Jan 29-31

Thursday turned into a day of rest and time with the family.

Friday I was fortunate enough to run with coach Andy since he was coming of some medical issues and said he would take it easy on me. It was a beautiful afternoon and we heading east to Horse Butte. Since it was 58 degrees and we had been experience warm weather we thought the trail would be in good shape, wrong. It was warm and the snow had been melting but it was not soaking in quickly and the trail was very muddy and had some snow. We started out slow and navigated the slippery slope as we climbed up 350' in the first 5 miles. After that it goes down hill and the trail was a little better. The weather was great and the mountains were beautiful but we didn't get to see them much as the trail required you to keep your eyes down about 5' in front of you. As we approached a small hill at mile 8 I realized that I was close to my PR on this course. Once we hit 8.5 and it was flat to down hill to the finish I knew I could get my PR. So I told Andy lets go for it and he turned it up as we hit mile 9. I have only ran Horse Butte once and that was last April when I hadn't trained much so my time of 1:18:30 isn't spectacular. As we sped down our last hill and crossed the finish I stopped my watch and saw 1:18:05. Still not real fast but a decent training run in some not so good trail conditions.

Saturday was an easy 5 after the great Horse Butte Run and time to recover before my long run.