It was nice to give my legs a day off from lumbering and attempts at running on Sunday, although, without proper club football to fill my afternoon hours, I did such activities as spend time with Wifey (I told you my potagerian efforts would pay off!), trim some landscaping, listen to music, and stare blankly at the irrigation system as it watered the front lawn whilst I sipped from my chalice, King of Thule style.
With the dark morning clouds overhead and a plan to once again do my version of what some people call “running,” I left my z50 camera at home and just stuck the old ass Canon s95 in my pack pocket. I used it once.
The first mile or so wasn’t bad, but I grossly underestimated the difference between running in last week’s crisp 55˚ morning air and today’s 70˚ morning temps with 90% humidity. I was soaked with sweat within the first mile, and it would get worse.
As I hit mile 3, just after passing the campground area, the humidity was crushing me, and the constant flow of bug spray-flavored sweat laced with leftover hair product in my mouth had me slowing down and then stopping to dry heave a bit. Then I did it a bit more. Thankfully, there was no food in my stomach.
It brought back memories of basically every endurance mountain bike race I ever did, which always contained a bit of retching along the way. At least my stomach muscles didn’t seize with cramps as they did once or twice in those days!
After a few seconds of heaving, I was back to just being slow, and after a couple of punchy climbs, it was fairly flat trails back to the parking lot and Escape II.
I finished the 5.01-mile loop and was a little disappointed with the effort. But after a quick look back at my Garmin files, it showed that while I was slower than my previous couple of 5-mile “runs,” I was 4 minutes faster overall when “running” this same loop. With that, there were many mental high-fives.
I toweled off, got some water, and did my stretching, anxious to get home for some breakfast and to put some precautionary ice on my knee.
Then, just as I finished the last of my stretches, I looked up and saw a bald eagle flying gracefully at tree top level directly overhead. All of a sudden, the start of another week in the Great American Hellscape didn’t seem so bad.
Later.