An Inspirational Journey
To celebrate my birthday, I wanted to adventure out further on my running mileage. I was supposed to run my first 100k a month before, but it got cancelled (due to the course being damaged from bad weather) so I figured I’d run my own.
After looking for a route that will allow me to run in some locations I had not ran in yet (which is pretty hard to find these days), I decided I’d run from the local (and my favorite) running store in Pensacola, Running Wild, to their store location over in Fairhope, Alabama. I sent my original 100k route to Paul Epstein (owner of Running Wild) to get his feedback on the route since I’ve never ran out that way and he recommended some additional miles at the end of the route which would take me on some of the running routes that the Fairhope store runs on. The extra 4 miles were well worth it as it gave me water views of Mobile Bay and some much needed shaded areas.
I started the run at 8:00 PM in Pensacola on July 8th so ever since the sun came out the next morning, there were barely any shaded areas to run on and since I was running in July in the Gulf Coast, the heat index at the end of the run was increasing past 100 degrees. Needless to say, it was great once I got to the Fairhope store and the staff there got me a chair to sit down in the AC and drink some water. The heat rash and moderate chafing I got from running in the crazy heat was well worth the completion of my longest run yet on my birthday.
