Blood Sweat & Beers Training Run 7-10-10 - Shannon

First of all - we had a huge turn out for this training run (minus my turtle buddy, Pam)!  FTR's Rock!

I'm smack dab in the middle - blue shirt, white cap

What a challenging course!!!!

We started out at 7a and it was already warm.  I had never run this route before, so I didn't know what to expect.  I did get a taste of some of this when we did the ADO to Rat Bar and back a month ago, but not this exact route.  The training run was for the upcoming Blood, Sweat & Beers Trail Run happening on Aug 1st.  There are 2 distances happening for this race and I'm scheduled to do the long one (10.4 miles). So our training run also consisted of both distances, and yes, I did the long run.

We first headed out on the old dam road (Auburn), then hit a single track that took us into China Bar where we hit the aquaduct.  We stayed on the aquaduct for about a mile, then we had a steep, challenging switchback to go down - I love the down!!  Once we came out of that we were back on a road for a very short distance, where we took a right turn back onto the trail that took us down some more.  Here is some of the view from this point.

These rocks were just stacked up like that.  Thought that was kind of cool.

Of course, I'm always in the back of the pack and I was the volunteered sweeper.  But of course, I had no clue where I was going, so I was quite please that I had my awesome trail veteran, Ken Crouse, sweeping with me.

This is the 2nd time Ken has been my hero! And I'm sure it won't be the last!

After this part, we were once again back on pavement, but now we start the climbing!

And we climbed, and we climbed, and we climbed some more.

I honestly believe there is more climbing than going down.

After you're on this for awhile you finally hit the Cardiac Hill bypass, which continues to climb, but at least you're on the dirt again.

Then you end up back out on the old dam road which takes you out to the old dam area.  I'm gonna leave the rest of the details for my actual race report.

All in all it was a good run and I managed to have yet another neausea-free run.  YEAH.

You can see all the pics from our training run HERE

This weekend Pam is doing the Tahoe Rim Trail 50k with several other fellow FTRs.

I, however, am not!  As it's my anniversary weekend and we're heading up to Lakes Basin area for some hiking and rest.

Blogging to follow next week by Pam and myself.

Have a great weekend!