South Austin Ramble - 18 miler

Today's 6AM adventure led us South. Appropriately named the South Austin Ramble, we rambled our way South way way WAAAAY far down south. I'd never run all the way to Davis Lane and Mnchaca before. But, if you run the 18 mile option, that's how far you get to go! How fun.


It was an out and back, and as you see above, the first half was a continous up hill run through the streets of South Austin. Bouldin, to South First to Bannister, and over 290, and over Stassney, and William Cannnon and on and on and on.
I'm not a big fan of this run. I hate to say it, but it's much mor fun to run through neighborhoods with nice houses than it is to run through where we ran today: Old school cookie cutter square homes.

The pace was ast to start, a little faster than I'd like, but it hard to not run the pace of others when you're out for 18 miles. The options are, run with them, or run on your own. There were 4 options to this run. 12, 14, 16 an 18 miles


It was a little hard to have a group of about 12 runner slowly dwindle it's way down to 3. 4 different programs ran today: Summer long run (just stay in shape), December's Las Vegas/Dallas Marathons, November's Marine Corps/Philly/NY Marathons, Chicago/St George Marathons, so as they're all at different stages, people would turn around at the 6, 7 or 8 mile markers. Abe, Jeff and I kept going to the very end; the 9 mile marker.

I'll stop boring you with the details, just know that the rain stopped after 20 mins, so the ground heated up more and more, which made it more and more humid, and less and less air to breathe. Overall, the run sucked, my legs were tired from this looong gradual 9 mile climb.

There was one funny exchange that had me laughing uncontrollaby for several minutes. There was this dead animal run over on the stree. As we approached it we couldn't figure out what it was. Now, keep in mind we're running on Dittmar (also knwo as Davis lane) and we're 400 miles from the ocean.

Abe: Wow, what is that?
Mike: I'm not sure. (Then thinking to myself: Is that a possum? Nope, maybe it's a rat??? There's no hair on it. What are all those speckles on it?)
Abe: Thinking to himself too.

We run up to it, and both almost at the same time: Holy Shit, that's is a giant frog!!! Check out those giant legs!

Mike: Wow, from far, I first thought that thing was a possum, then a rat.
Abe: No shit, I first thought it was a bird, then I thought to myself, no, not a bird, then i saw the speckles and thought: "Is that a trout??"
Mike: A trout! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH That is hilarious! A trout!!!
Abe: The speckles made it loo-
Mike: (interjecting) Oh I hear yah, those speckles made it tough to process! hahaha a trout! You know the world is fucked up when you're running along Austin streets, and dead trouts line the roadway!
Abe and Mike: hahahah

Total Time: 2hours29minutes
Total time without 8 waterstops: 2hours 17mins
Pace: 7:40 per mile.