Aliso/Wood Canyons run with James & Joe

I had a great time running in Aliso/Wood Canyons this Monday.
I ran with James (an OCTR member) and Joe (who is thinking about joining the club too).

James explained that he is more of a mountain biker and he did have a mountain bike in his trunk indeed. As James just got an archilles tendon injury (or something like that) he had to run more then mountain-bike lately.

As we started and ran the first mile together (at around 6:55 min/mile pace) I realized that there is no way on Earth I would be able to keep up with these guys and told them to go ahead. I barely managed to picture their backs as they were quickly disappearing on the trail ahead of me:
I will need to ask James next time about his injury and how I could get one like his as well to be able to run as fast as he did.

Well, at the pace of 9 min/mile or slower I definitely feel and embrace life and beauty of the hills around me much more than I do while running at 6:55 pace :-)

James and Joe again:

Most of the trail was beautiful, but some of it was totally breathtaking:

And although the trail might look pretty flat on the picture (James was complaining a lot about how boring for him the first 2-3 flat miles of the trail were), and although the day was not too hot, I was pretty soaked by the end of mile 4:

Another wow-section of the trail:

There were some pretty steep up-hills. But when you see people around you working much harder and suffering much more than you do (I am talking about mountain bikers here that manage to ride up on those hills somehow), you get less focused on your own hurdles:

The last uphill was most of the fun: it was so steep that they even did stairs on the trail to ease up climbing up for those mortals that cannot fly:

I did 9 miles overall that night at an average pace of around 10:50 min/mile.