I enjoyed this morning's Diamond Fork run with the Sojourners running club. There were about 30 runners that showed up for this roughly 18 mile mountain run. These included Wayne and Laryy who I drove there with, Bill Rieske from our relay team, Rich and Marci Lamoreaux who live nearby and who I stayed with at Boston last year, and Hawk and Cheryl Harper of Runner's Corner. The run starts at Three Forks on a single track trail. Wayne, Larry, and I started near the back with Hawk and Rich and a few others. As we worked our way uphill, I enjoyed talking with Rich about the relay and about his experience running the Squaw Peak 50 the past two years, among other things. Wayne had pulled ahead of us and I didn't see him again until the gathering point at the top where the run moves onto a paved road. Larry had been running in front of us talking to Hawk, but then Larry stumbled and fell. He was okay, but when we started up again Hawk was in front followed by Rich and me and then Larry. Hawk pulled quickly away from us and Rich and I pulled slowly away from Larry and the other runners behind us. There was a big uphill to start the paved portion of the run. Wayne, Larry, Rich, and I all started together with a couple of other runners. It wasn't long before Wayne started pulling ahead again. A little later Rich pulled away, too. I hung out in the back taking it easy on the big uphills. At the top of one hill we could a long downhill leading off into the distance and could see many of the runners strung out ahead of us. I was surprised how far ahead Rich and Wayne were ahead of me, so I told Larry I was going to try and catch them. He had a couple of other runners to run with so I took off. It took me almost a mile to catch them, a mile I ran at 5:46 pace. I was quite surprised to look down at my watch and see how fast I was going, but I was also quite pleased. There was a final big hill at the end of that mile, and we had been following the ultra marathon strategy of walking parts of the steep uphills, so I was able to recover by the top.
About that point the course leaves the road and starts on the trail back down past the Hot Pots and back to where we started. Wayne, Rich and I started out together for a while but when we hit the single track trail Wayne gradually pulled a little ahead of me and Rich dropped back behind me. This left me alone running down a beautiful shaded trail listening to the babbling brook and singing birds. This probably my favorite part of the run. We caught up with most of the other runners at the Hot Pots, where some were taking a soak and others were continuing on down. Wayne and I didn't wait too long and decided to continue on down the last 2 or 3 miles. We passed some small groups of hikers and a couple of bikers and made pretty good time down to the cars. Some of the runners, including Bill and Rich, had parked at a parking lot farther down and had run about a mile up to where we parked to start the run. I knew we'd have to wait a few minutes for Larry, and I didn't want Bill and Rich to think poorly of me for running less than them, so I ran down to the other parking lot and back up. When I got back all the runners were down and the snacks were out and Cheryl offered me a big bunch of grapes. They tasted way good, as did the cold bottle of water I had in the car. On the drive down we stopped at Red Cliffs (I think) and took a short hike to see the ancient carving of a sun in a cliff. It was pretty cool. I wouldn't want to drive this far very often (I love Provo Canyon being so close) but I really enjoyed the run today. By the way, the distance is kind of a guess. My Garmin registered 17.22 miles. However, Hawk says that Garmins are notorious for being inaccurate on trail runs. He said some guys rode this course on mountain bikes and their odometers registered 18 miles. He also said that his son had measured 7.5 miles of it with a distance wheel and his Garmin only registered around 6 miles I think. So I'm counting 18 miles for the run, with an additional mile for run down to the other parking lot and back. That was closer to 1.5 miles, but I figure counting a Garmin reading of 17.22 as 19 miles is generous enough.
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