Half Marathon training run…

Just finished my training run this morning of 21 trail km. I ran it with an 8:20 pace which was fast enough for training. I took a lot of walk breaks. It was a pretty tough trail with lots of steep muddy hills. It had been raining there. The tall grassy portions were soaking wet and in no time at all my runners were going squish squish and the mosquito repellent wore off pretty quickly since I was a human brush squeegee. Fortunately I ran faster than the mosquitoes could tear into me. I saw a deer, and a porcupine. At one point I stepped into a hole hidden by lush new growth and almost twisted my ankle but didn`t. I also stepped on a twig with my left foot just enough to raise the tip and pin it down so it could be driven through the mesh of my running shoe and into my big toe. Fortunately again the twig broke before penetrating my toe. The trail I chose was just a wee bit over 7 km and so I had to do 3 loops to get the 21 km in.

I got up at 5 AM and was on the trail by 6:10 AM and was done by 9:05 AM. And believe it or not I was getting snide comments from some campers where the trail goes by some campsites. I didn’t really pay attention to them except to note that one of them was singing a military marching chant at one point, as if I were a military person. I didn’t mind, after all what else does one expect from a bunch of beer-swilling young men camping on a weekend?

I tested out my hydration backpack and I think it worked well except that with two liters of Powerade it was a wee bit heavy in the beginning. But you don’t notice it after the first few km. I think it is worth a second trial because you can take really small mini-sips without losing your breath or relying on aid stations. At the end of the run I had about a cup left over since it was early in the morning and not too hot a day. The night before I put in about half a liter and stuck it in the freezer and that worked well for keeping it cool. The only thing you have to watch out for when you freeze it is not to freeze over the hose intake end nor the filling area. Then in the morning I just filled it the rest of the way with more Powerade. Worked like a charm. It is definitely more fun running without all that stuff, but I have to take something along for these long distances right?