Blanchard mtn. trail run take two

Last week I learned a critical lesson, never get a deep tissue massage the day before a long trail running day. Last week's training run was a mental battle for me. Running with completely spent legs isn't fun. All of my massages in the future will be earlier in the week so they won't interfere with my all important weekend trail training workouts. Spartan BEAST training involves being mentally tough as well as physically tough, so all was not lost. I chose to keep running last week all of the way to the parking lot even though my body was done. "Mental" training day complete! ;-)

Today's run was what last weeks distance was supposed to be before we cut it short because of my fatigue.

You can read about our route HERE in last week post. This week was a repeat of last weeks except instead of heading down the incline trail we took a left turn up towards North Butte on Blanchard Mountain.

What a view, looking towards Bellingham Bay.

After coming down from the Butte trail we enjoyed going a short distance on the Lily lake trail and then back towards the incline trail, down it for a ways, then back to the map to see where we really wanted to go ;-) 

We were correct the first time, Lily lake trail was our route. 

This trail connects with the trail we started on at the beginning of day's run. This section of the trail is really people friendly, lots of benches for resting!

We passed many hikers on today's route. Samish Overlook and the Oyster Dome trails are always heavily travelled areas now. When we were about 2 miles from the parking lot several riders on horseback met us on the trail. We learned on a previous encounter with horses on trails that it's not only good to step out of their way but to speak to them as they pass so they don't get spooked when what they thought was a tree, starts to move. I guess it's unnerving to horses. So now we say "hi horse, we're people not trees!" The riders are always appreciative that we know how to respond to their horses on the trail.

It was a good run, so much better than last week. Fresh legs are good legs and the distance covered was better too!

Endomondo stats:

total miles - 10.72

minimum altitude - 938 feet

maximum altitude - 2302 feet

total ascent - 2241 feet

total descent - 2252 feet