Trail Running Blog

Another Run on the Trail to The End

Sunday, January 27, 2002
Workout: Warm-up to Live Oak, hard to The End and back to Live Oak, Cool down Live Oak
Time: 48:38 Weather: chilly

While running the warm-up on the trail, I thought I felt pretty alright: no pain, injuries, no real complaints really. When we were stretching at Live Oak after the warm-up run, I realized that only four guys would be running today, so there would be big gaps between the people (which means we would most likely be running alone, which I hated). I guess all four of us could have ran together as a pack, but the odds of that happening were very slim. I think it’s a combination of the fact that all four of us are on different skill levels and there is always this feeling that we need to beat each other..

We started the run extremely fast, under 6 minutes (5:45-5:50) and after that I felt really tired. Other times before, I felt alright because I didn’t start out that fast. But this defnitely had an adverse affect on me, like it would with anyone starting a run too fast. A little bit before coming up to The End, I realized that Raymond was running right behind me. The rest of the way, I got discouraged because I thought he was going to beat me (I kept thinking, “Is he going to pass me now, which is fine or later on toward the end of the run, which would suck”) I saw how close he was to me when I got to The End and turned around and saw him running up toward the fence. It was literally 100 feet away or less. At the Park, I turned around (which I really didn’t want to do) and didn’t see him anywhere. That relieved me..a little.

Nothing happened until Duarte. I saw two runners up ahead, so I got a second wind kind of, and started picking up the pace. I didn’t catch them (I was really close though) but I caught a lot of ground on them. So from Duarte to Longden I ran at a pretty fast pace, which now, I loved! Then at Longden, without thinking I kicked, since it was only .25-.5 miles. And when I say kicked, I mean all out, I definitely didn’t want to get passed at this point in the run. Unfortunately, I hit a wall well before I finished, but at least I still finished.

What freaked me out was that Raymond was less than 20 seconds behind me, which really scared me. It was fun cooling down though, because I was talking to Raymond about the run. He kept saying that he wanted to beat me, lol. I talked about how scared I was if he caught me and how close he got at certain points in the run. It was a pretty successful run overall. Even though these runs are really hard, I’m glad I can run fairly well and hopefully they will help me for the upcoming track season and even looking long-term, the cross country season.