Outdoor Training Run - Teller Farms - Sunday, July 18

Sunday long run... this one was different because I actually went running with BOTH of my sisters (which is a rarity). I met up with L at her work and then we drove to west Boulder to meet W at the Teller Farms trailhead. It looked overcast, so we were hoping the temps would stay down a bit. Without planning, all of us were wearing combos of pink and black. Matchy, matchy! We headed out around 2:45 pm, and immediately I was happy to be on yet another different trail:

Five minutes in, we started getting rained on. It came down hard and fast (with a little hail). I'd take the rain (and yes, even hail) over 90+ degree temps and no shade any day!  The first 30 minutes were regular "run" pace, which W and L kept a bit slower (probably to humor me, I am slower than they are). The next 30 minutes were tempos (? or intervals?) - 1 minute fast (5K race pace) and 2 minutes slow (regular "run" pace). That did make for time going by faster, and I really appreciated those 2 slower minutes!

During one of the walk breaks after we got done with tempo (? intervals?), I took this shot - which shows the storm we ran through earlier:

At the last turnaround we were "running" (and I use that term loosely, I was barely moving faster than a walk) up a steep grade. We ran across a plateau in the open space:

And I encountered something besides weeds!

Stopped my Garmin at just under 1 hour 40 minutes (which included some stops, bathroom break, etc) and logged 8.81 miles. They were not easy! This was actually the shortest long run I've done in a few months, but I worked hard.

We had a few blocks to walk to get back to the car (through some pretty tall wild grass). I bet I got a thousand mosquito bites in just those few minutes. W realized at the parking lot that she had her car key... for the car she did NOT drive. And it was the one time she actually locked the car. Whoops :D