Black Cap/Whitaker Woods

Tuesday- I woke up to sunny skies and cooler, drier weather after a night filled with thunderstorms. As my schedule typically dictates, I had to get out for my run first thing since John comes home around 10am. After Monday night's run (only about 12 hours in between, as usual), I knew I wanted to do a mountain run, but nothing too long, so I drove over to Hurricane Mountain Rd to do one of my local favorites up Black Cap. I parked at the base of the road up to the water tank, then took Red Tail Trail up to the Black Cap Trail and then to the top of Black Cap. My legs were a little tired from the night before, but I still felt good. Spot joined me since she was left behind at the house. She's almost 12, but she still really loves running with me.

Spot on Black Cap

Us on Black Cap

Couldn't decide which picture I liked best so I chose both. Ha ha.

I looped down the other side of Black Cap back to the Black Cap Trail and then back towards Red Tail, but opted to continue along the ridge and run back down via the Kettle Ridge Trail. Kettle Ridge has a lot of switchbacks, so it's a very gradual run back down. Spot chose to cut off all of the switchbacks. Those have never made sense to any of my dogs. :) Finished up the run with 7.2 miles and 1,654 ft of gain. Spot had a nice swim in the brook by the car and then we drove home.

John came home, and his friend came over to play. I wasn't going to have a repeat of last Tuesday with me stuck at the house all day, so I let him play until 2pm, and then we headed to the beach at Conway Lake. It was almost 90 degrees there, so I did a lot of swimming, and John had a really good time. His dad was out there canoeing on the lake when we got there, and I kind of hoped we wouldn't run into him, but no such luck. He and his girlfriend paddled up just as we were about to leave. It wasn't too awkward. His girlfriend is really nice and talked to me. He snubbed me, as usual, but that's better than the alternative. Ha ha.

John and I drove right to Whitaker Woods from Conway Lake to run my last race of the Series. I had absolutely zero desire to race, so I just did my usual jog on the course, running my slowest time this year in 22:23. I hardly put a bit of effort into it except on the big hill where you have no choice. So that's 6 out of the 9 for me. One more race is left on Aug 11th, but I have other (much better!) plans for that day. I should have the 30-39 age group all wrapped up. This will only be my second time winning it, since the other 3 years, I never ran enough of the races to count for an award.

John and I left right after to go to ninja class. It was fun for him as always. He had a surprising amount of energy after swimming in the lake for two straight hours, but he's a strong, fit kid, so I guess it shouldn't surprise me. It was home from there to eat, shower, take out the dogs then go to bed in prep for a 24 hour shift on Wednesday.