Date: 6/12/21
Training Day: 141
Miles: 13.1
Time: 2 hrs, 28 min
Shoes: Hoka Bondi 7
Weather: Mostly cloudy, high 30s to low 50s

How It Felt: The knee and IT band felt much better this time around, probably because I was smarter this time (see commentary).

Commentary: Last night I cruised down a dirt road with dispersed camping, looking for a home for the night. All the spots were taken, but I continued down the road to loop back to the highway just for funsies. Bad idea.

May parts of the road were washed out, and there plenty of gnarly rocks. While navigating some serious ruts with equally serious large rocks, my car’s steering warning came in and I lost power steering. Perfect timing.

Let me tell you, driving down a fucked up diet road with no power steering sucks! I had all intentions of heading straight to town to see if anyone could help me with my problem. But before I turned onto the highway I attempted turning off and restarting my car. It worked! Next time I’ll try that before going miles down a dirt road.

I ended up finding a home at a trailhead I’ve called home before. Next time I’ll just go there first.

The Yellowstone half marathon was much more difficult than Grand Teton. It was mostly dirt roads, which was both positive and negative.

I believe the dirt roads were much nicer to my body parts. But the narrow roads made passing people harder, and the rocks in the road were ridiculous at times. Many people ate shit on a particularly treacherous, rocky stretch of road.

Instead of being a dipshit and running the whole thing, I alternated running and walking. I started with 3.5 minutes of running and 1.5 minutes of walking. Then there was long hill, so I just walked the whole damn thing. After that I did three minutes of running and two minutes of walking.

I noticed that regardless of my pace, my knee would start to hurt right around the three-minute mark. So I decided to pick up my running pace a bit. Then I got the great idea to try to finish under 2.5 hours.

I tore down the downhills regardless of how steep with were, and this bought me a little bit of time. The last 1.5 miles I jogged more than I walked and came in a mere five minutes slower than last weekend. Badass.

Thanks to running smart instead of stubborn, my knee/IT band isn’t killing me. I did a bunch of stretches and foam rolling in the park, and I’m not even gimping around!

Here soon I think I shall make my way to a lake to try out my new paddleboard. That is if it’s not too windy.

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