Celebrating Independence

Howdy yall! Happy 4th!

I just got back from a nice 10k trail run

Well, let me rephrase - nice and not nice at the same time. You know, the whole love/hate relationship with running. Today I went out there to do the best I could, and it was not easy!


I went up to FATS (Forks Area Trail System) in Edgefield, SC. A series of mountain bike trails that are also popular with runners. I have been out here one time before (details here), and today I opted to run the Skinny trail once again. I haven't been consistent with my long runs so I figure a 6 mile trail is about right at this time. I have some big distance races in a few months so I am getting back into half marathon training. And I plan to do the bulk of it on trails.

Near the trailhead

I wanted to push myself today but I didn't wanna go race pace fast, so I guess you could call this a tempo run. The first 3 miles are pretty much all downhill or straight so I was going pretty fast. Probably too fast. I'm not always the greatest when it comes to pacing myself. So by the time I got to around mile 3 I was actually kind of tired. And this is where it starts to be more uphill. There aren't any steep climbs here, the hills are more gradual but they are long. The last 2 miles were a struggle. I definitely went too fast early on and I was paying for it now. I tried to at least speed up where the trail was flat to make up for some of the slowness. But I cranked out an even 6.2 miles before approaching the trailhead. I was literally watching the clock so I could be done. I was so worn out. But it felt so good. All the pain I felt turned to bliss. I was hot and sweaty and it was so very right. I walked the remaining .3 miles back up to the parking lot and stopped to take some pics and just take in the beautiful views.

Trailhead

My watch always lags when I'm out in the woods, probably because the reception isn't great out there. So my pace is always off by a few minutes. It's annoying. After it's all caught up and figured the time it took to travel the distance, it at least shows me the accurate pace at the end. I was hoping I'd be somewhere in the 9-10 minute/mile range.

11:01 min/mile.

Ugh.

Why the hell was I so slow? I felt like I was going pretty fast in the beginning, and yeah I did end up slowing down towards the end but I still gave it everything I had. I was feeling down on myself for a little while... until I thought about it a little more.

First, there's this.

Uh, GPS, not sure what you were doing there in the beginning... but I assure you, I was not moving at a 17 min/mile pace. I could probably walk faster than that. So that's a big part of it.

Second fact - trails are harder than roads. Most people are naturally gonna go slower on trails, especially if there are hills involved. Then I tried to remember the last time I actually ran on the trails, aside from a OCR where I'm not running fast because I need energy for the obstacles too. I couldn't remember the last time I actually went out for a RUN on a trail. I guess I'm pretty out of practice.

Speaking of out of practice, I haven't even run in a week and a half due to the blisters. I've also completely fallen off the wagon with my diet, so all the crap food I ate was doing a number on my stomach this morning. This definitely affected my run today. The weather? Actually not bad, was in the 70's and not humid.

Then I went and looked up the first run I did here on Nike +. I ran that in 1:14, a 12:11 min/mile. I shaved more than a minute off of my pace today.

So having considered all these factors I don't feel so bad now. I will get faster with practice.

I came home and enjoyed this

Today I'm thankful I woke up in a free country. I have all my life's needs met and then some, and I had the ability to get outside and run. Not just through my own good luck and fortune, but because of the simple fact that I was born in America and I can go out and run around in the forest if I want to. There's a lot we do here that is taken for granted. I am grateful every day, but especially so on my nation's birthday. For everything that went into building the nation - the contributions of our troops and civilians, and even of my dad's ancestors (my mom is from Germany) - everything that brought us to where we are today.

I'm not overly patriotic. We have an American flag on the wall in our garage and that's about it. But I do have these crazy ass PJ pants...

Tonight we're just gonna chill. My husband has commanded me to make jello shots! So we're just gonna hang out on the back porch with some music and drinks.