Wet Saturday

Workout notes 20+ mile walk in 4:50. This was a bit weird; first I walked out to Moss and back (about 1 mile) and changed pants; it was in the high 40s and raining. My windpants were soaked so I changed to double layered bike tights under some shorts. That did the trick, but, of course, the weather heated up to 60 or so, and we even got a tiny bit of sun.

The rest of the walk took me into West Peoria (lunch course) with a loop in the Cemetery (big hill), followed by two Bradley Park Cornstalk loops, out Columbia Terrace to Broadway, McClure, Bootz, Bigalow, Forrest Hill, Glen Oak Park, past Woodruff to the Rivertrail and on home the standard way.

I maintained a steady 14 minute per mile pace throughout; the last 3 were in 42 minutes (uphill).
Only the last 2 miles or so were tough.

A few observations:

1. Since it was raining, there were earth worms all over the road. I avoided them, but of course cars didn’t; hence there was a slimy “worm paste” on the roads at times.

2. I noticed that during these long walks, I always start to get rocks in my shoes at about 2-2:30 into it. For walks of 10 miles or less, this is almost never a problem. I found out why: my shoes tend to loosen up as I go; when I tied my shoes tighter at 3 hours, I stopped having “rock in the shoe” problems. The problem is almost always more pronounced in my right foot, which pronates more than my left foot.

3. I usually do some thinking while doing these walks, and to be quite frank, the ideas that I come up with are usually pretty lousy.

McNaughton
A couple of photos from the race; here I am crossing Lick Creek at 3.3 miles into the second loop (13.3 miles into the trail race)

The definition of a lack of grace:

Midway: