Yet more lessons learnt that I will probably forget

It has taken a while to write something about the Trail du Georgeant -
Ceignes -. It took place just two weeks after Marc passed away.

The course itself was 16km or so of all runnable trail. With 550m of
elevation gain, it was just what I like. Plus it was being run in the
afternoon fantastic. But no, on the day things went wrong. I was doing
OK until about 7.5km. I was hanging on going up the hills and cruising
on the down hills.

But then I developed abdominal pains. At 7.5km there is no point
stopping as I have as far to go forward as backward. I had to slow right
down climbing. It felt like trapped wind.

By 12km I had to walk the uphill and the run was effectively over. At
about this time the second place girl went past and told me to hang on. It
was not until later that I realized it was the same girl who I had
encourage while passing several weeks before. Now the tables where turned.

I don't know what went wrong. It was hot and I had not been running in
the heat for a few weeks. I had had a sport drink beforehand, this is
something I never normally do and finally I was carrying water,
something else I do not normally do.

...Yet more lessons learnt that I will probably forget.

Ripped shoe

Went for a discovery run today on my local hill, the rocks are so sharp it went through my shoe (Cascadia) - The side that it. I tripped and the rock kept hold.

The limestone on the hill has been uplifted so that the bedding planes in places are vertical. Allot of the runs are on nice paths but others (especially the steep sections) have areas of exposed rock, where this happens there are shoe size cracks where the softer limestone has been eroded. You just need to be careful about foot placement and clearly downhill even more careful. The rocks are not really sharp as all the edges have been rounded off, they are just a bit "saw tooth" in appearance.

Here is my ripped shoe. The hole is in the outer mesh and about the size of a penny, so no big deal. Although I do have a bruise on my foot I tried taking a shot of it and honestly even with a half decent camera you cannot tell it is there.