My plan was to wake up early and get a run in at Rancho San Antonio before it got all too toasty today. It ended up being a little later than planned, I left my place at 8:30 after having two glasses of water and a banana for breakfast. When I pulled into the parking lot at Rancho I was surprised...It resembled a zoo... It was super crowded! On a Sunday morning! At 8:45!!! Crazy! But I guess that's what an attractive park does to the active population of the Bay Area.
I ran from the county parking area towards Deer Hollow Farm, continued on the Rogue Valley trail, went up the Wild Cat Loop trail, after gaining the ridge I followed the Wild Cat Loop trail back down to the canyon. I was planning to take the turn off to the PG&E trail and take it back to the parking lot. As it worked out, I took a wrong turn and took the Upper Wild Cat Canyon trail instead, which took me a little higher on the same ridge which i had just left...After realizing my mistake I went back down the same trail to find the right turn off. A 3 mile addition to the original plan! But a very nice one! The views were amazing, and the California Poppys along the trail were really pretty. It was good to see wildflowers despite the little rain the area got this spring.
This was my first hilly run in a loooong time (several years) and I walked quite a bit on the different uphill sections, but it was still fun and felt pretty good.
Thanks to the additional 3 miles and the corresponding elevation gain, I ran pretty exactly half of the Diablo 25k distance/elevation... 8 miles with 1860ft of elevation gain at a 10:32 pace.
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