Davidson College Long Run

Time: 128:26

Distance: 30.01k

Pace: 4:16

Map

Somehow I've been motivated to make early morning runs with people this week and today was no different. I was up and out the door before 6:30 am to meet up with a group running from Davidson College. I mixed a cooler of Nuun and lugged it down to my car so that everyone in attendance would have something to enjoy.

I started out at the back of the pack and reeled the large group of 20 in by about 4k. I was going to be out on the trails and roads awhile today and I needed to make sure that I wasn't cooked by 10k. We made a few loops on the cross country course before returning to the parking lot along the road around an hour. I was feeling good and felt like the pace was startling to settle so I hit the front and quickened the pace a bit. My right foot is still giving me some troubles but the discomfort generally goes away.

After snagging some Nuun at the hour mark, it was back out to the roads for some faster running. I was trying to run down Caitlin and one of the Mayes brothers, but their pace was quicker than the 6:40 that I was told. I ended up running back into the center of town as the couple turned off to finish (they started at 6:30 am) and I ran into Cornelius. I had never before been to the town so it was cool to visit on foot. I was not feeling fantastic by the 20k mark and was just trying to break the run down into smaller segments.

I was back at the college parking lot at 22k where I snagged some more Nuun and headed out for a final 8k of running. I was feeling good, but not great. The heat and humidity was getting to me, but there were no signs of dizziness of major dehydration. With about 6k to run I stopped to pee and was pretty sure I saw blood in my urine. Not good. Really not good.

I continued on and ran another 3k before I had to pee again. More blood. Not good, but I was still unconcerned as I had taken an ibuprofen and been out on the roads for close to 2 hours thus far. There weren't any signs of heat exhaustion so I chugged along finishing with some decent kilometers the last 15 minutes. This was the first time I had experienced something like this, but know it has happened to other runners.

Overall, it was a good run minus the period of me experiencing my period. I was thankful to jump in the Hovis' lake house pool afterward to cool off and continue to hydrate with some electrolyte tablets.