Red Rocks (and Mud)

I missed so many photo ops!

Last night Denver Trail Runners met at Red Rocks. The 5:30 group quit early, for some reason, so I continued solo.
The sky threatened to rain, but all it did was sprinkle and blow. It never got cold.

There were quite a few water and mud puddles, and some sections of trail were running water, a small section was 3 foot deep post-holing snow, but nearly all of it was avoidable without damaging vegetation. Then I just trashed my Mizunos that I just got through washing. But I guess trail runners aren't supposed to whine about stuff like that, huh? (So forget I mentioned it.)

The lighting was often weird and amazing. Once, while it was dark and sprinkling, a hole opened in the clouds down the valley and one section of Dinosaur Ridge was lit up brilliantly.

Near the end of my run, I saw a herd of about a dozen young deer around the trail ahead. I slowed to a walk but kept coming without showing them much interest and without any sudden movements. I looked at them often, but never for more than a second. They just stood there. I walked through the herd as close as 20 feet from them and they just stared at me.

I also saw about 20 Mountain Bluebirds, which are elusive. The males are bright-blue and the females just a little blue, mostly gray.

I went for 9.4 miles, some of it on extremely rocky, muddy, watery trail. I loved dashing through the rocks at full speed. What a "high".

I've completed 49 of my required 80 miles this week.

My left knee still feels tweaked, but each day it recovers sufficiently so that it's never worse than the day before. Maybe it's even better than the day before. During my week off, it got worse, so I need to keep using it enough to get circulation. It's the lack of circulation that makes it swell and stop healing. So I need to walk and ride my bike more diligently on my off-weeks.

It seems impossible that my knee is healing so fast each day. The only thing I can think is my diet is really giving my body what it needs, and I'm getting 7-9 hours of sleep every night. I stretch so often that I stop during training and even during races to stretch. I wonder if I over-stretched once to cause the tweak in my knee? I'm pretty careful not to, but knees are so finicky.