Notes
GPS says 9.5 but I'm calling it 11. 100% trail run! In Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsborough Town Forest. No idea where I was most of the time. There was a lot of single track. Covered the same general area on several very windy trails for the first half hour. At one point I ran into a deer and we had a stare-off for like 2 minutes. It was blocking the very narrow path I wanted to run on, and its deer friend had already ran off. But it just stood there and refused to move. So after a while I just turned around. Pretty cool honestly, we were maybe 10 feet away from each other, I was not expecting it to stay so close for so long.
After that I found a big wide trail I remembered from running with Steve a while back. I followed that awhile and got to another parking lot. Then I saw another single track and curiosity got the better of me. Followed that for my second session of getting completely lost. The first part was cool, I found this giant slab with several trails scrambling up it. So I did one and then continued on a trail at the top. I honestly have no idea how mountain bikers do these sorts of trails and survive. There's so many rocks everywhere that would come up so fast. But this whole trail network was very obviously ridden a lot. So it must be happening somehow.
So kept running, kept following trails and kept having no idea where I was. Finally, I was able to find my way back to that parking lot and the big wide trail. I followed that back the way I came, and thankfully I found Skyline again.
I decided early on I'd just run for time because these 10 minute "miles" from my watch weren't very meaningful. I wanted 11 originally so figured the slowest I'd run that normally is 8min pace or 1hr 28min. So I only spent that much time on my feet today. I probably put in just as much work as a normal 11 mile run, if not more, on my "9.5 mile" run today.
My hip flexor that acted up during lift, I felt a bit during this whole run, but definitely way better than its felt yesterday or Thursday. Will continue to monitor.