Little River Trail Run

This morning I ran the Little River Trail Race. Consisting of a 10 mile and 7 km race, this event is held on in the Little River Regional Park in/near Hillsborough. Interestingly, I learned that my great-grandmother used to live just a few miles away, like 1905 (they moved to Durham... when Duke St used to be a dirt road). It was cold morning, staying in the 30s most of the day. Out in the sun, I thought it wouldn't be that bad, but it was pretty windy which made for a brisk day.

After running 30 miles last week, this was going to be a recovery week. I essentially trained as a recovery week. However, given my normal weekend long run would be 15 miles, and me being me, I felt compelled to run 5 miles before the race this morning. So I was up at 5:00am to get that in. It was a very relaxed pace, though I knew there'd probably be some detriment to the Little River. This race was also my dad's first trail run; he was doing the 7k. So I met at my parents house, and we all went up to the race.

The race itself was hard and difficult. The start of the run I could definitely feel stiffness in my legs. Also, within the first few miles, I had to stop for a pee break. Only a few strides later, I took a wicked branch to the face. It happens all the time so I thought nothing of it. But when I wiped my nose, I was startled to see bloody snot (snotty blood?), and when I spat, there was blood. That eventually stopped, but it was little peculiar. The first two miles of the race flew by, and felt I'd get by without too much suffering. But 4 miles seemed to creep by, and the middle miles slowed to a halt. I was passing many people - less as the race went on - but rolling technical hills were really taking a toll. In the end, I pulled out a 1:16:XX (don't know the seconds); within my estimations of 1:10 - 1:20, but definitely not near the faster end. My dad did GREAT for his first trail race (or trail run, period). Though he didn't have a basis for setting an hour goal, he came in at around 54 minutes.

Though I'm sure I could go right back into a build week, I'm taking another week at recovery mileage. There's not really a need to, except lines up the rest of my training pretty well.

After reading The Story of the Human Body (by Daniel Lieberman), I read The Sports Gene (by David Epstein). In this book, the author address the issues of nature vs nurture; talent vs training. I don't have as strong an opinion on this as I did Human Body. But it is a fascinating perspective. There's an interesting field of genetics called epigenetics. It's the study of how genes can be modified. This mutations are frequently causes of cancer or other maladies. And while I think the exact mechanisms for gene modifications from specific actions, I think the basic ability truly shows that nature and nurture are unavoidably linked. Your baseline influences your talents. But you can't really become great without some training that is persuaded by your talents. I think the great thing about the book is that it illustrates how different every single individual is. And really, some people get to be great by talent, some by training.

I'm not sure what I'll be reading next. I ordered two books online: So Others May Live about Coast Guard rescue swimmers, and Guns, Germs, and Steel about geographical and environmental influences on modern society.

Soundtrack:
"Listening to Freddy Mercury" by Emery
"Currently" by Keaton Simons