Well.... my dumb butt decided to try and take our 8 miler on the trails this morning, should have heeded the omen when I saw the river was high and flooded the some of the trails closest to the river and my normal parking lot. But nope, I decided to drive to the little parking space near the levee and head out on the trails.... big mistake. Where it was frozen solid was just awful, the tracks were 1-3 inches deep probably because people were out there last week during 50-70 degree weather. And where it wasn't frozen was so saturated with water that it had ice/snow on top, leaves in the middle and mud underneath. I couldn't even go faster than 12 min pace on it all, it was so depressing and so frustrating - but then the worse part was that all the nasty crap began to tear up my right calf so now that is a dull achy pain. 
   Not only that, but I decided to reluctantly cut it to 4.3 miles on the trails and finish the other 4 tonight on the greenway... of course that is if this pain doesn't cause me trouble. 
  Rocky and I ran the 4.3 miles in 51:44 with an average pace of 12:09 min/mile, 53 feet in elevation gain and a loss of 50 feet. Temperature was 18 degrees with a feels like 6 and winds at 10 mph N. Just awful overall.
Laps/splits were:
Mile 1 - 12:03
Mile 2 - 11:57
Mile 3 - 12:50
Mile 4 - 12:10
.3         10:34 (on the levee headed back to the Tahoe)


    Bound the Mound Half Marathon is the Saturday morning, and I think I have pretty much decided that I am not going to risk really hurting myself out there for a race. If 4.3 miles can have me in this kind of discomfort, I can only imagine what 13.1 miles will do. I really was looking forward to this race, but seriously it would be stupid of me to go and do it after today's run. I think I will go and take photographs though... support it that way. Hopefully tonight's 4 miler will be fine, and then since I am not doing the race Saturday I will do my regular 6 miler on Friday instead of the 3 miler I had planned for tomorrow morning.