I have joked with my friends that if I do something like Western States I will work it into every conversation for months afterwards.
“Hey Valgard, let’s go to the salad bar for lunch.”
“Sure thing. That reminds me, I didn’t eat any salad when I ran 100 miles in a day.”
“Hey Valgard, here’s a picture of my cat Socks.”
“Wow! I wore socks when I ran 100 miles in one day!”
“Bob, this is Valgard.”
“Hi Valgard.”
“You know, someone said Hi to me at an aid station as I was running 100 miles in one day!”
Of course that sort of behavior bites you in the butt eventually. In one of Penn & Teller’s books Penn mentions being invited to watch a Space Shuttle launch. He’s feeling very full of himself and asks someone “Is this the first time you’ve seen a Shuttle lift off”. The guy answers “From the outside, yes”.
Oh, I know. I’ve done many trail runs, but no races before. I’ve got a half marathon this weekend (my 2nd) and then start training for the 10K on weeknights with a headlamp.
I signed up for the Disney Marathon tonight. It should be easy for me because I’ve been “running” 22-milers for a couple months now (unfortunately, only around telemark’s 50 mile pace, but I’m improving.)
I was planning on doing some trail running myself, but you have to travel way out of Florida to do anything interesting and its getting out of season quickly, but training for the marathon should prepare me for trail running too. I’m not gonna push over 26 until after the marathon, but I will try to walk as far as possible the day after my long runs in order to get my body used to exertion day after day (in preparation for long hikes.) Unfortunately my record so far in the past month or so is 30 miles in 2 days or 45 miles in 3, so I have nowhere to go but up.
I wouldn’t get too hung up on exact speed; do your run, enjoy it, see how you do and you can always work on going faster. I’d rather limp across the finish line than be the fastest man to bonk at 25 miles.
If your running is mostly on flat, smooth roads then expect trails to be harder - the footing is uneven, there’s more obstacles to keep an eye on, you’ll have uphills and downhills, etc. Start out slow and get used to the feel of it. If you’ve got nice smooth fire trails then you don’t need special trail running shoes. I would recommend a set of trail running gaiters to keep debris out of your shoes, that can make life miserable.
Telemark, if you’re doing night running you might want to carry both a small headlamp and a small flashlight - one small light source can often focus your attention on that spot of light so you miss something coming up, and especially with LEDs they seem to be a bit bad for depth perception regarding obstacles. Two independent lights helps.
Thanks for the advice. I’ve done my share of night running and I’m familiar with these trails, but I don’t typically carry two light sources. I ran this morning in the dark but it was city streets which are easy in comparison. I have a second headlamp and a small maglite, I’ll grab one of those before the training run next week.
What’s a good sort of place to get trail running shoes? I haven’t seen any at sporting goods stores and haven’t asked, thinking the employees might not know.
I’ve run on some trails in FL, unfortunately without significant uphills and downhills (my road running has more – two 75-foot bridges in my running path), but they do have significant amounts of roots. I wear regular ol’ hiking boots when I run them because of this, but I want something that will enhance performance and provide some shock absorption but also not injure me if I hit a root the wrong way. (I’m not even the sort to worry about hiking boots on normal hikes, as I’ve never hurt a leg on a hike, but running is another story.)
I like my new Innov-8 315 trail runners, and my previous pair was from Merrill. I’ve bought mine from Zappos since I was pretty sure about the size. Running on trails gets you better at running on trails; you start doing better at foot placements with practice.
For gaiters, let me put in a plug for Dirty Girl gaiters. Mine are Lime Gaiterade Hurl. Definitely a fashion statement.
Running shoe stores are your first place to try. You tend to find a wide selection and people who actually run and know what they are talking about.
REI is OK once you have a better idea of what you like.
I would skip the big-box places. IME they carry a limited selection of popular brands at full list price and nobody in the place knows anything about them.
