Quad Cruncher/Shin Basher!

Today we joined the Fat Ass Club for the Quad Cruncher at UBC Research Forest. It is a 10km loop that is uphill on one side, flat at the top of the loop and then a steep downhill to complete the loop. You can run as many loops as you wish and then record your kms and time on the piece of paper under the wiper blade on Karl's van. Neil and I arrived at 8AM to just a few cars in the parking lot. Some early birds were starting a 7:30AM. Half way up the hill we ran into Karl and Gilles coming down the hill. They are doing a 100 mile run in a few weeks time and are desperately seeking hill work. This is a great course for that but today we ran into quite a bit of snow and icy/slushy conditions which made it tougher and slow going. Karl and Gilles were the only other runners we saw but heard that a few managed to get lost in the woods. That can happen easily in this forest due to the many trails and logging roads branching off. I often run this loop with my iPOD but today I found that my mind was very active with many thoughts going through it while I was out there so I never turned the music on. Sometimes that happens, other times there are minimal thoughts! Right at the end of the last loop we saw Cheryl. She came out after lunch for one loop. We had lots to catch up on and talked until the 3 of us started to shiver and had to get moving to stay warm. Tim caught up with me for the last few strides before he headed out for another loop. Today when we started I was planning to do 3 loops but Neil managed to convince me to go for 4 loops when I had finished the 3rd. I was glad he did as we did a tough 40km, and that was 4hrs, 45 minutes so that really kicked up the training this week again! Two weeks in a row with long Saturday runs! That will help going into the upcoming 50km events. One next weekend, the other 2 weeks later. Here's hoping my quads and shins will be OK after all the crunching and bashing they took today going up and going down!