The Trails

I have found a very cool new site which allows me to embed pictures in a google map along with the gps route. Check it out.

He is Handing Them Out

2007_0813(006), originally uploaded by Tommy Galloway.

Griffin started smiling a few days ago, now he won't stop. What a cutie!

Banschee

Banschee, originally uploaded by Tommy Galloway.

I am playing around with blogging from flickr, my new site for storing all of our pics, check it out sometime, www.flickr.com/photos/tommygalloway.

This is a shot of one of my favorite sections of one of my favorite trails, from my back door to trailhead, less than 1 mile.

How to Beat the Heat? Head to the Mountains!

Saturday 8/04/07

6:00 am

Sunny 59 degrees

Moses Cone, Blue Ridge Parkway Milemarker 294

http://www.brptrails.com/brp2940.htm

We took the boys along with Gary and the Girls and headed to the mountains this weekend to beat the heat. A stunning sunrise run was one of the the highlights of the weekend.

I tagged along with Gary for the first part of his 24 mile training run this Saturday. Not too crazy about his strict 6am start time, I dragged myself out of bed at 5am. We arrived at one of Gary's favorite destinations and quickly becoming one of mine, Moses Cone http://www.blowingrock.org/mosescone.html, and were running shortly after 6am. I was running the first 10-11 miles with Gary, 1.5 miles down to Trout Lake, then 4 miles up to the top of Rich Mountain, then back.

Here is the elevation profile from my garmin.

The sun starts to rise as we pass Trout Lake, and the run takes a very difficult turn up, basically 4 miles of slow, gradual "up" on winding carriage roads. If you can catch your breath, you are rewarded with beautiful views of the mountains. Don't let the run back fool you, while mostly downhill, running with Gary downhill is a quad burning experience, and the last 1.5 miles is all uphill as you leave Trout Lake again and return to Moses Cone.

The tempatures were a good 10 degrees cooler than Chapel Hill and we passed exactly zero people the entire way up and most of the way down. All in all another excellent run on the carriage roads of Moses Cone. Watch out for Gary, whatever he has been doing is working, he is a RUNNING MACHINE, I recommend staying away from hills if you are running with him.

A "3-D view" of the route w/elevation from Google Earth, you can see 221 and the BlueRidge Parkway wrapping around Grandfather Mtn in the background.