7.34 miles, 1:01:14
Wine is the enemy of the distance runner. K., Steve, and I enjoyed two bottles which were quite tasty over dinner Friday night. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep enough water coming in to stay adequately hydrated. To make matters worse I forgot to bring a water bottle out on the trail today. By the time the ascent out of the valley came around mile 5 I was toast. I practically crawled up the mountain. However, this gave me the opportunity to stop and take some photos, a set of which are now on flickr.
The question of the day then is: do your run with a water bottle? I generally bring one in the day is going to be hot and the final mileage is going to be near 10.
August 30th, 2005 at 10:43 am
Running with a water bottle is a pain in the ass, but if you’re running on trails that are accessible to the road, one trick I learned from my sister is that you can hide your water bottles in the woods somewhere slightly off the trail and then pick them up as you run. When I was doing long runs in GG Park, even though I only lived a couple of blocks from the park, I would drive to a central point in the park and leave my parked car there stocked with gatorade and would do figure-8 loops around it, stopping every 5 miles or so for a drink.
September 28th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
I personally like running with an Ultimate Directions hand-held water bottle, but one hand only. Also, one ‘trick’ that I’ve used when running long distances (Nisene Marks,Aptos) is to park my car (loaded with water bottles, Gatorade, and snacks) at the last gate 3 miles into the park, so I can stop there and refuel if necessary when going from the gate to the entrance/overlook area and back..Works well when running 20 miles or so…In other words, my car acts like an aid station..
October 1st, 2005 at 11:37 am
That’s actually the same water bottle that I have. I picked it up because I read about it in “The art of inovation by Tom Kelley. Kelley is a founder of IDEO, the design firm that designed the Ultimate Directions water bottles. He talks about the constraints and their unique solution in the book and the resulting “kicker” valve really does work well. They interviewed a bunch of mountain bikers and decided that the goals should be to make it easy to open the spout hands-free and keep dirt out of the water. It definitely works for trail and road runners as well. My only complaint is that occasionally I switch hands to give me right arm a rest and the grips are setup to be comfortable in the right hand more than the left. But, otherwise it is the best water bottle I have owned. This reminds me that I wanted to start a recommended gear list. I’m going to get on that.