I Found a New Trail

I have to admit, I had a pretty awesome run on Wednesday afternoon. My goal was to go out for some ultra run/walk practice. My plan was to run for 9 minutes and then walk for 1 minute. This started out ok but once I got going I switched it up to walking up the hills and running the remainder. I happened to take a new route for this run, I wanted to check out a different entrance to a wildlife area that I had run previously.

This is a view of the road that leads 

to the entrance of the preserve. 

It's about a mile to the entrance.

This is the beginning of the trail.

Not far into the trail I had the pleasure of this view. 

Beautiful and humbling!

This section was very secluded

and it still looks like fall. It 

was almost like running through

a tunnel.

This is a small stream that I crossed.

Once I got close to the stream I

saw 7-8 deer running away.

They were all in the open area

in front of the trees ahead.

Once I crossed the stream and

made it up into the clearing, this

is the path I climbed.

Here is a look back to the clearing from the hill.

I followed the trail for about 2.5 miles

before I turned around and headed back.

Coming down the last road to our home

this was the view that I was rewarded with.

The sky was beautiful!

Since this blog is about running....

I ended finished the run with 13.1 miles at just over a 10 minute pace. Not bad in my opinion for walking up the hills and slugging through a couple muddy streams. 

A couple of training notes:

• Nutrition - I had a 20oz bottle of Gatorade and two gels with me. I drank most of the Gatorade and had one gel at about 1 hour into the run. At 1:43 I remember getting a little light headed (low blood sugar), so I took the second gel and felt better soon after.
• Run / Walk combo - Once I got over the mental hurdle of what it was doing to my pace, I began to enjoy this. It was really easy on my body, I was not sore or wiped out after this run or even the next day. I felt like I could have gone another 13 if I had the time and the food to do so.
• Trail Running - I love the variety and softness of the trail! It is much easier on my body than running on the road. Even after 13+ miles my plantar faciitis was very minimal.

I hope you learned something and enjoyed the pictures!