I got up early (5:15) and ran the Goshawk ridge trail loop today. The way I run it this is an 11.5 mile loop with 1235 Feet ascent.
The last time I ran this loop was Feb 12. That day I ran the loop in 1:54 – 9:59/mile.
Today I ran it in 1:38:51 – 8:36/mile – which was a comfortable pace.
Its cool to see the incremental improvement in fitness by looking back at past results.
This is a gorgeous run in the early morning. Its largely in the shade and pine trees. It’s a pretty fast trail because its never very steep. I stopped running it for a while because I was more interested in the higher, steeper climbs. But it was really fun to come back to this trail and be able to do a faster paced trail run. I remember when I was running this in the winter the climb up goshawk ridge seemed hard. Today it seemed super easy. I guess that’s due to fitness level and also being accustomed to 800+ ft/mile climbs lately.
Also enhancing the fun of the run this morning were the really great sounds of two albums I got recently: Band of Horses: Infinite Arms and Yeasayer: Odd Blood. I really enjoy a lot of the songs on both albums, and a couple songs in particular on both are outstanding.
Did an hour of pushups, pullups and core p90x afterward. Feeling groovy.
That is GREAT loop. You can take the back side beyond the bridge and head all the way back into Eldo.
I agree, I like the loop a lot. One of these days I’ll have to run back into Eldo and up the back side of bear from there and back. Unfortunately I’m not quite at the point where a 30 mile weekend run is all that easy for me…someday though.