Running long 1:12:00 [4] 15.39 km (4:41 / km) +210m 4:23 / km
Interesting run today, so story time? I guess?
So to start out, I didn't have anything to eat since breakfast (which I had at noon because I stayed up way too late last night). And the reason I wanted to do something long was because my family was going out to a buffet dinner and I wanted to stuff myself full of delicious sushi and simmering teriyaki chicken.
Anyways, I decided to grab a Gu before I went to test how well it could hold me up. I went out at a relatively normal pace until the Gu kicked in and I started picking up the pace to a medium-ish hard effort to see how long I could last on one of these bad boys.
My guess is the Gu ran out around 30 minutes into the run. I was still able to hold a decent pace, but I definitely began to feel fatigued.
Okay, so back to the story. I was running on a trail besides the train tracks and there was a train passing by, no biggie, when all of a sudden the brakes screech the train to a halt seemingly damaging the rusted containers trailing behind the head of the train. I thought maybe it was just an old train and they just made a quick stop, but on my way down the trail I saw crewmen making their way to the front of the train so I assume it broke down which is why it made that scary noise.
Now here comes the fun part. I was running on a trail in the back end of Valley Forge Park and there was a ton of new grass popping up everywhere since it's the end of summer season. And with grass comes grass seeds, some of which are horribly itchy if you run through them. And guess what I did! Yup. I ran through a small patch of grass and the seeds must've sprayed everywhere because my arms, chest, and legs were covered with these stinging, itchy grass seeds making the rest of the run (which was a good 8 km) a lot less fun.
Next I almost get hit by a car. And by almost I'd say within 1 to 2 seconds of getting hit. I was at a crosswalk and cars coming both directions yielded, but one sneaky Mazda sports car decided it would be a good idea to pull out onto the shoulder and zip by the stopped cars, nearly running me over in the process.
Anyways, that's pretty much what happened, quite scary.