Sundown Series - July 4 Milerish

 Driving down to Ann Spring yesterday, I happened to notice on my dashboard that the outside temperature was 97 degrees. I felt quite nice setting inside my air conditioned car but in the back of my mind, I could already feel the heat that I was going to face here shortly. 

This month, they had us running the May course but this time in the reverse direction. When I realized where we were running, I was quite happy about it. This meant that I get the more technical miles out of the way first and then the easier miles come toward the end. Who doesn't like that. 

As we waited on the start, I was looking for any place to stand in the shade. I could feel the sun burning my skin. 

One guys that I have been racing around here asked if I was going out hard to get a good place going in to the woods. I told them "no". This course has plenty of good passing zones. I would rather conserve those extra heart beats because of the heat. 

The race started, and it was playing out as I imaged. I had several runners ahead of me when I entered the trail. Sweat started running down the side of my face or maybe I should say that it restarted. Turning on a side trail, I noticed that the guy in front of me was running in what looked like slip-on cross fit shoes. Maybe not the best of idea since once we hit the more technical trails, he went down. He got up and started running again but slower. By a mile and half, I worked myself in to 3rd place. 

Soon I got to the easier trails. I was struggling in the heat but I was also experiencing hot and cold flashes. I would run through one section of the woods and could feel only suffocating heat and humidity. Then, I would encounter a section where I felt a chill in the air. Those sections were short lived and few and far between. 

Coming out the wood, we ran through this waist high grass for a couple of hundred yards before picking up the gravel road back to the finish. 

At least out in the open, there was the occasional breeze. I was happy to cross the finish line. My body didn't want to endure any more heat. 

How, I don't know but I was about 45 seconds faster than my time in the May race. Very strange, May was a pretty cool race. I don't know how I did this. 

We got one more race in this series, and it comes up quick. Because of the way that the weeks fall, we are racing here again in 3 weeks. I am looking forward to it. 

Oh, my time was 29:54 and 3 OA. It was a hard earned race result. 

The Cool Down Runner