days I want to get out there.  That is super healthy in my mind, and I'm glad to have that.  One thing I'm slightly worried about is that I've started to yearn for other trails to run, aside from the Ridgeline trails (which are awesome, but I'm the kind of person that really needs variety).  I'll be heading to Pisgah soon, and I'd like to see about running on some of the mtb trails, like Goodman, South Willamette, Salmon Creek, Brice, and so on but darn it if those aren't a good 45+ minute drive away, and just become the same problem as mountain biking...  Once I have to spend nearing two hours in the car, it just becomes a real buzz kill, not to mention it all of a sudden turns into a minimum of a half day time hit.  One of the reasons I took up running was to have a short time commitment workout.  When I was only typically running 3-4 miles, that worked out great, I could be  home and showering within an hour after a 5k-ish run on my local Ridgeline trails.  I guess the good part is that I can now run 1-2 hours, so driving a ways for a run isn't quite as bad if I do a longer run.

I look forward to doing some good mountain bike rides this summer, but I just don't know when those will be.  Summer is already getting busy, I don't have much budget or time to travel beyond what we're already doing, and the trails that really get my blood running are 2+ hour drive, or a day's drive (Tahoe) away.  Hopefully the trail running will keep me busy with some trails and help alleviate the pain of not getting to mtb much.  I just hope it's not something that I'll wake up one day and realize was a poor stand-in.  I really don't think so though.  I typically have WAY too big a grin when I'm done with a run, and am having a lot of fun seeing where I'll be able to take my running - getting into longer distances, and improving my abilities.  Now to figure out how to squeeze a run into a very busy day today...