One Hundred Acre Woods Trailblazer hike

Wow, 20 hikers today for our Trailblazer hike into the One Hundred Acre Woods. 

It was a bit grey looking for our start today at Marine Park.

We connected with the Interurban Green way trail system and walked towards Fairhaven Park.

The trail was in pretty good condition, only a few muddy places. I had hiked this area once before in 2012 with the Trailblazers (click here to read that post) and it was quite wet & muddy that day.

As you look at the photo below, which trail would you take - the one to the left or the one to the right?

If you chose the left, you chose wisely. 

That's just what we did :-)

There were a lot of Holly trees amongst the Cedar and Douglas fir in the forest.

The best part of the day......we spotted our first Trillium of the year.

Our fearless leader "Pat", didn't want us to be caught in a downpour so he led us out of the forest and back on to the Interurban trail to make our escape while it was still fairly pleasant out.

We ate our lunch in a civilized manner, at real Picnic tables. Hurray!

There were several tables to choose from, so we broke up into groups and enjoyed our lunches before heading back to our cars. 

It was a light drizzle at this point, just enough for us to need our coats and hats.

Excellent decision, fearless leader :-)

Endomondo stats:

Total miles hiked - 5.65 miles

Minimum Altitude - 3 feet

Maximum Altitude - 261 feet

Total Ascent - 223 feet

Total Descent - 291 feet

Spartan Race training

A couple of weeks ago I posted that I had signed up for my first Spartan Race. I already have a consistent exercise schedule going on, I hike with the Senior Trailblazers every Thursday and on the other days I run & do some exercises at home. Even though I'm a consistently active person I still felt like I was going to be sick when I clicked on the finish the transaction and paid my entry. I had watched my daughter and son in law compete in the Pac West Spartan Sprint Race, in Washougal, Wa. last August so I have a fair idea of what's in store for me. 

 I'll be doing the Montana Sprint. 

There are 3 levels of Spartan racing: 

Sprint 

Super 

Beast

Each level has it's own distance & number of obstacles to be completed. A "Trifecta" is when a Sprint, Super & Sprint are all completed in one calendar year.

 If you click on the photo below to expand it you will see that some of the obstacles are classified, some of the details are left out :-) to be discovered as they were on the course. All Spartan Races are this way, they leave some parts a mystery. The course below was for the Pac West Spartan race in Washougal, Wa. 

To up my training for the Montana Sprint I follow the Spartan Workout of the day or WOD. Here is a screenshot of what I did today. I'm following the workouts one day delayed so that it will work out with my existing hiking/running days.

I'm really lacking in upper body strength, but I'm really enjoying the workouts. In a Spartan Race each non completed or skipped obstacle has a 30 BURPEE (or squat thrust) penalty. So I'm trying to do burpees "often" throughout the day as well. Every day is a new adventure in training for me, who knew when I was watching that race last August that I would be signed up for one the following May!
Aroo.....