Day 4,451—Two Weeks until Vero Beach in Florida and Running with 3 Liters of Water!—

 

Start time: 8:50 a.m.

Weather: Mid 70s, wind 3.8 mi/h, Humidity 90%

I figured I would start tapering for Vero Beach today, but I still needed to practice running with my new hydration bladder. It was a little tricky getting into my vest and figuring out how to drink from it efficiently, but I got the hang of it after a while. It is so heavy to carry! It doesn’t feel too bad when you start out, but after a while, I am just having to walk more and feeling like there is no way I am going to run up Gravois once I made it there. I wasn’t sure exactly how many miles this route would be, so I took an early picture of what used to be a cover around a dumpster. It had clearly been on fire, so I wonder what caused it. They used to always say at that apartment complex not to dump hot coals from grills into the dumpsters, so maybe that is what happened.

        I was taking a break from books and listening to a podcast for half this run, but then I switched back to books at the last stretch. I kept feeling like I wanted to stop and have a Gatorade, so I do need to start to keep hydration drink in the front pouches, maybe I will do that tomorrow but at the same time my hydration stuff is expensive, and I don’t know if I want to use any of it but I could use some of the older stuff I have that I don’t race with anymore.

        When I got home, my wife’s family was there celebrating her dad’s 80th birthday. I went downstairs and checked how much water I had, and, as I figured, I finished roughly 1.5 liters during a 10-mile run, which gives me hope that 3 liters of water will be enough for 20 miles, but we will see. There are still other factors, and I need to go back through each loop to think about the time of day I will be attacking that arm and what I will most likely need to bring, but this training was a success! It takes a minute to get used to using a new hydration system.