Running Brice Creek
Today I finally got to run at Brice Creek, a place I've wanted to run for a long time. It is one of my favorite mtb trails, great scenery, and one of the more rocky trails I know of around here (which is still fairly tame compared to somewhere like Tahoe). I was running by about 8:15am this morning, and in an unusual bit of August weather, it was 48 degrees! I donned an Icebreaker GT t-shirt, and then some Pearli arm warmers, which turned out to be a perfect combo. Temp I don't think got any warmer during the run, and I even got a bit cold towards the end.
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I did wind up running in the Inov8 shoes. This was interesting, given how rocky the trail was, and how much more of the trail you feel with these shoes. However, it was fine, and actually, turned out to be a great choice, given these shoes have excellent toe bumpers, and I needed them a half dozen times today! Ugh, just nailed my toes into rocks several times, and in fact, on the last time, it tripped me up enough that I wound up having to put my right hand to the ground, but that bounced me back up. The only other point of note was that these shoes are a bit roomy on me. In the toe box that's great, but across the top of the foot they're a smidge sloppy at times. I should probably try lacing up tighter, but so far this hasn't really seemed to be a problem, and I'm trying to work out if the sloppiness is bad, or just different. Sometimes it seems a bit more forgiving when you get into tricky terrain, allowing you foot to move as needed.
The run was 5.5 miles one way, 11 miles round-trip according to their map. Too bad my watch wasn't accurate, as it shows a perfect half marathon:
I did a really nice pace. I was very safe in the rockier sections, really picking my way through, watching the foot work. It's a bit of an isolated location, although there were A LOT of campers out in the area on this day, so if I had gotten injured, it probably wouldn't have been too big an issue to get help. Still, I'd rather just take it a bit easier and enjoy the run, and stay injury free! Took 2 hours to do the run, which is about what I'd been figuring. I did not make it up to the waterfall, but hope to another time. That adds a very solid climb and I think about 2+ miles to the total. But overall, the mileage, conditions, etc. were just about perfect for me today. I did have some light right knee pain, as I've been having lately, but just sort of kept ignoring it.
Finally, I really love when Matt Hart takes short bits of video during or of runs. So, I gave it a shot using my iPhone today. Pretty bad really - it's quite hard to keep your arm real steady while running, trying to keep the camera pointed at the trail, and also watch where you're running yourself! Here are the two videos. The second one is a bit less shaky, and also shows some of the rockiness of the trail (well, you can sort of make it out :) and I think I'll make them shorter next time, seems like maybe 15 seconds is better than 30...
