Mt. Bonnell, Scenic, Stratford

Time: 94:17
Distance: 15 mi.

Yowza. A bit off today... Just going 90+ minutes, so Vig wanted us to not "dilly dally." We got out the door hard and kept the pace pretty real the whole way (I think we were 62ish mins at 10 miles near the end of Stratford). I wasn't feeling great, but we had our likely "top 7" running together decently well until Darren fell off a little bit. Vig had me drop back with him when we hit Town Lake, as I told him earlier in the year that I thought the super-hard long runs were hard for me to recover from. I was happy to slow up a little bit and help Darren out, but getting out of the rhythm (at least I think that was it) was rough on the body. I think my body was set to "hang in there" until we got back but once I slowed it thought "okay, done now" and I had to try to hit two bathrooms and ended up pretty much jogging back on Trinity. Not surprisingly, this resulted in some workout stomach issues.

In one of the strangest single running experiences I've ever had, a young buck deer charged across the road at me. I juked him and he jumped right in front of me at about eye-level. Crazy.