This weekend is shotgun hunting season in Southern Illinois. This I did not know. Let me begin my story of my first taper run...
I headed to Benton, IL to Wal-Mart and grabbed a large Gatorade and a couple PowerBar Harvest Grain bars to tide me over for breakfast. I saw a young boy about 14 in hunting gear. I smiled and said to myself, this is why I don't live in Southern Illinois. But it didn't ring any bells in my head. I've been too far removed from it I suppose.
Then I headed on over to Rend Lake. On the way I spotted many trucks pulled over to the side of the road next to woods. Still no trigger until I saw my fourth truck. Then I started thinking... "Um, Rock Cut State Park was closed last weekend due to hunting, maybe southern Illinois hunting's season this weekend?" After another couple of trucks & seeing guys dressed in all orange, I started laughing and yelled at myself for not thinking this all the way through.
So I get to the parking lot across from the visitors centre and I start to get prepared for the run. There was a lot of trucks in the parking lot but they were closer to the centre while I was near the trail head with one truck beside me. I looked in there, sure enough, dressed in camouflage with his buddy in a hunter's orange hat.
As I walk up to the trailhead, I set my Garmin. And I start my run. Boy was it cold. I checked the weather that morning and the forecast changed significantly from Friday's forecast. It was supposed to be a high of 46 on Saturday in Southern Illinois. Now only 40. Worst part was the 9a forecast of 30* with a wind chill of 21. But it still beats Northern Illinois of 24* a wind chill of 15. OUCH.
After mile 1, I ran across a hunter, dressed in orange and a gun strapped to his back. I was afraid he was gonna say something to me but he didn't and I just kept on going.
Boy, I can tell I am losing my fitness though. It hurt to run just 3 miles and I stopped at the 3 mile mark. I guess it's back to midweek running for me and only hope that it doesn't bother my foot anymore. After a minute or two of resting I plodded ahead. I ran past the dam and then I saw the sign.
Um, today's the 22nd. I'm running during hunting season. SHIT! Am I gonna get killed by a stray bullet? Probably not I realised because I am on the trail. However, the trail does go through some dense woods. Well, let's just keep going and see what happens.
I make it to the marina and see another sign and notice that it's getting to the wooded area. I lean against the Stop sign and decide what to do. I decide that if I turn around now (3.7) I'll get almost 7.5 miles in and that's good enough. I was having some foot problems again.
Everything heading back is fine. With 3 miles left to go, I had to start walking. But I also found this thing (picture left). Is it a bullet or what? So in the podcast I was listening to talked about the Galloway method which was running & walking. So I did 4 minutes of running and one minute of walking. It was hard to even do that.
The scary part came with only a mile left to go. A doe ran across the path in front of me from left to right. Oh shit. If she's running, she's running from something. So I was hoping that no hunters (or worse a bullet) were coming through at that time.
Man, I forgot how completely different southern Illinois is compared to northern Illinois! Here is the sign that I completely missed at the trailhead. I was messing with my Garmin as I walked through the barriers. Maybe it should have a chain across it to garner more attention.
But this week I will get back on the horse and start running again, at the Y, on the treadmill. To top it off with a Thanksgiving morning run! Then 8 miles on that Saturday. Sad part about today is that I was actually looking forward to running my 12 miles today because it was only 2 hours of running!!
I also got a strange rash on my neck. I don't know if it was from my neck gaiter and my iPod headphone cord mashing with each other but I didn't have it last week so something was different this week but it bothered me while running. It actually hurt! Speaking of headphones, my ear buds just won't stay in my ears! I had to keep messing with them which didn't help my run.
Oh and I don't get my orthotics until Wednesday. So I will only have a week or so to break them in and get my feet used to them. I hope that it'll work out!
Once again the BiM Active site has gotten at least one mile wrong compared to Garmin. My mile 4 Garmin has at 10:44 while BiM said 14:57. Oh well.
I headed to Benton, IL to Wal-Mart and grabbed a large Gatorade and a couple PowerBar Harvest Grain bars to tide me over for breakfast. I saw a young boy about 14 in hunting gear. I smiled and said to myself, this is why I don't live in Southern Illinois. But it didn't ring any bells in my head. I've been too far removed from it I suppose.
Then I headed on over to Rend Lake. On the way I spotted many trucks pulled over to the side of the road next to woods. Still no trigger until I saw my fourth truck. Then I started thinking... "Um, Rock Cut State Park was closed last weekend due to hunting, maybe southern Illinois hunting's season this weekend?" After another couple of trucks & seeing guys dressed in all orange, I started laughing and yelled at myself for not thinking this all the way through.So I get to the parking lot across from the visitors centre and I start to get prepared for the run. There was a lot of trucks in the parking lot but they were closer to the centre while I was near the trail head with one truck beside me. I looked in there, sure enough, dressed in camouflage with his buddy in a hunter's orange hat.
As I walk up to the trailhead, I set my Garmin. And I start my run. Boy was it cold. I checked the weather that morning and the forecast changed significantly from Friday's forecast. It was supposed to be a high of 46 on Saturday in Southern Illinois. Now only 40. Worst part was the 9a forecast of 30* with a wind chill of 21. But it still beats Northern Illinois of 24* a wind chill of 15. OUCH.
After mile 1, I ran across a hunter, dressed in orange and a gun strapped to his back. I was afraid he was gonna say something to me but he didn't and I just kept on going.
Boy, I can tell I am losing my fitness though. It hurt to run just 3 miles and I stopped at the 3 mile mark. I guess it's back to midweek running for me and only hope that it doesn't bother my foot anymore. After a minute or two of resting I plodded ahead. I ran past the dam and then I saw the sign.
Um, today's the 22nd. I'm running during hunting season. SHIT! Am I gonna get killed by a stray bullet? Probably not I realised because I am on the trail. However, the trail does go through some dense woods. Well, let's just keep going and see what happens.
I make it to the marina and see another sign and notice that it's getting to the wooded area. I lean against the Stop sign and decide what to do. I decide that if I turn around now (3.7) I'll get almost 7.5 miles in and that's good enough. I was having some foot problems again.
Everything heading back is fine. With 3 miles left to go, I had to start walking. But I also found this thing (picture left). Is it a bullet or what? So in the podcast I was listening to talked about the Galloway method which was running & walking. So I did 4 minutes of running and one minute of walking. It was hard to even do that.The scary part came with only a mile left to go. A doe ran across the path in front of me from left to right. Oh shit. If she's running, she's running from something. So I was hoping that no hunters (or worse a bullet) were coming through at that time.
Man, I forgot how completely different southern Illinois is compared to northern Illinois! Here is the sign that I completely missed at the trailhead. I was messing with my Garmin as I walked through the barriers. Maybe it should have a chain across it to garner more attention.But this week I will get back on the horse and start running again, at the Y, on the treadmill. To top it off with a Thanksgiving morning run! Then 8 miles on that Saturday. Sad part about today is that I was actually looking forward to running my 12 miles today because it was only 2 hours of running!!
I also got a strange rash on my neck. I don't know if it was from my neck gaiter and my iPod headphone cord mashing with each other but I didn't have it last week so something was different this week but it bothered me while running. It actually hurt! Speaking of headphones, my ear buds just won't stay in my ears! I had to keep messing with them which didn't help my run.Oh and I don't get my orthotics until Wednesday. So I will only have a week or so to break them in and get my feet used to them. I hope that it'll work out!
Once again the BiM Active site has gotten at least one mile wrong compared to Garmin. My mile 4 Garmin has at 10:44 while BiM said 14:57. Oh well.
Activity
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