Elk Meadow Trail: Take 2

Hmmm…. this view looks familiar.

Yep, it’s Sunday afternoon and we are headed to the mountains. Okay. We may have a slight addiction to clean crisp air, pine trees, and mountain sports, but who is judging?

Mr. B and we are attempting the Elk Meadow trail run again. Remember, what happened last time? Dehydration, hunger, rain, soreness, and a map navigation fail. So, not fetch. In order to avoid catastrophe again we came prepared.

Hydration: CHECK

Map Navigation: CHECK
(notice how Bret is checking the map, and not us….)

Chi running on mind: CHECK

To our surprise it was warmer than we thought when we started on the trail head. Even though we have lived in Colorado for over three years now, sometimes we forgot how intense the sun can be. Eh, details.

We walked about a half mile on the rocky trail to get our blood pumping. We were feeling motivated to get a farther distance in because we have only been attempting 2 to 3 miles of running at a time lately to work on our form and to give our hip a break. We were ready to rock out!

And rock out, we did. After we got through the switchbacks, which are always a pain in the butt to run, we reached some small hilly rollers, and let’er rip. We finally felt our whole body align. It was W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L. At that point we knew this trail was ours for the taking.

When we finished the 5 mile run, we breathed a huge sigh of relief. For one our hip wasn’t hurting. YAY! Two, we finally felt that runner’s high. Oh, runner’s high, how we have missed you.

We feel as though we are back, but still have a lot of work in front of us to do. But today, we will appreciate this small victory. At least this past month and a half hasn’t been a huge waste of time.

Who knows, maybe a marathon is in our cards?