Cathance Running

First off, a few photos from this past weekend's Bruiser run. Being surrounded by friends for the final 12 miles while running the UXBBA was such fun! :)

And now back to the past few days....

On Friday morning, after dropping Sam off, I headed out into the Cathance. It was incredibly humid and the roots and bog bridges were quite slick as they often are in this type of weather, but the woods are starting to look a bit fallish and it is always nice to spend time out on these trails. I saw four deer, two Hairy Woodpeckers, one Downy Woodpecker, and a group of teenagers and their teacher twice ;) Kept things nice and mellow, as to be honest, I'm feeling pretty tired from the past few weeks of training and although the idea is to train "through" next weekend's VT 50, I still want to be rested up enough to be able to enjoy and complete it! (9 miles)

Mama deer was eating grass right along the sidewalk. She just sort of looked up at me when I stopped to watch her, and then finally after a few minutes took off into the woods...

... where her fawn was waiting. Still a few spots on its back haunches, but not many.

Saturday morning, I waited until it was light to head out and had hoped to see the sunrise, but there was a persistent heavy, low fog, so no beautiful colors to be seen this morning. In fact, it was so heavy and muggy out that it was pretty much raining on me. Ah, gotta love humidity... Ran down to the river and back, taking the longer way home to get in a bit of extra mileage. (6.1 miles)

Later in the day, the skies had cleared and it was warm, sunny and still very muggy when we headed over to Rocky Ridge Orchard to meet up with Anne, Thistle and Kristen for some apple picking. The Cortlands and Honeycrisps were ready to pick so why not? Yum! Fun apple picking with friends on a warm September afternoon.

This morning, it was once again foggy and humid. I headed out into the Cathance to run down along the river and out on the Blueberry Loop. Legs still felt a bit tight and tired but better than the past few days. Not sure this weather helped any, as I basically felt like I was running through soup. Ugh! Saw two deer, three turkey, one snail, one Northern Flicker, lots of mushroom and a whole lot of spider webs. Finished up with an extra run up and down Mt. A. (10 miles)

Nice contrasting color on an otherwise grey morning (mushrooms were much oranger in person!)