Total Run time 4hrs 15 mins, for about 22.5 miles in the greenbelt.
Oh my. Yesterday I got my ass handed to me up and down the greenbelt for over 3 hours after I warmed up with Karma nice and gently.
If you've never had the opportunity to run on the greenbelt with Mer when she's feeling good, then you haven't ever run with her. As such, despite having run with her 50+ times?, apparently yesterday was the first time I've ever "run" with her! Holy crap!
Ran 45 minutes with Karma at 5:10am, then met Mer, Ken, and Kirk for a loop. That loop was more of a tempo run than anything else. Solid, hard pace all the way through climbs, technical jagged rock terrain, flats; you name it, we were pushing it, and all this with only headlamp vision to lead the way. I was seriously in trouble for about an hour of my run, as my legs were dead and I was REALLY having to put in a strong effort to stay in contact.
Thankfully the legs snapped out of their funk after I ate some food at our return to reload water bottles at the cars, and we took off for loop two with Jason and Beth joining the run. The ladies and I quickly lost the guys, as they took a fatal left turn as we took a right. (they couldn't keep up with the pace to see which way we went) Adding a little misunderstanding on where everyone was headed, meant that after Beth veered off after her hour with us, Mer and I were left for the "Piece de resistance", what I would call "graded sprint repeats" at a solid, hard pace. My legs felt tired but strong during our hill sprint repeats. The hill isn't a particularly steep hill, but at a fast pace it's a 7 min run up (then down), so it's definitely a workout of the legs, footwork, eye-to-foot coordination etc. Only had time for 1 normal pace and 2 hard repeats in order to stick to the overall runtime plan.
We ran back, going up the hill of death, and as is customary, you can't end a solid run with a weak powerline run, so we cranked out a 7:55mile last mile on there according to her Garmin! (On the rocky powerline, that's much faster than you roadies think it is)
Not that I wasn't bummed the guys took a wrong turn, but it's always fun to get some one-on-one running time with a friend to catch up on life. Especially when that certain someone can easily put a serious hurting on me whenever she so chooses!
I was absolutely spent when we were done. Legs were absolute jello. But boy do I love running hard 4 hour greenbelt runs! Give me a dozen more of these types of trail workouts before Bandera, and I'll be ready for sure!
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