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BoR Camp - Day 1 - Butterfly loop

November 4, 2019 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: 80, HOT

Comments:
Up early to drive to Leakey. Got an OML but kept it in the YETI 'til lunch: trying to keep up a good intermittent fast routine (yesterday: no food 'til 7PM, so about a 20+ hour fast?).

Me, Dave and a couple other mentors rolled in my SUV to Leakey. We met at a cabin and pre-camp briefed with all the other mentors before heading to "H.E. Butt Foundation Camp".

Pretty amazing camp. This place should be a state park: about 2000 acres of rolling hills and sharp bluffs over a spring-fed Frio River. Rolling into camp, the road actually went INTO the river (only in TX is this a thing).

The camp facilities we were in were pretty spartan: a tight barracks with a bunch of bunkbeds and the customary 4" plastic mattress.

But the land more than made up for it: SO many great trails -- even cooler than the Bandera trails (just northeast of here) and WAY better than Camp Eagle (our home for the first 4 years).

My heels were pretty sore on the off day, yesterday. I'm not sure why -- though I do think there's SO much stiffness, ALL the way around the ankle, that any exercise tightens them up. So I was a little nervous about the rugged trail running...and how much we were scheduled to do!

I was in Group D -- the first time I've been in a run group since '16, and it was great. "Delta" group is the fastest of the campers, but nothing/no one crazy. We had 10 campers, and most of them were late 20s to early 30s veterans, including several Marines.

Mentors in the group: me, Paul Terranova, Pam Smith, Rob Van Houten, Cinda Brown

First run - and nearly all runs - ran up along the river, past this AMAZING swimming spot named "Blue Hole" (that must be 30+' deep!) - crossing on a narrow plank bridge, then a steep scramble of 0.5 mi/500' to the top of the bluff. From there, the whole west side has big, sweeping loop trails (ranging in distance from 2-4 miles, which was ideal). And they were all remarkably runnable!

The theme of the week: run a mile or two, stop and talk about stuff, be it introductions, or instruction on trail running concepts./

This run: ran to the top of the bluff, then a big loop around, and up to an aid station set at t he top, then one more big butterfly loop, and back.

Nearly 8 miles on this run.

Ankles were a little cranky, despite my best efforts to stretch them and run whole-footed./

As such, I skipped the night run.