Bear Canyon Loop trail run

Today, I ran 17.5 miles on the Bear Canyon loop in Sabino Canyon with David M. He had just run 18 miles the day before, so I was hoping he would have sand bags for legs and be a little slower for me, but, as usual, he was raring to go with energy to spare. Keep an eye on this guy; I am sure he is going to do some amazing things in the ultra world. Me, on the other hand...slow as molasses. Is it allergies? The iron deficiency still? Or just hills that I'm no good at? Will I ever get better at trail running? David says I'm too hard on myself; that this loop is challenging.

The Bear Canyon loop starts at the Sabino Canyon parking lot, heads out towards 7 Falls, and then goes up towards the East Fork, connects with Sabino Canyon trail, and then up to Phoneline trail. We ran Phoneline trail on the return instead of the Sabino Canyon tram road. It took a long time to do this run, but returning on Phoneline trail just takes longer than running the road back on the last part. I'm also terrible on the uphills, so I tend to walk those a lot. I have to do something about that.

Total cumulative elevation gain/(loss): 4,112/(4,229) feet

On this run, a great deal of the elevation gain is on the first half and the majority of the elevation loss is on the second half. This is my second running of this loop (first was with TTR and I had a mighty sore ankle that day). I would really like to do it more often. Beautiful. The cactus are blooming right now and the saguaros all look like they have little hats on them. :)

Lots of cloud cover out today, which was fabulous! We got a few sprinkles of rain falling on us on the last 2 or so miles, but it felt good. What a great run. I didn't feel so bad about missing the Gunnison 50k (which was today) after all. Maybe I'll do that one next year.

I ran 40 miles total this week. I hope to keep this mileage up over the summer, with some additional hill training thrown in. On June 1st (when registration opens), if I can get in, I'm signing up for the Imogene Pass run, which is on September 12th. Holy Cow. Oh, and I also signed up for the Run with the Roosters race, which is new this year, and is on July 12th. Pretty soon, I'll have my race calendar filled. That's the way I like it!