It. Was. Glorious.
The poppies were mostly furled again by 6:30 when we got to the trail head (they open when it gets warm out and then curl back up at night), so they weren’t as dramatic as they are mid-day, but they were still pretty spectacular, and it was easier to see some of the other flowers in the sea of orange. Of course, because we were jogging, the flowers went by pretty quickly, and it was hard to get a really close look. On the other hand, in just less than an hour we made it out to the stepped out wavy rocks by the water’s edge and back. If you’d ever gone, you’d know precisely where I mean – the spot where there are giant steps of rock that have waves in them as if they were once sedimentary, but have been metamorphosed and bent and twisted into cool patterns. It always makes me wonder about the geological story of those rocks. Someday I’ll have to look them up.
Speaking of stories that I would like to know – the newts were out again. Not as many as I have seen before, but I probably saw 4 or 5 in the trail, making their purposeful way to someplace mysterious.
And the running felt great. For the last month or so I’ve been doing Jillian Michaels (of The Biggest Loser fame) online circuit training workouts, and watching my calorie intake. I’ll tell you more about that later, maybe, but out on the trails today I felt like I’d gotten a lot stronger from that program even though the circuit training is mostly short intervals, and the run is a long steady slow pace. I’ve read and been told that interval training can help your distance running tremendously, but I haven’t ever experienced it personally before. Whaddya know. It actually works.