October training

October 2011 was not a normal training month for me. After running the St. George marathon on the first day of the month my legs were pretty wrecked because I had not yet fully recovered from Wasatch 100 and the marathon just killed them. I took it pretty easy the next few weeks and just did some easy maintenance runs. I did do a really fun run on the 15th with Craig, Matt W. and Matt V. to the summit of Grandeur and then down Church Fork to the Pipeline trail, out the canyon and then back to the trailhead. This has become one of my favorite training runs and I do it about once per month. Here is the report:

I met the guys at 7:00 am at the west ridge trailhead. Well, I met Craig and Matt W, but Matt Van Schitzel (Van Horn) was nowhere to be found. His car was there so we speculated about where he was and after about 10 minutes we decided to start and he came running down the trail. Dealing with a case of insomnia he decided to get up early and do a lap to the summit and then meet us for round two. Awesome.

It was pretty windy to start and after about 10 minutes it was calm and warm as we made our way up the ridge. Craig went out a little faster and I spent most of the time on the way up with Williams with MattV not far behind. We reached the summit in 1:11 and took a break to snap some pics and I had a gel. Craig had to go back down because of time constraints, but we continued on down the Church Fork trail to the Pipeline. The fall colors are at a peak right now and the trail was absolutely unreal. Stunning views in every direction. We ran the Pipeline at a pretty casual pace and at Rattlesnake Gulch Matt and I decided to go down to the canyon road instead of up and over the saddle following the Grandeur Fun Run trail. MattVS looked a little disappointed that we weren't going up. Come on Matt, you already had almost 7K in elevation gain on the day. He is definitely a vert whore (one of the reasons I love the guy).
The run down Rattlesnake was fast and fun, but unfortunately we didn't see the Millcreek flasher to the dismay of everyone. We ran down the canyon road and then back to our car at a pretty decent pace. It was an incredible morning.