Sunday Morning Long Run in the Grand Canyon

Awesome long run yesterday! Mark and I ran just over 16 miles down the South Kaibab Trail and up Bright Angel. What a privilege to live in Northern Arizona and have access to one of the greatest places on earth. It was a bit overcast and cool, perfect for running. The views were spectacular. We arrived at the park in time for the 7 am bus to the trailhead. As we took our first steps down the trail, I could feel my quads being shocked into arousal. After a mile or so I got into the groove and, aside from a few stops for pictures, it seemed that we were down at the Colorado River in no time. After a quick Gu and refill of the water bottle, we took our first steps toward gaining back the 5000+ feet we lost on the descent.

I was pleasantly surprised by our progress. We ran a majority of the trail, slowing down mostly during those high steps needed to get over the hundreds of waterbars on the trail. There were the 10 minutes or so that we were stuck behind a mule train on some of the most ideal running on the Bright Angel, just before Indian Gardens. But after cussing the donkeys and their riders, we passed them and were on our way up the last 4.5 miles of the trail. We were moving well until we got to those upper switch backs. We'd walk a section, then run the next, until we were about a half mile from the top. At that point we were able to run it in for the finish. Total run time: 3 hours, 38 minutes.

It was a great day. Neither of us have done a lot of hill work since last fall, so this was a good measure of our current level of conditioning. I'm pretty happy with where we're at right now. We haven't started working on serious elevation gains yet and I thought we handled yesterday pretty well. My muscles are feeling fatigued today, but not real sore; certainly not injured. I concentrated on my recovery efforts yesterday afternoon and am starting to get a feel for what I need to do. Success at Trans-Rockies really does have as much to do with recovery as it does with preparation for the actual running. We're at about 45 miles a week now so recovery, staying healthy is becoming a necessary focus of attention.  I'm looking forward to this final month of our base training before we start the hard stuff. The canyon run was just a taste of what's to come.    -jea