Losing a mouth piece

Saturday morning, I headed out for my long run. As I usually do, I took along my Camel back vest. I find that I favor running with a vest over running with my Nathan handheld bottles.

Everything was going along fine during my run. I was sipping at my usual intervals. At 15 miles, my Garmin chimed its usual alert. I instinctively reach down to take a sip, but the moment, it touched my lips, I realized something was wrong. I looked at the end of the hose to see the shut off valve but no mouth piece.

I guess I was lucky that the mouth piece and the shut off valve were not made as one piece. Otherwise, I would have lost my entire supply of water.

Even now, I cannot figure out how it came out. Removing it to clean the vest is nothing short of a pain so having it fallout seems strange to me.

I thought about back tracking to find it, but I could have lost it anywhere in a 5 mile stretch. Backtracking didn’t seem practical when I was already at 15 miles.

I guess now; I have to buy a replace valve. However, this time, I will keep a better eye on it when I running. I don’t want this to me habit forming.

Stories from the trail,

The Cool Down Runner