10 mile trail report

As I stated in my previous post, my dad and I hit the Potawatomi Trail on Thursday afternoon. This trail is like nothing I have ever ran on before. The terrain was much more difficult than the previous trails. It's extremely narrow, lots of up and down, rocks, sand, tree roots, logs, man made wooden bridges, etc... Definitely a hard route to run.

My dad says it usually takes him about 1:40 to run this 10+ mile route. So that was my goal. To be able to run with him in his normal finishing time. about 1 hour into the run I fell. I didn't have any time to react so I planted my knees and face straight into the dirt. I must have tripped over a tree root. My dad was ahead of me, so I shouted out to him and he came sprinting back to me. I wiped my face and noticed blood all over my hands. I freaked. I could feel my lip getting fat. I grabbed my water bottle and used it to wet my face. I asked my dad to inspect my lip to make sure I did not need stitches. I thought for sure my teeth went through my lip. They didn't. It was split but on the inside. I had dirt all over my white running shirt, my hands were covered in sand, my face was dirty & scratched, my knees were scraped and I had a scrape on my right shoulder. I asked my dad what we should do and since he has never had to bail off this trail, he had no idea how to get back other then finishing the run. so we did. He would look back every few minutes or so to make sure I was ok. We ended up finishing the route in 1:56. Not too bad for falling and stopping at a well to wash my face and hands.

I felt so bad that I slowed down my dads run. He felt bad that I fell. I kind of feel a little hard core for falling and still being able to pick myself back up and run for another hour. And I will be back out on this same trail for another 10 miles on April 10th and to run my trail half marathon on April 25th.

Here are a few pictures of my injuries after I was able to clean them off. Sorry for the poor quality, they are from my camera phone.

Ignore the "deer in head lights" look on my face.


You can't see how fat my lip really was, but you can see the scratches above my lip, on the tip of my nose and on the bridge of my nose between my eyes.


Right Knee- which also happens to be what I call "my bad knee". Luckily, I landed on the fleshy part because as of today, I am pain free!!









Left knee- not nearly as bad as the right!