Don't go hobbling toward waterfalls

Sunday showed up with Carrie working and Jo'l and I meeting in San Diego to walk out the rest of the weekend. Before I left the house I took the blister kit that Jo'l made me and got to work putting molefoam on both heels before taping them with KT tape. I doubled up on socks and got ready to head out. When it was time to put on my shoes it was a bit dicier than anticipated, but I got them on after some effort and quick expletives.

I met Jo'l in the parking lot at the Los Penasqitos Preserve trailhead and we set off for a projected 11.3 miles of easy trails. When the trail split into the loop we got to cross a really fun sproingy bridge that went over the stream that we would cross and walk along all morning.

At some point we realized that the trail that we were on was running parallel to another that had trees, shade, and no mountain bikes which made it easier for both us, and the groups of bikers who were whizzing by and trying to around us on the narrow path. We got to the waterfall just over 2 1/2 miles in, but there wasn't much to see from our side of the falls, the good access was on the other side. So we climbed back up and kept going, waiting to get to the other side of the loop to really check it out. 

It was at this point that I started to slow down. I walked on the balls of my feet to try to avoid my blisters, so things were getting pretty sore. Jo'l and I had completely different mileage down and eventually figured that it was because I was doing something called the hikers hobble and talking smaller steps, so my fitbit thought I had gone further than I had. Meanwhile Jo'ls watch used GPS and kept accurate distance. I was so glad to reach the halfway point and stop for a break and our snack spread. 

When it was time to get going again I was really feeling it on my left side for the blisters, but my right hip was making its presence known. We talked about shoe options, and did some really good dog watching as we wandered toward the turn around point. 

When we finally got back to the waterfall I was so excited because it meant we weren't too far from the car. We made the climb down to look it over and while not a huge roaring falls, it was still a pretty sight for a San Diego water attraction. 

Once we reached the split we decided to take one more walk over the sproingy bridge for fun and walked what felt like forever toward the parking lot. We paused to watch a murder (ha!) of crows that was in a huge tree along the trail, and I turned to stretch while Jo'l took photos and I started frantically chanting "bobcat-bobcat-bobcat!" and she was able to snap a shot of the most adorable grown up Mr. Murderbritches that I had ever seen as he trotted away into the brush. 

When we got back to the car I carefully removed shoes and socks and other socks to discover that my blisters had not only survived our 12 miles, they had thrived and multiplied. There may be shoe shopping this week. Until then, we've had our last training walk of 2018.