Sunday, September 14, 2008 [18M]

Rancho San Antonio. In fairlty typical fashion I got started around 1PM. I psyched myself to head up Black Mountain trail, which I have avoided every other time I was in this park since it involves about 3000ft of climbing. I don't know why but today I felt like giving it a shot. I headed to Chamise trail first which led to Black Mountain trail. There were a couple of fairly steep climbs in the begining but it got more gradual towards the end. Black Mountain wasn't too bad at first either. It was a continuous climb for about 3 miles but fairly gradual, something along the lines of the other trails in the park. I made it to the end of the trail in 57 minutes and continued towards Monte Bello Preserve. I had another mile and a half to go and that was the most brutal part of the run. It took me 15 minutes to cover that last part, which means I was running 10 minute pace. Running is probably not the best term to use, the hill was so steep I could only sort of jog up. At least I made it up without stopping once and added a few minutes in Monte Bello before heading back. My legs were already feeling beat from the climbing and I wasn't very excited about the downhill part that was coming up. It only took me 8:30 to get back down to Black Mountain trail as I was pretty much running without control down the hill. I was still moving fairly fast on the more gradual descend back to Chamise and to the parking lot. By the end, though, my legs were spent and I was also feeling a bit dehydrated, which made the last couple of miles a bit rough. I wound up back at the car in 2:13:30 and I wasn't even sure if I could call this 18. I'm guessing it might be somewhere between 17.5 - 18, making this one of the slowest long runs I ever did. I doubt I'd be heading back up Black Mountain again, at least not all the way to Monte Bello.