Notes
Here's one for the books. A true coming of age battle. Jake came up to Waukesha for half the weekend to run in Kettle Moraine and asked me to join. I told him I'd do up to 16 but he said he was planning on 20 and I'm not a pansy so of course I said I can do that ezpz. We stayed at Claire's the night before cuz it's like a 20 min drive.
I just gotta say I have mad respect for trail runners and ultra runners now. The run was really fun but damn it got really hard. I almost bailed a few times. The first wasn't even a quarter mile in. Bugs were swarming my face so I panicked and ran back to the car and got my shirt to tie around my face. It only kinda helped. I honestly considered not going back in but again I'm no pansy so I manned up and went back in. The second time was at our first stop half an hour in where the trail seemed to get dense and scary. I reluctantly followed Jake in though and took my shirt off my face cuz I was gettin real warm. The bugs eventually got better as the day moved on. I enjoyed the time in nature and talking with Jake, rolled my ankle a few times, conquered a bunch more hills than I thought, then at about 2 hours in, my legs were getting real fed up with me. Jake could tell too cuz for the last 40 min after every big climb he asked me if I wanted to stop cuz he heard my loud heaving. I caved in a few times and took a breather. The biggest challenges were the sheer amount of time running and the few opportunities to get a break from steep climbs and steep declines (honestly, going down was at least as strenuous and going up at times). Then we ran out of water with like 30 min to go. I just put my head down at that point and focused on just finishing the damn suffering. Jake seemed totally fine. I'm just guessing we went 18 cuz the GPS was spotty and I forgot to start my watch again at like an hour and a half in and just said fuck it. 9 min pace seems about right. Didn't think we'd need to go so slow but I think it's mainly cuz climbing was really slow and we didn't get to fly on the downhills either. Pace isn't super important though.
Overall, I'm really glad Jake had me do this. Super fun (for most of it), it was definitely good practice for the marathon, and just good to be able to do a full long run with Jake. I super overestimated how hilly Kettle Moraine was, how slow we had to go, and how painful running this length of time would be. I'm definitely gonna be aching for a while. Learned a lot. We should do it again.