Notes
Mostly sunny, very humid, thunderstorms last nigh so the woods were wet and steamy. Plan was to do 15, run a loop come back to the car, get more water and half of PB&J, then go back out to finish. Started out on the 100 course. The ATV road wasn't as humid as it was in the woods. It was really steamy, like running in a sauna. The sun was coming out and heating things up too. Stopped quite a lot to pick up sticks and branches. Legs felt pretty good. Once I got back out to the road I ran up to the Fox Run trail and took that over to Deer Path. Stopped and splashed my face at the bridge, then headed for the Bradford Loop. My energy was fading and I wasn't feeling that great, it had been 47 minutes so I had a GU before I got out the loop trail. Felt better on the loop. The deer flies were still out in force. They swarmed the car as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. I had my hat with fly paper and was catching a lot, I sprayed up with bug spray too which helped. I was getting to the end of the loop and there was a big hole filled to the top with water. I tried to skirt the edge and knew it would be slippery. As I was reaching for a small tree to grab onto, my feet went out from under me and into to the puddle I went, slid in and my legs were completely submerged. Nothing hurt, but had to stop and wash the mud off my side. Kept going and stopped at the Bradford intersection. Splashed around in the brook before continuing on. Decided to run the 100 course back, which would make it about 13 miles, then I would have to do just 2 after stopping at the car. The ATV club had done some excavator work on this end of the road. It was smoother and some of the big holes were drained off, but the mud was pretty soft. I was starting to get a little low on energy again, so I stopped at the intersection down to the river and had another GU. Ran pretty well along the road back to the beaver bridge, stopping a few times to let ATVs go by. When I got to the bridge I was really hot. I splashed in the brook and took my tank off and soaked it in the cool water before putting it back on. I felt better, but once I started down the Homestead trail, the humidity was bad again. My legs still felt pretty good and I ran pretty well all the way to the picnic table. Felt like I was going to bonk though once I stopped. Had my emergency GU and sat to cool off for a bit, but I ran out of water. As I started towards the field, I caught my toe on a root and bear crawled to keep from falling. That kind of hurt. Once I got the porcupine trail, I turned right to head back to the car. I really needed water. But by the time I got to the car, I was hot and dizzy. I couldn't see going back out and called it good at 12 miles. The heat and humidity this week finally broke me. My legs felt ok though. I think this was a pretty good long run and it was nice being in the woods, except for the humidity and temperature. Caught a lot of deer flies on my hat. I'll be glad when they are gone.