James's passion for running and for the mountains came together last weekend in his first mountain trail run. The run was called rock2rock, a 10k, that involved two fairly significant inclines (and as a result declines), lots of mud, downed trees, and rocks. James was told when signing up for this to plan on doubling his standard 10k time of 45 minutes, so we planned for him to take approximately 1.5 hours. Now, lots of the guys and gals running this thing were naturally accustomed to mountain trail running having run races as impressive as the annual Mt. Mitchell challenge, which is a 40 mile run up and down the largest mountain in these parts. For them this was just a "fun run". For James, accustomed to the flat terrain of North Central Florida, this was going to be a bit more challenging. At least I thought so - I admittedly had low expectations for him. I just wanted him to complete it without spraining an ankle or turning a knee. When I saw the men and women coming through before him, beaten and battered by the trail, I became slightly worried. But then he emerged down the steps that brought the runners to their finish. His time of one hour 13 minutes was better than he expected and aside from muddy legs and a few scratches he came through feeling great. He was 47th out of more than 120 runners. He loved it and is now more addicted to trail running than ever. I think we will be making more trips to the mountains for these races. That's fine by me - the antique shopping up there is great!