Dry dirt at last!

Cody had been diligently calling the local state-park hotline to check trail conditions for who knows how long now. Finally the toasty warm weather took care of the trails and everything opened up. Not only were they open, but they were the driest I've ever seen them including the dead of summer, let alone spring. I think it was about 80° or so and clear most of the time. 

Getting hot out, plenty of water was downed.

Corrine's front tire fell victim to a locust tree attack. Thankfully the only one of the day which is pretty good considering the quantity of thorns we saw.

Stripped, tube replaced, rolling again. No problem, though it did make me want some Stans. 

Had to get a picture of Cody's new whip.

Suffering in Elk Rock

Today was my second trail-run at the local state park. I really like it a lot better than running on pavement so far. We've had some rain recently so everything was a little soft - just enough that the trail wasn't being damaged, but it was constantly hard work. All the better for what we were doing though. Corrine is working on training for this: http://www.damtodam.com/20K.htm. I've been doing all the "scheduled" runs with her, which has been great crosstraining.

We had hoped to do a 6-mile run, but neither of us was feeling it. My legs were in bad shape by the end of mile one. We made it five miles, which is the same as last week. Ah well, I think we have four miles to do on Tuesday.

Iowa single-track...sort of

A nice rest stop along the way with a view. This is roughly half-way to make a five-mile out and back. I ate a gel here in hopes of improving on the way back. If I didn't know better, I'd think all we did was climb both ways. I'm still amazed how much this wipes me out compared to the nearby paved bike/walk path.

I realized today that this is only about the third or fourth time that I've run in my Solomon XA trail-run shoes. A shame now, I realize, they've just been my everyday shoes to wear at work for many months. I'll be running in them from now on though, at least on dirt. They are way heavier than my cross-country flats, but that's to be expected. My feet decided it's o.k. to run with slightly heavier soles when going past bushes and trees that are dropping 1.5" and larger thorns all over the trail.

Lots of sunshine, it was a great morning to be out. I think the high temp. made it to 86° or so and there was a stiff breeze. It wasn't that warm yet at this point, but it sure feels hot until getting acclimated. Recalling several runs last summer where the heat-index was 110+, that sure sounds horrible right now.

Minor detour. We haven't been out here on the mountain-bikes for a really long time due to the frost coming out of the ground, so I don't know how long this washout was here. Parts of this park are black dirt like you'd expect to see in this area, and other parts are mostly sand. This is what happens when one of the sandy areas lets go and slides down the hill. It took some pretty good size trees with it in the process. We've seen several areas around the lake in the last year where hills have fallen down really close to the roads.