Ever have one of those runs where you just knew you were going to bonk at some point, the only question was when? That was today for me. I knew I hadn't been eating and hydrating properly all week, and the legs just didn't feel right from the beginning this morning. Plus it was 70 degrees at 7 a.m. (have I mentioned lately how much I hate running in warm/hot weather?) and I forgot to pack my GU gel in my new Amphipod belt, which has solved the abrasion-of-my-back problem but not the predawn memory lapse problem. So I just decided to treat it like a regular run as long as the legs would hold out, complete with the progression to MP + 10%. I managed to do that, and got in about three miles at MP+10 before the bonk. From there, it was just a question of getting back to the car as best I could.
The Crackheads are in their final week before the Little Rock Marathon and were only running six today. Since I was planning to go 10 miles more than that, I decided to sleep in an hour, start my run at a different site and go on my own course. I did all that, and darn if I didn't run into a mob of Crackheads on the Main Street Bridge and beyond on the river trail. I guess they selected a different course than I had expected for the final six miler.
One new thing today: The first time I had done the complete River Trail loop, both sides of the river and across the Big Dam Bridge. Started from the River Market, looped down to the Clinton Center, back over MSB and down the north side of the trail to BDB, across to the LR side, down to downtown, back to the Clinton Center and loop back to the car for the full 16 miles. | 