Day 4,388—First 50K + of the Year—

 

      I don’t want to be too hard on myself because April has been a busy month, but I just haven’t run as much, and the only long day I did was the Marathon a couple of weeks ago. I am looking at my mileage for the month now, and I was consistently doing two long runs on the weekend. On the first weekend in April, I ran 17 miles, then 13.5 on the Chub Trail. The next weekend was the marathon, and the week after that was last weekend, when I did 10 on Saturday and 13.5 on the Chubb trail, so I am acknowledging that it has been a successful month, but it is always harder to keep the mileage up on trails. Originally, my goal was to run the Chubb trail tomorrow, but now I am way too tired to do anything like that.

        I love being able to do a 50K loop. I modified my marathon version of this a little. I was happy that all the water fountains seemed to be on. I was able to get some water at a park in the city early on and then at Brentwood Park. I stopped at QT when I made it to the start of Grant’s Trailhead in Kirkwood. I found this snack with cashews, chocolate, and vanilla that I have never seen before. This brand usually uses honey in its products, so it was shocking to see it using something different in this version. It was such a nice day. So many people were out on the trail, and I saw a bunch of families going to Grant’s Farm. I forgot that there was still a detour because I was getting sick of running it. I saw the signs leading up to the spot, but this time I decided to go see what the construction looked like. When I got there, it was easily passable. They hadn’t put the path back in one small section, but that was it. I am glad I did it because I had been debating seeing why the section was closed before, but I was fine with running the detour for a while, but that was last month. I don’t get why it is taking so long.

        When I made it all the way to the trailhead at the end of Grant’s trail, I was shocked to find that the water fountain wasn’t turned on there! It was way after the first day of spring now, so I am not sure what they’re waiting for. I had some water from the bathroom sink and kept moving. I slowed down a little once I got to the last five miles. I was trying to remember the different distance markers. I was pretty sure it was close to five miles after I started running on the Riverway, but I wasn’t sure. I am going to try to remember for next time it was 5.1 miles from that point, so I was pretty close.

        I was so tired when I got home and didn’t want to do anything. I wrote most of this yesterday, but I struggled to motivate myself to finish writing and publish. I don’t know what my deal was. I felt fine running, but awful afterward. This morning, all I wanted to do was sleep, but my cats kept waking me up, so I got up. I don’t know how I am going to go running, but I will as soon as I can. If I don’t have the energy to go to Lone Elk, I will go to the track, so at least the surface will be more forgiving on my feet.