PBPB

Met up with Mindy and Tim early at the Brad. Tim commented on how nice the weather was.  Huh?!  It was more like we needed gills to breathe the air.  Still, it's always good to have some positive vibes going on.  Mindy and I were going to time ourselves on the Bruiser minus Island, Bat Cave, and O to see how long to allow before the start of the race; we are running that to make sure the flags and arrows are in place.  Zak showed up early, thinking the course marking would get started at 7.  When it became clear, that it was more likely at 8, he decided to join us for a few miles.  He peeled off when we reached the top of the SnoMo trail to get back for volunteering.

We ran along chatting.  Before we knew it, we ran into Ian about to begin marking the new part of the race (had to be put in to avoid the bridge out between the snomo trail and knights woods).  We finished our part of the Bruiser then stopped at the cars to refuel.  From there, we agreed on the mountain portion of the BBU for the rest of the 18 we wanted for the day.

Tim had been only been on the Connector in winter, but still recognized the trail.  That's pretty good.  The road portion of the BBU was new to him though.  We all agreed it was going to be spectacular dressed in its fall colors.  We even took the time to introduce him to Wiccahenge, knowing he'd appreciate it.

By the time we reached the power lines, we were all pretty soggy.  My shoes had puddles in them.  Yuck!  The general consensus was we would skip Lunch Break, run the long way down from the summit and be good with whatever the mileage.  We were all extremely hungry, too.  I think I almost cried when Mindy reminded me that E&Ls was closed.

As we finished up in the parking lot, getting in right about 17 miles, Ian and Emma were walking back from the park office.  Getting ready for the Bruiser takes a lot of time.  Ian wasn't even done for the day; he'd have to come back at 2 pm when the park people could help transport the stuff to the aid stations.  We said see you tomorrow and headed to Pineland Farms for food.  If I didn't know what we were missing at E&Ls, I wouldn't feel at all disappointed by lunch there.  It was good.  We ran into Julia there.  She'd just finished a four hour run there.  Yuck!  I repeated my Squirrel-given mantra, "I am so done with Pineland!" to myself.

Sunday, Rick and I went to the race early so that S&S could do our pre-race sweep of the course to make sure the overnight storm hadn't left lots of debris on the trails or that the marking hadn't been tampered with.

It was a good run of seven miles (others had done stretches so we didn't have to do all 12 miles of the Bruiser).  The air was so much nicer than the day before.  We ran easily chatting as we picked up sticks and twigs along the way.