Finishing up... and moving forward.

i'm about to finish up my first week of training under the advice of my coach, and i gotta tell ya, i feel pretty good.  i'm starting to feel like maybe training doesn't always have to be so difficult and that maybe last summer i was "overtrained" and pushing too much all the time, trying to get a lot of hard miles.  on the other hand, maybe it's because i'm still running around town here in Gillette and in the Black Hills and the miles here are easier.  we'll see what things are like once i'm back to the Wasatch.

but the Wasatch Mountains are still covered in snow.  friends are sharing photos of ski touring (still... ) and local races have had to change their courses because the snow level looks to be still around 7,000 feet, and lower than that in the north-facing aspects.

i'm going into my last week of work here in Gillette, WY, and i'm so happy to be going home.  looking at race photos of the Wasatch foothills green and blooming with mule's ears (flowers) makes me so homesick, you don't even know.  i'll be back for a week of running in my local hills, then going over to my other homeland, Bavaria, Germany, for two weeks.

i have some good runs planned for Germany and am so excited to see family and friends.  our neighbor in Germany assures us that we will need to spend some time cleaning up the yard as well (he's pretty much a master gardener, which makes our yard look pretty plain and un-kept) and we'll have a bit of work to do in the house as well, cleaning out old belongings of my dad's and donating clothes to charity.

i'm going to miss my fluffy-dog running partners while i'm in Germany ~ yesterday we did a 15 mile loop in the Black Hills and last weekend we did a spectacular 14 mile run near Sundance, WY.  photos today are from those two runs.

loops on the upper trail of Dugout Gulch meant we hit this refreshing waterhole three times ~ the dogs were happy about that!