Lot of running at Tucson Mountain Park

Love running with my best friend.

Dallas and I have been running a LOT out at Tucson Mountain Park. Over the holidays, we did two runs - a 10 mile and a 12.5 mile. Since there was no run scheduled with TTR, we decided to head back out there again. Good place to get a lot of runnable miles. I'll need that with Pemberton and Old Pueblo coming up.

We started at Gates Pass -  Yetman TH. We took that to the Golden Gate intersection and ran Golden Gate trail. New trail out there for me.

Lots of cholla cactus on the Golden Gate trail and nice singletrack. A little climb on the way back.

We then ran Yetman trail and then looped around on Starr Pass trail (on the Kinney Rd. side).

Next - down 36th St. trail. Cool saguaro cactus 'alley' on this trail. Don't believe the sign - it says .9 miles and it is about 2 miles to the TH.

Dallas is the quintessential 'forefoot' runner

We also ran out and back to Starr Pass TH. We found out later that Outside magazine was doing mountain bike testing out there. When we reached the Starr Pass TH, there was a U-Haul unloading a pile of mountain bikes. Luckily, we got out of there and back on Yetman before they got going.

Heading back up to Gates Pass at the end kind of sucked - very rocky uphill and then rocky downhill. We got 'er done, though!

Yeah, one time in 100, I get ahead of Dallas.

22 miles in 5:16. Slow, but we hit some rocky sections with some climbs. We had 25 minutes of 'non-moving time' on the Garmin - we took a few breaks. 2,400 feet of elevation gain - not bad for Tucson Mountain Park.

This place is where I practiced learning how to trail run. One of my favorite places.