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MRT out and back with CA

August 19, 2018 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: nice, then a bit warm

Comments:
Weird day. We slept outside the Jaqua cabin with the door wide open. Turns out that smoke rolled in overnight. Sometime in the middle of the night (turns out it was 4:30) I woke up "wired". This = histamine, so after laying there for like 15 min wide awake, I decided to pound 2 benadryls. I was worried I'd be up all night. But just as soon as I laid down and got comfy, the damn alarm went off! Shit!

It was 5, and we were planning on driving from the Waldo area, all the way over to McKenzie, so CA could do her last pre-race long run. It was going to be a haul, so we had to get up early.

We got out of there by 5:15, and I was able to drive down the hill to Oakridge, then cut over to a scenic highway. But once on that road, and annoyingly, as CA was sleeping, the benadryl was kicking in and I was nearly falling asleep at the wheel! I had to wake her up and have her drive.

I tried to sleep in the bed in the back, but the road was so winding and goddamn bumpy that I had to go up front. I more or less passed out for a solid hour+ til we got to McKenzie highway.

Bad, bad start to the day.

But thankfully once we got there and moving, I felt...OK! The plan was to run the usual finish line, upriver "100 minutes" (or no more than 10 miles), then run harder in return.

I had CA lead. I felt remarkably OK, if not GOOD, on the outbound. Good energy, good head...despite being drugged up on benadryl. Weird.

The ankles, however, were shitty. Just sore the whole damn time, never really got better. But at least I felt good.

We were moving pretty good, too: mostly 9:30 miles, on that winding, upriver trail. Not bad. Felt easy.

At Deer Creek (mile 8.x), there's an unofficial hot springs and camp area, where CA and I camped after McKenzie last year. Several tents were up in the woods between the trail and the river. As we were descending the trail from the lot to the river, I look up and there's a woman emerging from the river, BUCK-ASS-NAKED. I barely saw anything, as she saw us first, and had some sort of sheet and did like a forward fold to shield herself. But what I did see? Pretty...attractive! (Which says a lot because "random naked bodies" tend to NOT be, like at all).

Huh. I wasn't even sure CA saw it, and since we were both pretty fatigued, I wasn't even sure *I saw it*! A few seconds after we blew by, I simply said, "Good MORNING!".

LOLZ.

We ran about another 1.3 miles before stopping at an even 10. By then, I was feeling pretty fatigued. CA felt crappy, too. But we stuck with our plan to fartlek back: minutes ladder of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-7-6-5-4-3-2-1.

I was half looking forward to running through camp again, and when we did, it was like a small group of people sitting in a hippie-like circle. One woman fitting the description was looking at us pretty hard...like she KNEW it was us who saw her. Lolz. Didn't see any more.

The run back was...rough. The fast chunks were hardly fast, and by then, I was both too tired and STIFF to run fast.

I swear, a part of this AFS -- as it is with ultra-bonking -- is this central governor, "Oh no, you di-int!", where it just shuts down your system. For today, it wasn't a bonk. It was just like...motor nerves. Like the whole posterior division of the motor system. Just was "done".

We finished the final minute of fartlek about 1.5 miles away from the finish and jogged it in. I almost wished we'd kept running hard. That felt better, even if it was "slow" tempo.

But we got there. 20 miles in the books. Not super-impressive, but it was a good run.

Post-run:
* jumped in the McKenzie
* drove home, wearily
* ate some foods
* THREE HOUR NAP!
* out for a "date night" to celebrate 44 months!

Solid day. Really lucky it wasn't horrible.