I took some time to ponder the nature of long distance, endurance running. It is about so much more than the physical motion of putting one foot in front of another for an extended period of time. It is the prep, what do I wear? It is the nutrition, what do I eat and when do I eat it? It is the mental, how can I convince myself to keep going when it is against everything I want to do? What do I think about for that long?

Three hours and 17 miles later, we completed our training run and are probably three of few people (five if you count Kaidree and Jen) who know the dirt side of Eagle Road.

In retrospect, I think the reason the Waterfall run is so hard is because it is all up and then all down. There is not a lot of rolling hills. It reminds me a lot of the infamous 1/2 marathon in Boise called the Race to Robie Creek which is eight miles of uphill followed by five miles of intense downhill. Unlike Robie, waterfall has equal miles uphill and downhill but like Robie, each is equally hard because having your body get pounded on the downhill after so much climbing really takes its toll on you.

Because I desperately needed a stress-relieving, feel-better-about-myself run and because we were kicking off our 50K training schedule, Anna and I decided to brave the snow and head out on a Saturday afternoon run. To show how motivated we were, we initially planned to run at the YMCA at 9:30. I nearly choked my daughter by shooting Vitamin D liquid too quickly down her throat which traumatized both me and her so I texted that I was not going to be able to run until we had both recovered. That led to me wanting to take a nap with Belén because I was too nervous if I let her sleep on her own she might die because the Vitamin D was in her lungs or something. Which led to waking up around 12:30 starving. Which led to being lazy on the couch and then Andy going and getting us BURGERS and TATER GEMS (seriously, like that is going to help the situation…but yes, I ate EVERY LAST BITE!) which led to me delaying the run yet another 45 minutes so I could digest a bit. And we finally met up at Anna’s house around 3:15pm.