switching up the routine a bit

on sunday, the bean and i woke up extra early to head out to claremont for a fun sunday meet-up.  while she hung out with with one of her BFFs, her mom and i drove the short distance from their house to the start of the claremont wilderness trail.  it's a 5-mile loop that i'd been wanting to check out - i have several friends who go to run it while training for a race, and while i'm not a trail runner by any means, i was definitely willing to give it a shot and hike it with a friend.

the main lot at the trailhead is a paid lot, but since my friend was a resident she was able to park in a lot that was just a quarter mile away.  not a bad warm-up walk for our hike.  and since it was so early (6 am!  on a sunday!), it was cool and quiet.

this was posted right as you went inside the gate to start the hike.

as early as it was, i couldn't complain about the scenery.  it was pretty out there.

this was the start of the mile or so of painful uphill climbing.  this right here is why my ass and thighs were incredibly sore for the next two days.

hello, sun!

i'm always grateful for mile markers, so i can see that all that truckin' along is actually getting me somewhere.

you know i had to get at least one cheesy instagram-worthy photo at the top.  you can't tell, but i had a view of downtown l.a. from here.

after a nice stretch of some lovely downhill, we had one last hill to climb.

and while i totally forgot to get a picture of us while we were huffing and puffing up that trail, i did remember to snap at least one.

when we got back to the house, the girls were hard at work making us some delicious breakfast.  the bean was showing her friend how to make scrambled eggs, and they were super proud to serve up some grub for us.  my eggs and nutella-filled crepe really hit the spot after working up a sweat.

while i would probably never choose to run that trail, i would totally do the hike again.  it was just challenging enough, and definitely reminded me of some muscles i'd forgotten i had.  maybe i'll get the hub to go out and do it with me one of these days.