Rants, Recipes, and Running

Last Saturday I raced in the Catalina State Park Trail race, which happens to be my favorite race that Tucson holds. It's not a huge race. There are about 300 people total. But it has breath-taking views, great support, and it's quite the challenge! The route is a 10.2 10.5 miles ( according to MY Garmin ) race. There are 2 loops that you complete. Within the loop, there is a 92 stair climb. While running on trail, you're pretty much running on sand the entire time. Which is not easy! You pretty much suck wind the while 10+ miles. The views are just incredible, though! I did this race last year, and happened to place 1st in my age group, so I felt pretty serious about "defending my title". (another perk to a smaller race. Placing!!) I'm not elitist. After I did last year's race, I got motivated to become a better trail runner. So I really started incorporating it into my workout plans. And I definitely beat my time, but didn't do as well ...

Here are my current currently's! Reading : I am currently reading "The Kitchen House", which I am having a very difficult time really enjoying. It's a good book, but it seems to be moving slow. Or I'm just moving slow. One of the two... Thinking : About how amazing my coffee tastes on my 1st free morning in several weeks, where I don't have a workout or work to rush to. These quiet morning are so therapeutic! Frustrated : With the cactus hair-like-thorn lodged in the bottom of my foot from yesterday. And no, it wasn't from my race! It was from cleaning the pool, while walking around our back yard barefoot yesterday afternoon. (Here's your Cactus Thorn 101 for the non-desert dwellers: There are some large thorns that can easily be pulled out. Then there are this little hairs of thorn that hurt 10x worse . Usually a tweezers can't grab them. So if duct tape doesn't pull them out, the cactus thorn removal is self-limiting. You have to be pati...