20 Miles in the rain

The weekend of the 14th, we camped at Sherwood Lake near Neola, WV. It was a great weekend. It rained Friday, but was beautiful and chilly the rest of the weekend. I ran on Friday before the girls got there so as to not interfere with our weekend activities. I pulled the camper up and did some initial setup then on with the running clothes and out the door. I would run 10 miles downhill away from the lake and then turn around and run back uphill for 10 miles. The Garmin would later tell me that it was a 700ft drop down and a 700ft rise back up or a 1.3% average grade.

Just as I hit start on the Garmin the rain started falling lightly. I said "Oh well" and went on. This would be a great place for a couple buddies to run as there is very little traffic on this paved two lane road through the national forest. By yourself, in the rain, it can get lonely. Thank goodness I had the ipod cranking along. At mile 5 the rain increased in intensity, I pressed on and the rain kept slowly cranking up in intensity. I was placing waters and GU packs along the route to eat on the way back. I've found I need to eat about every 45 minutes at least 100 calories maybe more. I need about 0.5 Liters of water every 5 miles, depending on the temperature.

I had turned around at mile 10 and was starting the climb. The rain had intensified even more and by mile 12 I looked to the clouds and said out loud "Is this the best you can do?". Thank goodness it wasn't lightning or I wouldn't have said that. I wasn't taunting God, I was more so taunting the rain itself. I know better than to taunt God in that situation. I guess you could say I was feeling sassy.

I was feeling good till about mile 18 when the terrain got very hilly. I hung in there till my Garmin said 20.00 in the campground and I stopped. It was a good run. If you were to ask me "What did you think about for those 3 hours and 22 minutes of running?" I really can't say anything specific. It is weird. I thought about my pace, the next water bottle or piece of food, the song that was playing, and how my body felt. It's amazing but your mind sort of goes blank in this state almost like it is refreshing itself. Simple math is hard to do, thank goodness for the Garmin! The next day (Saturday) we had some of the family up for a cookout. Note all the jackets!



Dad and I did a trail run around the lake of 3.7 miles on Saturday. As you can see in the picture below I think I wore him down a little with that one!