Today was the second event in the Scott Cougar Mountain Series. At least they called it an 8-mile event this year since last year it was billed as 7.5 miles, it is really 8.2 miles. Christian and I volunteered together doing parking duty today and ran together again on what turned out to be a pretty perfect morning for running with cool temps and only a very light shower. Trails were in good shape throughout after a few mostly dry days in the area. I opted for Merrell Trail Gloves on my feet just in case the rains came on hard like at Grand Ridge, did not want another slippery sandal incident.
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Grand Ridge 5 mile
Finish after an hour of rain, still smiling.
I had plans for June 5 that involved finding clear skies somewhere in the NW and photographing the transit of Venus in front of the sun. The jet stream had another plan and headed south causing a huge storm to swing in from San Francisco to British Columbia blocking out the sun all the way to Montana. Realizing I was stuck in the clouds I decided to just do Evergreen’s Solstice 5-mile run at Grand Ridge instead since I had to run anyway.
It rained pretty much all morning with showers in the afternoon and then it dumped hard while I was driving over to the trailhead, going to be a wet one. I had my Trail Gloves and BareGrips in the car figuring I’d decide which to wear when I got there. I had my Lunas on as I jogged over to registration and I got a bit of encouragement to just wear them. Figuring that my feet would be wet no matter what, I decided to be a bit badass and run the steep and wet Ridge in the Luna Leadvilles, it would be a good test of the limits of these things.
Lord Hill 10k
Lord Hill was my fourth trail run last season and became my fourth trail run this season too though this year it was only the 10k for me and not the half, plus I was more prepared on the footwear front. This was going to be my first run in months not in Lunas, I knew wearing the sandals could potentially be dangerous in a few spots on this trail so I laced up my Inov-8 BareGrip 200s which gave me all the traction I needed. After finishing I realized that aside from one section I probably would have been fine with the Lunas.