All the leaves are brown...

After a horrendous winter with apocalyptic snow fall that was followed by record breaking heat waves this summer, DC has been punished with awful weather. However, somehow all of that seems like a distant memory with the beautiful autumn weekend we just had. This weekend was sunny, bright, a bit crisp and made more beautiful with the background of the leaves starting to change.

Crossing Rock Creek

Saturday morning, I was able to invite myself (thanks Alejandro and Rob) to my first ever trail run in Rock Creek Park (RCP). I was a real genius by leaving my Garmin GPS watch in the car searching for  signal instead of wearing it on my wrist for the run, so I don't know my distance, speed or heart rate. I do know I went out too fast as I tried to keep up with Rob and Alejandro for the first bit. Once I let them go and put  on my ipod, I was able to settle to a speed to keep my heart rate more normal and just enjoy being in this urban oasis - for non locals, RCP is giant park that intersects all of DC yet makes you feel like you're miles away in a beautiful forest. Once I decided to turn around, Rob tried to make sure I knew where I was going, and I thought I did... up until I started running over fallen trees I didn't remember before, and then had to cross the actual creek, and then hit a road. So, whoops, I got lost, but I had my phone on me, so google maps came in FTW. In total I was out at least 45 minutes, so I figure at the very least 4 miles. The other guys had gone longer, so once I found the parking lot, I used the extra time for some core work such as push ups, sit ups, lunges, etc. Rob very graciously let me invite myself to brunch at his house as well with a nice spread of bagels, fruit, and vanilla ice cream (although I was the only one that partook in ice cream). But in all, I think I am hooked; I really enjoy trail running. It made different parts of my legs sore - like right above my achilles, which is probably a good thing to strengthen (as Rob explained) more of the stabilizing and lateral muscles that don't get used when going in a straight line on the road.

On Sunday, Ty and Julia planned a great off-season activity of going for a hike in Old Rag, which is located a couple of hours outside of DC. According to Alejandro's garmin gps watch, it was a climb of over 2,500 ft for a distance of over 9.6 miles (probably closer to 10 if you include the walk from the parking lot to the start of the trail) which we did in around 4 hours of hiking (not including breaks). It was a great group that went out there so it combined two things I enjoy perfectly: training AND being social! I felt the burn again in my lower calves/upper achilles, and also my glutes and quads. The climb up had some surprisingly tough rock scramble climbing, so there was some good team work, including some key butt boosting. And in some sort of unspoken understanding, we all dressed up like Skittles - a taste the rainbow hike!