My Epic Training Run

There was no doubt that the run we had planned for Saturday would be a big run.  An Epic run.  In the end I had consumed over 170oz+ of water we had run just under 25 miles, ascending 4000′ as we ran through 2 different wilderness parks and crossed over or under highways 4 times. 

Having recently run 21 and 22 mile runs I kicked it up a notch for a near 25 miler as my last long run before Lake Tahoe in 3 weeks.  Fortunately Tom was willing to run it with me and I didn’t have to slog out all those miles alone.  Laura and Lauren joined us in the beginning of the run.

We started out at the main Aliso Entrance, went up Mathis toward Top of The World (coming down as we were near the top we saw some other runners – most of them familiar faces from another group).  We watered up at the top and made our way back down.  Laura and Lauren parted here as we took the ridge and they ran back.  We made our way over to the Stairsteps trail which is about the only way you can link Aliso with Laguna Coast.  It lives up to it’s name.

Our Laguna Coast trek took us down the Laurel Canyon trails, under the toll road and up Serrano Ridge Trail.  We took a great little singletrack called Little Sycamore down to the under-renovation-Nix Nature Center where we fuled up and got more water.  We were around mile 12 or 13 here and I bonked a little bit.  Part of it was probably the long stop we had here.  We continued on up Stagecoach
Trail, then down and Camarillo Canyon, down Serano
Ridge and back under the Toll Road which eventually brought us back to the Laguna Coast entrance where we got water again.  The plethora of water stops along this path made it ideally suited for a long long run.  Not to mention I had never run on the trails near the Nix Nature center and I loved all of them.

We went back up Stairsteps then down along the outer ridge of Aliso to a park where we made a small detour for our last water stop.  When we started up again the front of my right lower leg was bothering me in a way it never had before.  What was it?  Shin splits?  Tom and I ran for about the next mile then I had to walk.  I eventually told Tom to go ahead.  My leg was bothering me and I didn’t want to make it worse by running on it.  I walked a good portion of the remaining trip back to our cars.  Tom was there waiting to make sure I finished and had some water and a gel in case I needed it.

Funny thing is that I felt great cardio, hydration and energy-wise.  I was ready for some more miles had my shin not been bothering me.  That’s a good sign and it wasn’t exactly cool when we finished either.  I’m taking it easy this week and hopefully this minor pain will blow over fast.  At least I’ve done 95% of my training at this point and need to start tappering.  I plan to get out and do some cross training on my mountain bike this week.

Check out Tom’s report of our epic run here and you can see his map of where we ran as well.  Turns out our 24.75 mile training run was my longest non-race run ever.  My previous longest had been 23 miles.

Happy Running & Dirty Feet,
Jessica