Snowy Taj
Nice jaunt up to the Taj trail. I have only done it once and was surprised by how much snow there still was at the top of the loop – lost the trail for a while and post-holed around. Still great fun.
Johnson’s Hole Redlining
Fun times trying to go fast around Johnson’s Hole.On Monday I did a double loop of the Johnson’s Hole and Great Western (Dragon’s Back) trails, once each direction. Afterwards I noticed that I wasn’t too far off from getting a course record, so I went back on Wednesday and redlined the clockwise loop, poaching the CR. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Timp Trail Half Marathon Route
Lots of short runs lately, so I decided to see if I was up for a bit more mileage. A fellow professor joined me to run the Timp Trail Half Marathon course. We’ve had so little snow, I suspected most of the route was dry. I was mostly right – a couple patches of wet dirt, some mud, but not bad.
What was bad was my body. Not only did I get killer cramps in both calves and one quad, but one of my IT bands flared up. WHAT?! What is this? 2015? IT bands? Sheesh. In any case, it was a beautiful, but frustrating outting.
Provo Canyon Treadmills
I seem to be playing a lot in Provo Canyon lately instead of on the Orem/Lindon foothills/bench like I did for my first couple years here. Now that I look at some of these, I was clearly looking for routes with good amounts of flat. However, today I hopped over to the south side of the canyon to explore some mountain bike trails that I knew snaked around the hills east of FS Rd 027 (Sq. Peak Road). Fun times exploring!
Touring a new friend around the foothills
I have been doing my best to seduce a new neighbor (kind of old family friend) to the trails. So far, pretty good. I have taken him up the Lindon Squiggles, around the BST, the Dry Canyon – Altar/Rock Pile loop, the Johnsons Hole / Taj Mahal / GW loop, etc. Good times. I still struggle to believe all of these great trails are just a 5 minute drive away.
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Petroglyphs, Monster Wolf Spiders, and More Johnson’s Hole
For some reason my last few local runs have all been around the Johnson’s Hole area. There are a lot of dirt access roads for the aqueducts and water infrastructure up there – which makes for some nice easy miles, when I’m too lazy or beat up to bang out the singletrack. Here’s some recent routes.
I took the kids up to some boulders above Johnson’s Hole that have petroglyphs on them. Very cool. They are quite weathered due to their being out in the elements. My archaeologist friends date these to the pre-Fremont era, pre-1,000 AD.
Enthused by the area I went back to explore more. I did a double loop of the Johnson’s Hole / Great Western, one in each direction, then explored up-canyon on one of the lower aqueduct (Union?) roads, climbed back up to the Alta Aqueduct road. There I found the old 1857 Provo Canyon Guard Quarters, built during the Utah War and then manned for a while to monitor Native activities in the region. I also got in a good schwack and sliced my leg up on the scrub oak. It had been a while, I figured.
This run was particularly soul-invigorated. I was up in a region with TONS of access, trails, dirt roads, etc., but I didn’t see a single person. I felt so good to have the place to myself.
Today it was 75 and it is supposed to snow in a couple days, so I figured I should get one last sweaty run in.
Johnson’s Hole and my Sinuses
I have been out of commission for about 3 weeks with a cold turned sinus infection turned lingering cold. Yikes. I haven’t been this sick for this long in a while. Being sick in the summer is just cruel. Beautiful weather, but stuck inside.
I finally had to get out. I hit up Johnson’s Hole from Canyon Glen Park. I can’t believe I’d never been up there before. It’ll be gorgeous in the spring when the grass is green. I looped it up to the aqueduct roads for about 6.5 miles. It wasn’t that hot, but I felt pretty slow and low. Very quickly it became apparent that I am not as recovered from this illness as I thought I was.
