LSHT, part 2

Well, this run SUCKED!!!!

We headed out at sun up this past Sunday on a new-to-us section of the LSHT with a goal of an out and back course that would give us 15 to 16 miles along with some pretty scenery. Unfortunately the night before there was a really bad windstorm, so the entire trail was littered with fallen trees crisscrossing the trails, along with a lot of sticks and roots and pine cones. This made the going slow and very rough.

On top of that, my legs were feeling a bit fatigued from a moderately hard effort 15 miler the morning before, AND this section of the trails was very rooty and muddy.

Did I mention the roots?

After about 3 miles I was reduced to lots of walking, so I told Jesse he should just go on without me and that I would see him back at my truck when we got there.

He took off and actually went to the turn around point we were intending on going to, being a shod runner the roots and such didnt bother him nearly as bad as they did with me.

I continued down the trail, walking much of it, running the sections that I could (which were very runnable!) Untill I got to a road that crossed over the trail. At that point I decided that I would just take the road back to the Trailhead (TH# 6) and just wait for Jesse there.

Big mistake.

The road started out as a reasonably worn down asphalt that was pretty nice to run on.

Then it went to some rougher asphalt.

Then chip seal.

Then really rough chip seal.

Then it got worse...

I ran on one of the worst surfaces Ive ever ran on for probablly 3 excruciatingly painfull miles untill it met up with a more traveled road that was old worn down smooth asphalt. The difference was night and day. I was on cloud 9 once my feet hit that asphalt.

Although the chip seal hurt like a bitch, I wasnt worried about snapping a toe off on a root like I was on the trail.

I made it back to the truck in about 10.5 miles total distance and laid back waiting on Jesse. Unfortunately he got lost somewhere on the way back and turned what should have been only 1.6 miles back to the truck into about a 6 mile detour. But he did set a new PR for distance ran!

I feel like this section would have been perfectly fine had there not been a storm the night before. When it starts drying up outside instead of raining every other day for the last month, I think this section of trail would be fine barefoot along with the rest of the trail that I have ran so far.

It is beautiful out there though! Between the 2 of us we captured some good pictures of the trail, both nice sections and not so nice sections.

Enjoy!