Today I am down in O’Fallon,IL, a town about 15 minutes out from St. Louis, visiting my good friend Jon. He’s running in the STL Marathon tomorrow and I am planning to join him during his last 6.2 or so to help motivate and pace him.

In preparation for the race Jon took me out on an amazing path that he likes. Let me tell ya this, that route was freaking awesome! Hills, hills and more hills. For some people you may be going, okay there were some hills, so what? Well I’ll tell you what, where I live the entire concept of hills is lost no one knows what they are, not literally but I mean it’s the midwest kind of expected. So coming down here and having some hills to finally train on is actually something to write home about, or in this case this blog post.

We knocked out 5 miles taking this course. We started out by taking this one trail right by Jon’s house, pure bliss. Its as small trail that dips and weaves through some forest and though it was less than 3/4 of a mile before we were back out on the road it was definitely my kind of trail! After that we headed toward this part of Jon’s course that starts you off with a steep decline only to mess with you the rest of the way. And by messed with you I’m basically just pointing out the fact the rest of the course involved a lot more uphills than downhills. As we approached one hill we passed this one house where the owner has a bunch of goats and one of them was just out chillin on the hill, not gonna lie that was pretty cool to see. The last parts of it consisted of a nice 200+ foot elevation climb followed by a mile of small rolling hills it was….delightful. Ya we’ll call it that. Ha!

This was my second run in the new Cascadia 7’s. I’m starting to adjust to them but still getting a little foot pain after the first 2 miles, which I think is mainly a result of just running in minimalist shoes for the past year. All in all it was a great run! Thanks Jon for taking me out on your course. I’m looking forward to joining in on those last 6 miles tomorrow. To everyone else, get your workouts done and have a fantastic evening!

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