Trailrunning Training

Tough Mudder is part obstacle course, part mini-trail-running marathon.  The course I'll be running/climbing/swimming/crawling on is ten miles long.  Conveniently enough, just ten minutes from my house is Lake Habeeb, part of Rocky Gap State Park.  Coincidentally, the trail that loops the entire like is....5 miles long!  So while I haven't gotten up to 10 miles yet, I could, in theory, run the lake twice, and somewhat simulate a Tough Mudder course.  So now all I need is a good solid thunderstorm to turn it into a mud bog, a few monkey bars, and a couple of people to Taser me (Warning: expletives abound in the video, but you'll see why) as I run to get the full effect. But we'll work up to that.

In all seriousness, this loop is actually a great trail to run/bike/hike.  Here's me carrying my son in a baby backpack yesterday morning.  We did about an hour and a half, maybe 2.5 miles, before it got too hot to really have a toddler out.

After dropping the family back off at the house and fueling up with a PB&J (my son's, which he refused to eat) and a few pieces of fruit, I headed back out to the Lake for my first full run around it.  By the way, unless you're living in a cave, you know that it's still really hot out:

www.weather.com

But the trail around Lake Habeeb is pretty well shaded, and I brought one of my Camelbacks filled half with water in a liquid state and half with it in solid state.  So I ran.  And honestly, while it was really tough, it just didn't seem as hot as the other night.  I did have to stop and walk a few times, but once was because some friends called from out of town- they were passing through town on their way to vacation and wanted to stop in for a few minutes.  The rest were because I was exhausted.  I think the heat just really takes the energy out of my legs.  Normally, I can just run and run, but man, the last two runs have been in this heat and it's just brutal.  Luckily, Tough Mudder seems to relish the cold and my event is at the end of October, so hopefully it will be kind of cool.  

So my plan is to keep running around the Lake, and maybe sometime soon I'll throw in a swim across a portion of it to simulate the water obstacles in TM.  So stay tuned for that!