When I walked out my door this morning to go for regular Saturday morning trail run, I felt almost knocked over by the heat.   Fortunately, I had my Klean Kanteen full of cold water.   Living in in the Bay Area of Northern California, we are accustomed to very cool evenings with temperatures in the 40′s and 50′s.  It felt like it was at least 65 degrees.  Not that 65 degrees is too hot to trail run in.  I run.  Period.

I met up with my 3 favorite running friends-Andria, Nadia, and Izzy.  We usually get together every Saturday morning for a nice long trail run.  I have been running with Nadia for 7 years, Izzy for 5 years, and at least five years with Andria.  We are really not an official running club.  We all get along so good and it’s easy to schedule our runs for the wee hours of the morning.  We would love to have a few more people join up with us.  A few guys have tried running with us and could not hang with the early hours!

We left Mission Coffee at 5:45 AM.  I ditched my LED runner flashlight as I noticed a little bit of first light illuminating the distant mountains.  I was actually enjoying the warmer weather.  We had full shade running up Mill Creek road.   The higher up we ran the hotter it became.  I had drained a full 27 ounce Klean Kanteen water bottle in the first hour.  Have you ever tried a Klean Kanteen?  I will never go back to plastic running bottles after using one.  I started using a Klean Kanteen about a year ago because I was concerned about the toxins that leak from plastic water bottles.  I always detested the awful plastic taste that comes from hot water out of a plastic water bottle.  I don’t miss tasting whatever brand of soap that I washed my water bottles out with.  Ever put a sports drink in your water bottle?   It will taste like a weaker version of the drink for months!  With the Klean Kanteen, I always have fresh tasting water!  It fits right into my water bottle fanny pack too.  I must say that I do miss squeezing my plastic water bottle over my head and face when I am really hot.

The skies were clear and it was beautiful-until we started getting attacked by mosquitoes!  This is California.  We are not supposed to get stung by those pesky little things.  The buzzing in our ears was so annoying.  Growing up in Minnesota, I was used to mosquito bites-but not on my runs!  I must be honest, trail running near Mission Peak on hot days, we always get bombarded with biting black flies.  The mosquitoes were not near as bad as the biting flies.  Guess what?  There were no biting flies today!

We had a great trail run.  It was a tad slow because of the heat.  Next week, we plan on running at Redwood Park in the Oakland hills.

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