Greenbelt Run

I got up early this morning to get in an early 3 hour run starting at 6am. Jim met me at the top of the hill of life, and we took off from there. He is running the Capt'n Karl's Night Run with me, he is doing the 6hr option while I'll be doing the 12hr option. I thought today would be a good day to just take it nice and slow, and try to run at the pace we'll do next weekend up at Ink's Lake.

The first hour and a half went pretty easy. We were both feeling great, light feet, wind at our backs, easy effort. It was getting hot already, but not bad. Then I took my first spill of the day. I was cruising on a slightly downhill single track, got lazy, dragged my foot over a stump, and went flying head first. It wasn't that bad, other than I spilled my handheld water bottle. Not only that, but somehow the water/gatorade mix somehow managed to spill by sneaking through a crack in the lid and spray straight up into my eye. Gatorade in your eye is not pleasant.

OK, enough whining. So we kept running, the morning was beautiful and everything went well until about 2.5 hours. At this point, Jim got really tired. I guess it was a little too fast for him. I guess he didn't get the memo that we were going to run at the pace we would uphold next week for 6 and 12 hours. So we slowed down dramatically. I didn't mind, I figure this is something we are doing together, and I have my bad days too.

Side note: Jim and I have agreed to run together for the first 6 hours of the race next week. This isn't the most efficient way to go, but this will be a really long run for both of us, and I want to be there to support him, while I know it will also help me keep a smart pace for the first half of the run.

OK, so right after we had slowed down we started to head down the Hill of Death. Well, it gets that name for a reason. First, Jennifer had apparently fallen on this hill just this morning (surprising I didn't see her out there). Then, as I was running down it today, I managed to slam my face into a tree branch. It's a really technical decent, so you have to focus on the ground. And this was no small branch, this was about 3" in diameter thick. It didn't budge, but my head did. It banged me up a little, and gave me a cut under my eye. So now I was muddy and scraped up.

the rest of the run was fairly uneventful. It was a good morning. Nothing like a 3 hour run, and still home and showered before half the city has even woken up. On my way home I did my usual routine of picking up Rudy's Breakfast Taco's for me and Kara. They love me there... The sweaty, muddy, smelly and sometimes bloody guy that comes in every Saturday morning.