How it works

The point of this blog is to generate challenges to provide my life with adventure, personal growth, and to meet people in interesting ways. In order to do this, I need challenges. I expect it to take anywhere from a week to two months for me to complete my challenges, whether because I am preparing for some one-time event at the end of "training," because the opportunity to complete the challenge isn't a daily thing, or that is how long I need to do something.

To submit a challenge to me, reply to any post. While challenges can be as simple as "Do _____ while ______ing," but I would also appreciate more information, such as a suggestion of how long I have to complete my challenge, approximate costs if I have to buy all of the equipment involved, anything else that seems useful. After evaluating the entries, I will post about a few of them, and the ones with the best responses will be added to a poll to vote.

While I do reserve the privilege to decline challenges I do not see to be in line with the spirit of my adventure, I will give serious consideration to all submissions.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Run in the woods

So this last weekend, I decided to do my first trail race...at night. It was also a half marathon. Really wasn't actually my best idea.

 I started running at 8:30, as the sun was closing in on the horizon. Since I wasn't sure how to ajust my pace for a trail yet, I got to asking a couple of the guys near the front what their road times were like. The one who was older than me happened to be a coach for the other couple guys there with me. He was apparently doing mostly trail runs as he could not give me a good idea what his road time was like. He just said I should simply start somewhere near the front since I would not want to be caught in the bottleneck at the beginning of the trail. So off I went. (As it turns out, this 40 year old was the second place finisher to his athlete). Needless to say this was not as conservative as I expected to be going.

I was drinking water regularly from the requisite water bottle I was carrying, but I was probably close to dehydrated when I started. While still on the first lap on the first loop (two laps of two loops), I was already favoring my thighs a little. My continued drinking helped significantly with that. Any way, I kept at my demanding pace, nimbly flying from stone to stone. As it was getting dark, my pace started to slow from the extra care taken to not eat it, but I was already well into metabolic suicide, especially in my lower legs and feet. I continued to grind on, by this point back on the first loop for the second time. At 1:22 in, my calf were such that I started walking, thinking I had only a couple miles left to go. After about 20 min of walking (I'm so ashamed about that) one of the people who was passing me told me it was about 4 miles to the finish. Four miles!? I'm not walking that, so I started running again, but like this other runner, I walked up the hills. At the very least, having another runner to exchange a few occasional words with was much more motivating.

I eventually finished after 2 hours and 15 minutes. That's averaging about 10:25/mile. As I crossed the finish line, I was quite relieved to be done. I polished off most of my remaining water and walked around to prevent my legs from simply accumulating lactic acid. Once I had gotten my heart rate down, I went into the building to see about some food and (as I realized inside) a massage.  While waiting, I started to feel a bit nauseous. I went over to gram by complementary hot dog and chips. (great post race food *sarcasm*) Though it does at least have salts, protein, and simple starches. After nibbling a couple chips is when I really noticed it as I rushed off to the bathroom for the toilet. After another repetition, one of the race volunteers had drawn their attention to me. Rather than water, I started sucking on some ice chips and she had me take a salt tablet. I also got a start on some Coke. Gradually I started feeling better, but not without wavering from not to bad to about to puke if I stood up for a significant fraction of an hour. Eventually I got in for my massage, some of my food and by 1:30 AM, I had managed to be on my way back to my car for my hour and 20 min drive. By the time I got home, I managed to rally to the point that I was more lively than my suite mate.

I'm up to 3 states now for my half marathon tour.