Trail running - joy from pain

Today I went for a trail run up Flagstaff Mountain on View Point Trail, just up to where it hits the road, then back down, starting from downtown.  Mapmytri doesn't have this trail on their map so I approximated using the sattelite, it says the distance is 2.93 miles, while Nike+ says it's 3.55 miles.  I'm guessing it was about a 5k.

View Point trail is fairly rocky, and of course it's pretty steep in places, but it's nowhere near as brutal as going up Mt. Sanitas.  There were only a couple sections where I felt like my lungs were going to burst.  My heart rate only got up to 187, though, which doesn't seem very high considering my last run LT was like 183 or so.  I was definitely taking tiny little mincing steps going up, which is probably why the Nike+ reading is so high.  Coming down I went pretty fast, as fast as I felt comfortable with the rocks, because tripping and flying headlong down a rocky mountain does not appeal.

I started out just after 3pm so my resolution to start running earlier clearly didn't pan out today, but it was much cooler than the last time I tried doing a little running on this trail.  It was only around 80 degrees or so.  Of course the trail is mostly exposed to the sun, so I was pretty hot, and coming down I was really aching for some water, but I felt good overall.  I did stop to rest at the top and twice on the way up, but my heart rate drops pretty quickly.

Today's music selection was Rammstein.  I am a big Rammstein fan, and one of their songs struck me as especially appropriate when it came on as I was busting my butt up one of the steep sections, "Ich Tu Dir Weh" off their latest album "Liebe Ist Für Alle Da."  The title means "I hurt you" and it's about sadism, and implied masochism (the vocals are from the point of view of the sadist, but it's implied that the person the sadist is hurting enjoys it).  This song actually got the album banned in Germany for under-18 sales.  I'm not going to list all the lyrics, but the chorus seemed to describe how I was treating my body when I forced it to run up the rocky trail:

Ich tu dir weh
tut mir nicht Leid
das tut dir gut
hör wie es schreit

In English:

I hurt you
I'm not sorry
it does you good
hear how it screams

It was definitely the appropriate tune for the way that my glutes were feeling as I ran and quick-stepped up large chunks of rock arranged like "stairs."  Now that's definitely not what the song is about and the lyrics are not for the squeamish, but it was pretty much my powersong of the day.

Despite the pain, today was a good run and I feel good about it.  The Xterra is next weekend and I'm pretty confident that the run course won't be as steep as this one, so I'm hoping for a respectable time.  Considering the course is something like 4.8 miles I'm not sure I can finish the run in under an hour, but I'm going to try my hardest to finish in under 1:15, which I think is doable.  Next year I hope I'll have improved my running enough to the point that I can expect to run better than a 10 min/mile in a triathlon, but for now it's best to keep my goals realistic!

Summary:

Distance: 3.1 miles (approx)

Warmup/cooldown times: 11:19/10:15
Time from trailhead to summit: 17:45
Time from summit to trailhead: 11:55

Total time: 51:12