Griffith Park Trail Running

This past weekend, a bunch of friends got together for a hilly 15.5 miles on trails at Griffith Park to tackle our 2nd to longest run before the California International Marathon next month. The run itself was beautiful and challenging at the same time. Part of training for CIM requires hill training. I am shooting for a 3:40 again since the course is a net downhill and hopefully doing all these hill runs will make the miles fly (yeah, we’ll see about that). After last week’s brutal 21 hilly miles in Palos Verdes, I wasn’t sure if I was ready for a 15.5 miler on trails. The course kept changing which made it more interesting, not to mention the entire course was so scenic. Sometimes we would be flying downhill or running single-file over loose rocks, trying to stay clear of the snakes! We marked the course with some flour that my friend brought in a big bottle since we all ended up splitting up and we sure didn’t want anyone to get lost in the mountains! In the end when the flour ran out, we had to get creative with rocks and sticks Here’s a photo recap of our run. It’s so much fun to run with crazy runners!

Photo shoot before the trails begin…everyone is looking happy and smiling

13 of us at the beginning…

This is what we call crazy running

Only 5 miles in, we made it to the Griffith Observatory!

How many runners are left?

Running to the Hollywood Sign

Keep going….we saw a coyote on the way!

Re-group, water break…oh the runners are dwindling down!

More catching up

Don’t ask how I’m so energetic…

Need. Food. ASAP!