Notes
This run really sucked, and I'm not running trails in the woods again until cooler weather gets here because:
1. The temp even at 7:00 AM was warm and the humidity had to be in the 90's.
2. I removed seven ticks from my legs and hope I got 'em all - two were baby ticks, but weren't even that cute...
3. I endured a couple of trips and one major "face plant" stumbling over roots (scraped my & bruised my knee)
4. Horseflies, yellow flies, and mosquitos escorted me throughout this run - yes, I kill living things and I like it!
5. Due to these adverse conditions, I ended up walking quite a few times - my slowest run to date
6. Two days later redbugs (chiggers?) had caused 50-100 little red itchy pustules all over my body
7. Hundreds of spider webs (with spiders of course) across the trail were hard to see, and got all over me*
* Spiders can be your friends, if you'll just let them. However, I might change my mind on this if any Banana spiders are involved. Getting a web on your face (and especially on the lips) is really weird - fortunately, I didn't have to spit out any spiders. I think it's probably harder to swallow one than say, a gnat that you breathe in. Also, using a stick to break up the webs in front of you doesn't really work, because the spiders eventually crawl to the bottom of the stick and onto your hand. The best technique is to let your body break up the webs naturally as you run. Spiders will detect a moving object (I don't know about just walking) and will rappel down your body and onto the ground. Even the large one that initially landed between my glasses and my eye did this! The largest spider that I encountered was fortunately at perfect eye level and I managed to stop within three inches of it - I'm just glad it wasn't at "lip level"!