Yosemite 2012, originally uploaded by Random and Odd.

Victoria and her friend, Katie asked if I wanted to go on a road trip with them to Yosemite.
I took them up on it and I am SO glad I did!

The last time I was there was in 2009 and the waterfalls were bursting over the edges of the cliffs. This time they were dried up, but the leaves were amazing.

Thursday we did the touristy things and walked around taking pictures of every step that Carsen took.
Today we got on our running gear and we headed out to see if we could get in at least four miles of trail running.
This was day 3 of week 5 and it was a 20 minute straight run.
We struggled up the first hill, but then took off down and Victoria did her first 1 mile run without stopping. We had decided to break the 20 minute up into two ten minutes because her great dislike of trail running. At the ten minute mark she was still doing pretty good. Her breathing was labored and I had to show her how to breath so she wouldn’t pass out. After that she held up better. I didn’t tell her we were past ten minutes and ran ahead.
She usually waits for me to stop running because she can’t hear the app say to switch over to walking so I just kept listening to her breathing, watching her pace and my watch to see how far we had gone.
At .9 I turned my head to make sure she was doing okay and at the one mile mark I turned around and encouraged her to run to me. When she got to me I said, “YOU DID IT! YOU DID ONE WHOLE MILE WITHOUT STOPPING!” all the while she kept running!
I was crying as I was hugging her as we ran. She did it in 16 minutes!

We went around two miles down the path and then we started back to get Katie and Carsen who were hiking behind us. When we caught up with them I asked if I could trade her my camelbak for Carsen in his back pack carrier. She thought I was crazy, but I wanted nothing more than to run with 40 extra pounds on me. We got the pack and I jogged as far as my body would take me, which was probably only a half mile.
I traded her and said, “Okay, now I can never complain about running with a full Camelbak ever again!”
Holy crap that thing was heavy.
I was so proud of Victoria though…she kept running for well over the time she had to run. I took off and let her and Katie visit and ran the last mile and half back to the main path and then back to them.

She promised to never complain about running up the hills or street running again if I would stop making her do trail runs.
She also said that her goal is to become an amazing trail runner so she can kick my ass. It won’t take long, she’s doing such an amazing job!

It was the most glorious run ever…running along El Capitain in these enormous trees and leaf covered single tracks.
I was blessed and so grateful I went.