Ominous Clouds at Whiterock

I got up this morning feeling glad that I could run for an hour before I had to be at C.’s soccer game.  I was pretty sure I would be sucking wind behind the entire group and thought briefly about bringing my iPod, something I NEVER do on a Saturday run.

I quickly did the math and decided that I could run for an hour.  That would give me 10 minutes to get home and about 30 minutes to get a shower and eat before I had to leave for the soccer game, after which we were headed to the local high school theater for a “dry tech”.  In theatrical terms this means that the technical people are at the rehearsal setting cues.  We do this before any actors are around because we need to create scenes and won’t do a run-through of the show with cues until they are built.

Because I couldn’t stay for coffee and had already decided to wear shorts come hell or high water, I was pretty unencumbered when I left the house.  No coffee mug, jacket, extra fleece for when I start to get cold once the sweat dries… just me, my Garmin (so I could turn around at 30 minutes and head back to the car) and camera.

I showed up to the East Boulder/Whiterock trailhead at 6:50, a full 10 minutes before our planned meeting time.  The sun was doing pretty things with the clouds, mountains and dry grasses, and I took a few minutes to play with the settings on my camera with hopes that I could capture something worth keeping.

View of the Flatirons from the Whiterock Trailhead in Boulder

The ladies started to pull into the parking lot, and I seriously had to laugh at the literal line of cars our group created!  The bummer part was that so many of us were “solo” today; we couldn’t do our usual carpools for reasons such as mine plus a few others (people had to leave early, couldn’t stay for coffee, had to do errands after the run, etc).

We took off down the trail and for some reason no one passed me after I wound up at the head of our train.  Maybe no one was feeling especially frisky, but we stuck pretty close together and I did much better on the hills than I thought I would.

I kept checking my Garmin, but didn’t have to turn around until I reached the top of the big nasty hill!  The read-out said “29:02” for time, how perfect was THAT!!!  I took a moment to catch my breath, and when I turned around to head back to the cars two of my buddies were with me (they had to leave early too).  We stuck together until we hit the down-hill, and then it was all over from there.  My legs got excited about running WITH gravity, I gathered speed, and our trio turned into a solo and a duo somewhere far behind.  It felt so good to run downhill.  My quads felt so strong, my hip flexors were doing that happy thing they do when all the stars are in alignment, and I reached the trailhead with a 5 minute negative split.

This gave me a few minutes to retrieve my camera and get set up for a few shots.  The clouds were low and dark, giving that ominous morning look of thunderstorms that aren’t far off.

Ominous clouds approaching from the northwest.

I snapped a picture of the ladies running the last few yards of the trail, then said a quick goodbye and headed off to a date with my shower, breakfast, and a soccer game.