Bradbury, BRADBURY, Bradbury, Then Breather

Friday, Rick and I hit Bradbury for a loop of the Breaker, the last loop, to be precise.  It was hot and humid.  Neither of us felt particularly spry after this past week.  Poor Rick has barely gotten to run.  First he was putting in extremely long hours at work and then dealing with the death of his mom.  I'd like to say the Brad worked its magic, but...At least he was glad to get out and run.

Saturday was a day of long runs for lots of Monsters.  To beat the heat and finish with some day left, we met up at 7 am.  A group, mainly made up of 100 Mile Wilderness runners, were looking to do the Ultra-Xtreme Badass run (all the Bradbury Series races PLUS three miles to make 30).  Mindy had 21 on her training plan.  I wanted to do at least 18 of those and perhaps hang on for all of them.  Since the Ultra group needed an extra three and Mindy's planned route started with three, we all started out together.  I think it was Ian, Emma, Jeremy, Nate H., Julia, Nate A, Mindy and me.  Sorry if I left anyone off the list.

The three turned out to be more like 3.5, but nobody minded, better that way than short!  The larger group headed off on the Scuffle, while Mindy and I set out on her 40 loop.  It might seem like running it so often would get old, but somehow it doesn't.  We still see new stuff and there's always the little wildlife sightings.  Mindy made a great save from what looked like was going to be a nasty fall.  Her core must be pretty strong cause she looked almost Cirque du Soleil-like in being able to recover her footing after being nearly horizontal.  I wasn't so lucky later in the run when my toe caught a root big-time.  Fortunately, I managed a fairly nice landing and only my toes suffered any pain.  At the end of the run, the toes just blended in with my normal foot pain.

After the short loop and two loops of the 40, Mindy expected to need another 3 miles.  According to her Garmin it was more like two.  My Garmin had me at 19.5.   I decided to at least get to 20 miles.  We headed back out the link;  Mindy would just do an out and back on the snowmobile trail.  I went slightly longer than the 20 and had 20.35 back in the parking lot.  Later, on the computer, it would show that I'd gone 21.1.  Who knows?!  Linda was waiting at the picnic tables.  She'd come later to work on the Breaker course.  Mindy and Julia (who was not doing the entire Utlra-X) finished up nearly at the same time.  After a little hanging out to cool down, we all headed over to E&L's.  I think we were all happy with ourselves and our runs.

Sunday, Rick and I headed back to the park.  We didn't see any other Monsters, but only waited till a little after 9am.  Instead of the  loop we did Friday, we ran the Boundary to the Connector, turned around before the road crossing, back to the Boundary, straight to the summit, then down the Terrace.  Ian and Emma's car was parked next to us when we got back.  I read they did a nice 10 mile recovery run.

Today is a rest day that I'll fill with lots of errands.