Thursday, December 30, 2010

Tuesday Night Trail Run

Tarahumara training is in full force!  Tuesday I went on a 12k trail run with the meetup group.  Wowwie! 

Continue for a picture of the Midlevels ghost runner!



Caught on film! (sounds better than "digital file")  The infamous ghost runner of the Midlevels!

In an attempt to combine the joys of running and hiking, I joined this group for a Tuesday night outing.  I'm so lucky that the organizers were patient and kind and willing to wait for me, Slow Poke McGee!  I was also lucky because the rest of the group were also first-timers, so we kept on truckin together.

All the details of our trail run are here.  And boy does that make me want a Garmin even more!  My poor little Nike + has gotten me far, but is not exactly keeping up with the big boys.

Not gonna lie.  This was hard.  But not impossible.  Some of the inclines were STEEP.  I could feel it burning on the way up, and the way down too.  And everyone was faster than me, but I didn't stop.  But at some point eventually  we got to flat-ish trails and running through the dirt and rocks and leaves in pitch darkness was AWESOME.  Next time when I'm by myself I'll take some pictures leaving the city.  The view was beautiful.  The air felt clean.  And we could even see stars!  A very rare sight in Hong Kong!

And then I had a headlamp malfunction.  When we got into the trail (pitch darkness remember) my headlamp wouldn't turn on.  Actually more like the batteries wouldn't stay in place.  I've had issues with it before, but I've gotten it to work when I needed it.  This was a total fail.  One of the organizers stayed back with me and we tried to fix it, and when that was a no go he kindly lent me his turbo headlamp as he used a small flashlight.  I need to buy one of those babies soon.

I feel awful for slowing everyone down.  It's not a nice feeling.  And hopefully these kind people won't resent me for it.  Keep on truckin.

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