A few club runners met Saturday morning at the Bagel Shop. Steve, Alan and Scott were planning a 12 mile loop, but Rebecca and I were going a bit longer and "a bit" slower. The route we chose was up and back on Grizzly Gulch for a total of 16 miles and around 3100 feet elevation gain and loss. Rebecca was trying to figure out the grade of the road with her Garmin. Not sure what it told her, but my a** told me areas were STEEP. It's been good for me to run with Rebecca. Even though we took our time, we ran the entire thing except for the hourly gel stop.

The men headed up a parallel road and were nice enough to swing back down Grizzly to say hi. The road was packed snow and areas of ice and I was the only one to forget the Yak Trax. My ASR's did fine though, and by the time we headed back it was slush. I had received a few Accel Gels in the mail, so tried them out during this run. Between the Heed in my pack and the gels, I felt great. My only complaint was the bite valve on the Nathan bladder. It's difficult to open/close and if left open, it just constantly leaks. I'm thinking a CamelBak bladder is in my future.

Rebecca heading up Grizzly Gulch

This afternoon, I did a little tempo work. I won't even post my pace per mile. Before I left DC, I was running 8:30-8:45 miles on a pretty consistent basis.Not fast, but I was happy with it. The last couple years, I've slowed way down due to laziness and a lot of walking during trail runs. This winter, I'm going to make the most of my road running time and try to get at least a little faster.

As a follow-up to my health goals...

I've been getting about 80-100 oz of water per day.

Only missed lunch one day last week - ended up eating at 3pm.

Got in 25 miles while recovering from my lung infection.

Still not sleeping well, and am exploring options for the insomnia.

And, congratulations to Emily and Jason on the birth of their baby girl!