Thunder-snow showers and llamas

Sunday was a fine day. We woke up to sunny skies and perfect spring temperatures. My hubby and I had planned on going for a run with Linds and Patrick. Linds is training for her first marathon and this was going to be her longest training run yet (and longest ever).

I felt the need to make it special for her. After all, I had a great training partner (T-Money) back when I started running long distances and she made my runs way better. It was my time to pay it forward. We set out to the Coalton trail head to drop off a car with "aid station" supplies. That trail head would be somewhere between mile 7 or 8 of our 16 mile run. 

Met Linds and Patty at Marshal Mesa trail head when all of a sudden white stuff was falling from the sky. It was some sort of sleet. Great. I was wearing shorts and a light long sleeve. Shortly after we started running, that turned into snow and after 2.5 miles, when we started heading east, we had a pretty legit headwind. 4.5 miles in, we heard thunder. But there was still white stuff falling from the sky. This is Colorado!

Did I mention we saw llamas being walked by their owners... on a leash... like dogs? 

We reached our aid station at exactly 7.5 miles. My man wasn't ready to run more than that because his feet are still trashed from his super race last weekend, but he hung out with us a few minutes at our mobile aid station, which was his car. We re-fueled and continued on. The second part of this course starts with a significant 1.5 mile climb followed by a mile descent on a non-technical dirt path. The downhills always fly by and shortly thereafter, we were climbing again in a single track. 

By the time we hit mile 10, Linds and Patrick were pretty tired but I was inspired by their determination to keep pushing. At mile 14 they had the option to finish off the loop with a straight shot to the trail head which probably would've added up to a 15ish mile run. But they decided to finish what they had started and took the long way back. We stopped the clock at the 16 mile mark which left us walking another 1/4 of a mile back to the car (it was a nice cool down).

16 miles... CHECK! 

All in all it was a great run and a great day with friends. We finished it off at the Southern Sun with some bloody mary's, beers and a large coke for Linds.

What's the weirdest thing you've seen on a trail run?