23.01 mi, 3:39:33, 9:33 avg
I woke up at 2:00 dealing with repercussions from the chilli-mac I had for lunch and feared it was something even worse. Dogs woke me up two hours later. I got back to sleep for a little bit and then figured I'd still give the run a try, wanted to run 22 with some of it on trails. I met up with Joe, Jamie, and Daisy at Longleaf. We ran up Starkey Blvd to the entrance of Starkey Park where the others turned around and I continued on.
Stopped at the shelter where the Striders had set up and had two doughnut holes and half a cup of coffee, then headed onto the off road trails. Ran near the horse corral and then out on the orange trail to where it branched slightly left and then out to the power line road. Turned onto the bike path and ran about 1/4 mile to the water cooler to top off my bottle. It was still kind of chilly out, glad I wore my hat but it was starting to feel comfortable. Ran back to the power line road and turned north and headed up that was for a few miles until almost 12 miles total since I left (knowing I'd head back a slightly different way, I wanted to go past exactly 11 miles). Part of the raod starts with baseball sized rocks, so I had to pretty much walk over that section but it was only a few hundred feet long.
The rest of the road was nice, saw some dear crossing the path and a few Sandhill cranes flying overhead making their squawking noise (I tried to get some video of them but was too slow).
Took the detour back to the water cooler on the way back (soon had to take off my hat with the sun out), then continued south on the power line trail back to the orange trail. Trail miles on the way back were about a minute/mile faster than on the way in.
Finally, back to Starkey Blvd and I thought it would feel like it would take forever but it wasn't so bad. I picked up a little more speed and chugged along, finishing up the last mile at 8:15.
So, hopefully the Croom Fools Run will be not so bad now that I've gotten some distance and a little bit of off road, but will see what happens.
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