Did ten trail miles at Reach 11 Recreation Area this morning, and finished up by this picnic table:

                   

There's nothing like a picnic table for a post-run stretch. The combination of surface and varied heights, and the big flat area on top for laying down to do the Plow and the Bow (although my Plow isn't that graceful, and my Bow isn't really a bow - it's more like an upside down Bow, with much more bend of the hamstrings and less of the back).

A picnic table that's covered is a wonderful thing to find in the desert sunshine; since it's nice and comfortable under there, I tend to want to do more stretches rather than less, because as long as I'm stretching, I'm not back out there under that sun. This morning, I think I was stretching for over twenty minutes before I finally headed back to the car to head to the gym to shower to go to work - and didn't get to work until about a quarter till nine, so maybe a picnic table that's covered isn't such a wonderful thing after all.

That bag you see is my cooler bag - it's just a standard 1-gallon Zip-Loc freezer bag that I keep in the freezer with a small bottled water to act as the cooling element. When I head out to my run, I drop my RockStar and my recovery drink into the bag with the frozen bottle of water, and that keeps them nice and cold until I'm done with my run.  Once upon a time, I used a small PlayMate cooler, but somebody picked it up and toted it off - nobody has ever wanted to tote off my freezer bag.

Ten miles; it had been quite a while since I'd done ten miles. A quick check of my running log shows that I did 20 on the 27th of March, at the Durango Mountain Club fitness center on the dreadmill, so that means that it's been almost three months. The last time that I went 10.5 miles was on February 20th, on the dreadmill at the Hartford City YMCA in Indiana. I haven't been farther than 10.5 miles since the 28th of November, when I did twelve miles with the Daisy Mountain Running Club. Wow. I didn't have a very good winter (okay, there was the little matter of skiing 51 days, sure. That might have interfered a bit)

I currently intend to be back out at Reach 11 next Wednesday, to do 11 miles, and then I'll be doing 12 the Wednesday after that (although I'll be running those miles in San Antonio) - that should be my first 40 mile week since the motorcycle wreck. I'm not sure what I'm going to do then.

Two years ago, I swore off of running more than 40 miles per week (with and without a solemn oath) - but I'm hoping to break that vow this summer. The Imogene Pass Run is coming in just three months, and that is going to involve more vertical climb and descent than the Rim-2-River-2-Rim run that Patrick and I did then, and it will be at a much higher elevation - and, before I swore off of greater-than-40-mile-weeks, I was doing up to 50 with hill repeats.

I do wish that I could get a nice picnic table installed at my other running spots - with a roof as well. Maybe I've got it backwards - maybe I should be looking for picnic tables, and running from those, rather than looking for trailheads.