sunrise at el moro

Sometimes there are runs that just make you feel good to be out there. Today was one of those. The weather was perfect, the air smelled of life, the conversation was good, and the body felt like it moved effortlessly through the miles. It just felt great to be alive today.

After a less than exciting solo 4.5-mile street run on Tuesday, I was happy to join my OCTR mates for an early jaunt out at El Moro. At 6am, amidst the fog and cold, I met up with Pete, Michelle M., Skipster, Stephanie S., Beiyi, and newcomers Natasha and Andrew at the park entrance.

Our route today took us from the top of El Moro Canyon on Bommer Ridge down towards Laurel Springs in Laguna Coast Wilderness Park. We did a little loop on Willow to meet back up with Bommer on the way back to our starting point.

I enjoy this course and run it when I can. Not only is it pretty and scenic, but the vegetation is fairly lush (by Southern Cal standards), has a nice wide trail at for a warmup start, and a decent amount of fun and fast single track on the way down. It also has a good one-and-a-half mile steady ascent for a nice uphill workout that will get those heart rates up.

For some reason, Skip was tearing up the trail this morning. He is the self-proclaimed "love from the back," but today I wondered if someone had moved the back more to the front. According to him, he had his mojo on today. Less than a mile into the run, he went ahead of the pack, and disappeared into the fog. We wouldn't catch up with him again until our quick break at about mile 5.

We finished the run with a great view of Newport under a blanket of cotton candyish fog. Simply beautiful. My Garmin clocked the run at about an hour and 19 minutes. Not bad, not bad for 7.5 miles on the trails.