Saturday August 24, 2010

Workout: Scheduled - 10 miles; Actual - 9 1/2 - 10
Weight: ?
Two Years Ago

Cornbread and I met Mark at the Waterfall Glen forest preserve in Darien (Argonne National Laboratories) at 6:30am to do a 9-10 mile trail run.  Cornbread hasn't run since before we went to Yosemite because he hurt his heel when he jumped off of a rock.  He's been working out, but hasn't been running.  He thought he could probably do it by now.  In addition, my sister and family were at our house for the weekend, so we had babysitters in the morning.  AND, since my confidence is so low right now, I really wanted to run with someone for the long run.


The trail map said the trail was 9 miles and the stuff I saw on the web said 9 miles, but after we hit the 9 mile marker we ran another 1/2 - 1 mile to get back to our car.  So I'm not sure what the exact mileage was, but it was certainly over 9.


Mark has not done much running this year, so he wasn't quite as up to it as I think he anticipated.  I was miserable for the first 2 miles and really wanted to stop to walk, but wouldn't give in and make them stop.  He stopped right at that point and we took a break to walk.  The next 2 miles were again kind of miserable, but I was just starting to settle in and get into a groove and then he stopped again, around 4 miles.  It was kind of this way for the first 6 miles... by that point I was definitely settled in.  We stopped at a bathroom at 7 miles and Mark never really got it back after that.  I was okay for the next 2 miles, but mile 8-10 were rough for me and I stopped more often to walk, but for shorter breaks.


The weather was not hot, but it was incredibly humid and by mile 7 my shorts were falling off.  The mosquitos were also bad - we had sprayed before we started, but had to stop around mile 6 to reapply  because we had sweat it off and they were biting me everywhere.


It was kind of a miserable situation, however, it was kind of fun and I'm glad we did it.  Its a nice run and I would definitely go again.  Much nicer to run on a trail like that than through the neighborhoods.  Next week: 11 miles.  UGH.