Day 4 - Cherokee to Blue Ridge to Maggie Valley

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Day 4: total mileage 23+
Today was a much better day mentally than yesterday, although I woke up tired from a lack of sleep. My legs were cramping all night, I need to take more ice baths or something.

After breakfast with Shelly and Mike and Mike Bledsoe, Matt's dad, and Matt, we set off for Cherokee to run a 5 Mile out and back, which provided plenty of sidewalks and easy running. I felt pretty good when this was done, and then we set off for the second segment, a stretch on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Shelly ran with me and it was straight up the entire way up to almost 5,000 feet. It was stunningly beautiful, but it was a pretty difficult climb and we were both gassed. We came back down to meet everybody else, and decided it would be better to set off to run the Maggie Valley segment twice and get the rest of the mileage in that way.
Maggie Valley was filled, I mean just filled with motorcycles.  It was a weekend of thunder in the Smokies, so there was quite a lot of activity and it made the Run heading back a little more amusing. I got pretty overheated at the end, but running with Mike and Matt really helped. We finish today with beer and nachos at the Maggie Valley Brewery, I forgot the name. And then dip their toes in the river before heading to the Waynesville. Tomorrow is all Asheville running.

Godspeed, 

R.

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