This morning, I finished my running year with a double summit of Schooley’s Mountain with Dave. Typically my love for sleeping in, prevents me from hitting the trails too early, but whenever I get the opportunity to trail run with someone else, I can’t turn it down, regardless of the start time (7am). In spite of the alarm clock, there are some definite advantages to the early trail run, we had the distinct pleasure of watching the sun rise as we ran to the mountain, which, for those of you who have never experienced a mountainside sunrise, is probably one of the most invigorating experiences available in nature.
Now, as the year comes to an end, many people will be celebrating, and making resolutions for the following 365.2425 days. While part of me still thinks that the change of the year is really an arbitrary deadline, it is a convenient start-date for change, starting over, and gives us all a simple means of quantifying our lives. That being said, I am, in fact celebrating the new year (I’ve never been big on party pooping…) and I do have a litany of lessons I’ve learned over the course of the past year, as well as things I’d like to improve on in the following. With that in mind, I’ve decided to not publish the full extent of my goals/plans/list of random improvements, but I will say this, Next year will include the following:
Ultramarathon(s)
Auditions
Recitals
Increased dedication to bipedal mountain travel
Additional cross-training/core work in an attempt to prolong good form, and make those super-long runs hurt that much less

Now, for some Pictures… according to Dave’s Garmin, we gained and lost just under 1300 feet, all of which during the middle 5.5 miles of a total 11.16 not a bad end to the year…

Rails to trails before the mountain

Base of Mountain… Sunrise

Fog over Long Valley

Rocks can make good tripods..

This was the SECOND stick stuck in my shoe today..