Highlands Sky Training Run

We lucked out on the weather and Saturday turned out to be a great day to be running at Dolly Sods. It was probably in the 40s in the am and got no higher than the 60s with sunshine all day. We did the first 19 miles of the Highlands Sky 40-miler with an optional add on of some road running for some at the end. The course was in great shape thanks to Monongahela Forest folks and great volunteer work by West Virginia Mountain Trail Runner volunteers.

I can say that the course was the wettest I've seen it, particularly the Roaring Plains Trail. At one point Lorrin and I were running through ankle to calf deep water continuously for what seemed about 15-20 minutes - I'm not sure if it was really that long but it seemed like it! The water just sits on top of the rocks and you really have no choice but to just run on through. It was pretty fun until my feet froze up. We actually had to step out of the water briefly and jump up and down to get the feeling back in our feet. But the views were spectacular as always so it was all worthwhile. We saw lots of cool wildflowers and beautiful ferns, unfortunately no Pink Lady's Slipper this year. We fueled up at about mile 13 with aid hiked in by Megan and Bill and then continued up the South Prong Trail. The South Prong Trail on top of the ridge after AS#3 also had a lot of water on the trail. The picture below is actually the trail, not a stream!
As always, we enjoyed the wet, wild and wrocky trails of West Virginia!


We finished up with a fast trot down FS19 back down to where we started in the morning at Laneville. What a fun day!! We wrapped up back at Seneca Shadows campground with lots of food and ice cold beverages! Here are pictures from the weekend.