Alta Lodge to Cardiff Pass in 23:54, with an effort that started moderate but got hard by the end, back down in 12:22 (36:16) with a pretty recklessly fast descent on lots of loose scree (aerobically easy, but ridiculously exhilarating to hurdle rocks that fast). Next, over to the bottom of Collins (38-ish), up Germania Pass in 37-ish (1:15:20, harder effort than it otherwise would have been after trashing my poor quads on Cardiff, which also means that I crossed Little Cottonwood from West Ridge to East Ridge in ~51 minutes) down to Cecret (once again, aerobically easy, but almost recklessly fast in parts), around the front of Cecret and down the uber-rocky trail at a pace which certainly qualifies as reckless. Around Upper Albion and most of the way back down to the bottom of Alta, where my brother had parked my car (he was up there taking photos). Total time 9x:xx, missed some splits at the end as I just didn't care about them anymore at that point. In all honesty, running down the back of Germania at a quick pace, completely pain free, may have been the single happiest experience of my life. The scenery at Alta is so overwhelming that I couldn't help but bomb the downhill with a massive smile on my face. Matt Poulsen's prescription seems to be knocking this hip stuff out of the way short-term, and I have well developed plans to keep it away as much as possible in the long term. Yes, I will stay sensible while upping my mileage, but I can't wait to get back out for some more real runs! A photo taken from Cecret a little while before I ran past it:
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