I only ran 13 miles, but they were hard miles. At first I started from the corrals at North Fork Park and headed up the trail that goes up to Ben Lomand Peak. I only made it about 3.5 miles up before I started getting into a lot of snow. I turned around at 4 miles and came back down as I was doing more hiking than running at that point. I gained a lot of elevation in that 4 miles and only averaged about 11 minute mile pace going up and about 7:45 pace going down.
After getting back to my car I drove up to the top of the North Ogden Divide (about a 10 minute drive) and took the trail off to the south that goes up to Lewis Peak. For the first .5 miles this trail isn't bad, but it then gets very steep after that for the next 2 miles. I averaged about 13:30 pace for those 2.5 miles up. At one point I was going 16:45 pace, but my heart rate was way up. I averaged about 8:45 pace coming down because it was too steep and technical to go any faster.
Both of these sections of trail are part of the Skyline Mountain Marathon which I plan on running in August. Even though my paces were slow and I only ran 13 miles total, given the effort I feel like this was probably worth the same as about 20 miles at 6:45 pace on the road. Just a different currency.
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